The PC maker announced Thursday it recorded a net income of $290 million for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010, and earnings of 24 cents per share, or 15 cents per share when accounting for write downs from severance pay and factory closings during the quarter. That's down 63 percent from the $784 million, and 38 cents per share recorded a year ago. Revenues were also down 23 percent to $12.3 billion.
Analysts on average had been expecting revenue of $12.66 billion, and earnings between 19 cents and 27 cents per share.
"It started out as a slow first (fiscal) quarter. It picked up a bit in the second half of the quarter," Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said on a call with reporters Thursday. But he said it was "still a challenging IT demand environment" and emphasized that Dell is not yet ready to say that the drop in demand has yet reached its lowest point.
Dell has been saying for the last few quarters that since its core customer base--corporate IT departments--are being battered by the economy, it would try to focus on internal housekeeping tasks like cutting expenses and operating costs. Gladden said the company's operating expenses had fallen by $101 million from the previous quarter and by $312 million from a year ago.
Despite that, Dell is still facing major challenges. Revenues decreased in every major business unit significantly, though a relatively bright spot appeared to be the consumer group. Consumer revenue was down 16 percent to $2.8 billion, and consumer shipments rose 12 percent from a year ago. It's been spending much more on research and development on products down in Round Rock, Texas, and produced yet another Netbook, and more notebook models--including the high-priced Adamo--during the quarter.
1 COMMENTS:
Well, all companies today are not doing so well anyway. Dell should be thankful that they haven't even filed for bankruptcy yet. But hopefully they'll bounce back. :)
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