The firm yesterday reported a first fiscal quarter to January 31 that saw revenue up 10% to $21.5bn, but net income up not quite 1% compared to the 2004 quarter, at $943m.

While the former CEO was not mentioned by name, the company is sticking to its story that Fiorina was ejected last week for failing to put to execute the company’s strategy effectively, maintaining that the strategy itself is sound.

The focus from executives, speaking during the analyst conference call discussing the results, was on improving margins by cutting costs and attempting to balance market share growth with pricing.

The new imaging and personal systems group, formed last month after HP finally decided that spinning off its imaging business was a non-starter, still brings in the most revenue $12.9bn, up 7% compared to the same quarter a year ago.

That unit saw operating margins of 8.5%, $1.1bn profit in total, up from $1bn last year. While revenue was fairly evenly split between imaging and personal systems groups, and imaging is still more profitable, most of the growth came from personal systems.

The company said imaging and printing was up 3% to $6.1bn, while personal systems (consumer PCs, laptops, etc) was up 11% to $6.9bn. Imaging operating profit was 15.4% of revenue, compared to 2.1% from personal systems.

Post-Fiorina, analysts wondered whether her still-to-be-named permanent replacement would conclude that shareholder value could be best served by spinning off the imaging business, but HP executives are not following that train of thought.

We believe strongly that the combination of the imaging and printing and personal systems groups will drive greater growth, as well as deliver more value to partners and customers, said VJ Joshi, executive vice president of the unit.

But Joshi admitted that there is work to do to improve margins in imaging, where the company is losing share at the low end. The company needs to grow market share in the consumer printing and imaging segments that have the most usage, he said, which will drive recurring sales of items such as printer ink.

Revenue in consumer hardware declined 13% year over year, driven by aggressive pricing and intense competition in both all-in-one and single function printers and the ongoing decline in the scanner market, he said.

We will focus on regaining market share globally, in terms of providing promotions, and we will do some pricing moves, where we think the usage is much higher, he said. Market share where we see high usage is where we need to go after.

He added that he expected IBM’s exit from the PC business will help grow market share in certain HP segments.

We expect our new family of commercial notebooks that we introduced two weeks ago will help us recapture lost ground in the commercial notebook market, particularly among customers concerned about the sale of IBM’s PC business to Lenovo, he said.

The Technology Solutions Group, which consists of storage, servers, software and services, saw revenue up 14% at $8.1bn, with profit down to 3.9% of revenue, $312m, from $365m, or 5.2% of revenue a year ago.

Anne Livermore, executive VP of that group, said pricing pressure and the changing revenue mix were to blame for the margin decline in this segment.

She pointed to blades, network-attached storage and ProLiant servers, which grew 19% year on year, as highlights, but said services, while recording 20% revenue growth, suffered at the bottom line from a move away from proprietary product support.

While the company’s Q1 numbers were not amazing, the firm gave a boost to its share price in after-hours trading by offering a second-quarter revenue estimate $100m over the latest Wall Street consensus estimates.

Bob Wayman, acting as CEO while HP finds a replacement for Fiorina, said the improved estimate represent an expectation of the usual seasonal strength, plus good expectations in the PC market.