Hewlett-Packard third quarter profit surges, beat expectations
San Jose – Hewlett-Packard Co. beat Wall Street’s expectations Wednesday, when the computer maker reported that fiscal third-quarter profit surged on strong printer and laptop sales. The company’s shares gained nearly 6 percent in after-hours trading.
For the three months ended July 31, HP earned $1.38 billion, or 48 cents a share, compared with $73 million, or 3 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
The year-ago numbers were dramatically lower because of a tax charge that resulted when the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company pulled $14.5 billion from foreign earnings and “repatriated,” or reinvested, those profits in the United States.
Sales in the fiscal third quarter rose 5 percent to $21.89 billion from $20.76 billion last year. If not for currency fluctuations, sales would have increased 6 percent.
Excluding one-time items, the company earned $1.48 billion, or 52 cents per share, up nearly 40 percent from the same quarter last year.
On that basis, which does not comply with generally accepted accounting principles, HP beat Wall Street expectations by 5 cents per share. Analysts were expecting the company to earn $1.37 billion, or 47 cents a share, on sales of $21.8 billion, according to a Thomson Financial survey.
Dell customers flock to replace notebook batteries
Dallas – Dell Inc.’s record-setting recall of 4.1 million notebook computer batteries raised safety concerns about the power source of countless electronic devices, but experts said the problem appears to stem from flaws in the production of the laptop batteries, not the underlying technology.
Customers began calling the company and surfing to a special Web site Tuesday to order replacements for the lithium-ion batteries that could cause their Dell machines to overheat and even catch fire.
Dell, the world’s largest PC maker, announced the recall Monday night with the Consumer Products Safety Commission. It was the largest electronics-related recall involving the federal agency.
Dell said it received more than 100,000 phone calls, 23 million Web site hits and took 77,000 orders by late in the day.
Battery packs contain cells of rolled up metal strips. During the manufacturing process, crimping the rolls left tiny shards of metal loose in the cells, and some of those shards caused batteries to short-circuit and overheat, according to Sony.
