The leap of 18% to $205m in Hewlett-Packard Co’s first quarter net profits caught analysts on the hop but seems to have been substantially caused by the benefits of a couple of years of cost-cutting measures feeding through to the bottom line – sales were up only 10% at $3,400m – and the cuts are continuing: the company says that it shed about 1,000 employees in the first quarter by attrition, and expects that not replacing those that leave will enable it to shed another 2,000 in the rest of this fiscal year; orders overall were up 12% at $3,700m, but foreign orders grew 20% to $2,200m while its US orders rose only 3% to $1,500m.
