Despite the prevailing gloom about the US and indeed the world economy, Hewlett-Packard Co was surprisingly upbeat when it met security analysts late Wednesday, saying that it enters 1992 in very good shape because of its focus on improving performance. It reckons it has made solid progress on key initiatives aimed at improving growth and profitability despite a challenging business environment and believes it can continue to increase operating profit more rapidly than revenue in 1992. It hopes finally to get its baby sub-$10,000 HP 9000 Series 700 workstation out this quarter, and says that business through US dealers rose sharply in the fiscal fourth quarter to the end of October. The test-and-measurement and components businesses are responding to the slowdown in the defence and aerospace business with new products aimed at the communications market. The company also claims a 75% market share in the US for inkjet printers, based on figures from market researcher Storeboard Inc. Lewis Platt, executive vice-president and general manager of the Computer Systems Organisation, reported that in the past year, 50 customers have moved applications from their IBM mainframes to HP high-end systems. Orders for the Series 700 RISC workstations continue to exceed the company’s expectations, and although the Model 720 backlog now is at a normal level with four-week availability, the backlog for Model 730 and 750 is extensive: availability of the 66MHz floating-point chip from Texas Instruments is causing some previously announced shipment delays, but availability should be back to normal in the second quarter of this fiscal. He also highlighted the development of an impressive array of what the company calls middleware, software layers that sit between the operating system and the application and that enable users to build, manage and use distributed open systems, noting the endorsement of OpenView. Richard Hackborn, executive vice-president and general manager of the Computer Products Organisation, noted a sharp increase in orders from the US dealer channel, with orders up 42% over the fourth quarter of the 1990 fiscal year and up 25% over the third quarter of fiscal 1991. Factors contributing include strong product offerings, the company’s expansion into computer and office superstores, which yield profit margin equal to that of the traditional dealer channel, closer tying of the sales force with product groups and a new dealer contract. In addition, dealers that were consolidating inventory earlier in the year now are re-ordering, he said.
