Specifically, the company said that it expects to report revenue of $19.5bn and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.35 in Q1; after adjusting earnings for amortization of purchased intangibles (gained through recent acquisitions), GAAP earnings will be $0.30 or $0.31 a share.
This, according to an HP statement released by its investor relations office, is consistent with guidance that HP provided for the quarter three months ago. Back in November, the company said that it would have sales between $19.1bn and $19.5bn. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call had an average expectation of non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.35 and sales of $19.4bn. So HP has more or less pegged expectations.
Of course, all large companies manage expectations through the analyst community, so this is not necessarily much of a surprise. In fact, it is always much more of a surprise when a company does not hit its targets, as HP has done several times under the stewardship of chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina. She doesn’t like surprises any more than Wall Street does.
HP’s spokepeople were saying that the company was pre-announcing Q1’s results because of speculation in the past several weeks in the analyst community. There has been talk that the printer business being weak in January. HP didn’t say this wasn’t the case, and if it was indeed weak, the company made it up elsewhere. Either way, HP is saying it hit its numbers, and it is probably not a coincidence that the company is saying this as Sun Microsystems Inc is finishing up its shindig with analysts and press for its first quarter product announcements. All week, these two have been trying to steal each other’s thunder. What are the odds that both companies would launch their dual-core RISC processors within 24 hours of each other? Well, the odds are 100% if you are talking about HP and Sun–and that is not a coincidence. It is planning.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
