Compaq Computer Corp’s Rod Canion, over in Munich for the Compaq Grand Slam Cup tennis tournament, took time out to talk to Reuters – and was unfashionably bullish, saying that the Houston company was having a very good fourth quarter and he anticipates an outstanding year. Europe now accounts for 45% of Compaq’s business, despite some evidence of a slowdown, but Canion dismisses as baloney rumours that the Systempro server machine is selling very slowly. He claims that Systempro has notched up some $200m in sales in its first year, and analysts are forecasting overall unit sales to grow between 5% and 10% in the US this year, between 15% and 20% in Europe. Canion is optimistic that markets will pick up by mid-1991, and he is confident that laptops will outperform other sectors. However, Compaq is unhappy with its current manufacturing capacity and acknowledges that it has a huge backlog of orders that it won’t be able to meet until some way through the first quarter of 1991. Canion claims that even if other vendors experienced a downturn in demand in the UK market, Compaq saw its business grow rapidly, and he believes that both net and gross margins will remain strong.
