Both Dell and Hewlett-Packard announced their latest quarterly financial reports after hours local time on Thursday, showing strong demand for personal computers from users who were isolated at home during the epidemic.

Dell’s 2021 fiscal second quarter financial report showed that Dell’s consumer equipment business quarterly revenue jumped 18% to $3.2 billion, while HP said in its fiscal 2020 third-quarter financial report that PC shipments in the quarter Reached a record 18 million units.

Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer of Dell, said: “As parents, teachers and various school districts are preparing for the new situation of online learning, we found that government and education orders have increased by 16% and 24%, respectively. ."

HP CEO Enrique Lores (Enrique Lores) said that facts have proved that HP laptops played an important role during the epidemic. He added in an interview: "Now, instead of one PC per household, one PC per person."

The epidemic has forced millions of people around the world to stay at home, which has brought an unexpected boost to the PC industry. According to data from market research company IDC, after several years of stagnant growth, shipments of desktop computers, notebook computers and workstations reached 72.3 million units in the second quarter of this year, an increase of 11% over the same period last year.

Dell Performance

Dell said on Thursday that as of July 31, the second quarter of fiscal 2021, the company's revenue was 22.7 billion U.S. dollars, while analysts’ average expectation was 22.5 billion U.S. dollars; net profit was 1.1 billion U.S. dollars, compared with 4.232 billion U.S. dollars in the same period last year. Compared with a decrease of 74%; adjusted diluted earnings per share was US$1.92, a decrease of 11% compared with US$2.15 in the same period last year, but exceeded analyst expectations. After the earnings report was announced, Dell's stock price rose more than 1% in after-hours trading.

Dell CEO Michael Dell (Michael Dell) once again sought to adjust the company's structure, this time to create more value from Dell's 81% of the software manufacturer VMware shares. Dell said in a July document that it might consider spinning off VMware. The company said that in order to achieve tax-free transactions, any transaction will not be completed before September 2021 at the earliest.

At the same time, the company has been fighting the economic turmoil caused by the epidemic, which has reduced the company's demand for data center hardware. But as more consumers work, study and play at home, Dell’s efforts to update its personal computer product line have paid off.

Dell said revenue from consumer devices increased by 18%, PC business revenue for corporate customers fell by 11%, and server and network revenue fell by 5% to $4.2 billion. Storage hardware revenue fell 4% to $4 billion. VMware revenue increased by 10%, reaching $2.9 billion.

Dell's flexible purchasing options have attracted more corporate customers who want to adopt new technologies without having to prepay the full amount. Dell’s current quarterly revenue reached $6 billion, an increase of 15% over the same period last year.

HP Earnings

HP said that in the fiscal third quarter of fiscal 2020 ending July 31, the company’s revenue was 14.3 billion U.S. dollars, while analysts’ average expectation was 13.3 billion U.S. dollars; net profit was 700 million U.S. dollars, compared with 1.2 billion in the same period last year. The U.S. dollar fell 37.7%; adjusted earnings per share was 0.49 U.S. dollars, down 15.5% compared with 0.58 U.S. dollars in the same period last year, but still exceeded analysts’ expectations of 0.43 U.S. dollars.

Hewlett-Packard also predicts that the fourth-quarter profit will be between $0.5 and $0.54 per share, while analysts expected it to be $0.5.

Rawls has been leading Hewlett-Packard in its efforts to deal with the threat of the epidemic. The company first solved the production challenges, so as to meet the demand for personal computers of consumers in isolation at home. As the offices of various companies are generally vacant, HP's commercial printing business is in trouble, but the company has been using inkjet subscription services to support printing revenue. The users of this service will soon reach 8 million.

HP's revenue from the personal systems division (mainly computers) increased by 7% to $10.4 billion. Revenue from the consumer business grew 42%, while revenue from the corporate business fell 6%. Printing business revenue fell 20% to 3.9 billion US dollars.

Hewlett-Packard expects free cash flow in fiscal 2020 to reach between 2.5 billion and 3 billion US dollars. (Chenchen)

Source: NetEase Technology Report, translated by Google Translate