Hewlett-Packard beat, raised, and had fairly stable comments to offer on the European front, and the stock reacted accordingly.
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HP
HP reported $1.09 a share on $30.8 billion, beating the Street's consensus of $1.05 and $29.81 billion respectively.
There was noticeable strength in a few of HP's key division, most notably the Personal Systems Group, home to HP's personal computers, which came in at $9.96 billion, blowing past the $9.67 billion Wall Street was looking for; the Enterprise also was a strong performer, reporting $4.54 billion, or half billion dollars above analyst projections.
The company's Imaging and Printing division seemed to reverse the issues that plagued this part of the business last quarter, coming in at $6.4 billion, or $200 million above estimates. Services also came in ahead of expectations at $8.7 billion.
On the guidance front, HP now offers an EPS range for its third fiscal quarter of $1.05 to $1.07 a share, or in line with the $1.06 expected, and the company is ticking up its revenue range to $29.7 billion to $30 billion. The Street was at $29.72 billion. For the full year, HP is raising EPS guidance to $4.45 to $4.50, above the Street's $4.45 a share. Get after-hour quotes for Hewlett-Packard here.
A couple of key takeaways —
In an interview with CNBC just after the numbers were released, CEO Mark Hurd didn't seem so concerned with Europe's weakness, and in fact the company reported an 11 percent increase in its European/Middle East/Africa business during the second quarter.
This report also specifically pointed out that third quarter and full year expectations from the company do not include any potential revenue from the Palm acquisition, likely because that deal hasn't even closed yet. HP also reported that it has $14 billion in cash on the balance sheet.
This is a very good report on a variety of levels, most notably with all the fronts that HP is battling on, the company seems to be accelerating its growth in most of them. The question now, in this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately kind of world of Wall Street is what HP's numbers might mean for its struggling rival Dell, which reports its numbers on Thursday.
But for those investors worried about tech weakness, HP's numbers aren't just good for that company alone: HP's numbers bode well for IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, and likely Dell as well.
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