Dell and Hewlett-Packard to Face Fiscal Report Business Faced with Transformation Challenges This Week

Beijing time on February 21 news, this week, Dell and Hewlett-Packard will announce quarterly earnings, performance may highlight the status quo of the PC market: become the Red Sea, is recovering, the two giants compete for high-margin business.

Due to the sluggish PC, the two major companies have been affected, and the shortage of hard drives caused by the flood disaster in Thailand has even worsened the situation.

In addition, the economic downturn in Europe has not brought much help to performance. However, the PC market is recovering, and the corporate market has expanded its hardware requirements to benefit Dell and HP.

IDC analyst Bob O'Donnell said that the PC will remain difficult in the first half of this year, but will see moderate growth in the second half of the year.

Wall Street is particularly bullish on Dell, and by the end of last Friday, Dell's share price has risen by 20% this year.

After the US stocks close on Tuesday, Dell will announce new quarterly earnings. FactSet survey analyst data shows that Wall Street estimates fourth-quarter earnings per share of 52 cents, revenue of 15.97 billion US dollars. In the same period of last year, Dell earned 53 cents per share and revenue of $15.7 billion.

Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays Capital, said: "We believe that because of a one-week increase in sales, Dell's share in the PC and server markets has increased compared to HP, its earnings per share, and Revenue will increase."

However, the Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu reduced the Dell stock rating from “neutral” to “weaker than the broader market.” He believes: “Investors’ interest in Dell stocks is too positive and they are somewhat complacent.” He thinks Dell is in a very difficult competitive position. Despite diversifying efforts, 70-75% of the business is still related to PC.

In the past few years, Dell has made great efforts to emphasize corporate IT's high-profit business, including networking, storage, and services. However, the transition will take time. HP also faces the same problem, it has actually entered the high-end enterprise IT business.

In fact, HP's portfolio is broader, involving PCs, high-end servers, and services. This is a good thing. To reshape the glory, this also becomes a burden. After all, it has a huge business and involves many markets.

Brian Marshall, an analyst at the ISI Group, points out that HP is the only company that owns all necessary intellectual property rights in building the next-generation data center. However, he also pointed out that Hewlett-Packard acquired many companies in the past few years worth US$35 billion, and it is necessary to integrate the challenges.

Under the leadership of the new CEO Whitman, HP will undergo a difficult transition.

After the US stocks closed on Wednesday, HP will issue a financial report, which is expected to yield 87 cents per share and revenue of 30.8 billion US dollars. A year ago, Hewlett-Packard earned 1.36 US dollars per share, revenue of 32.3 billion US dollars.