Dell Technologies has reported its fourth-quarter results, and the PC and enterprise technology behemoth’s current-quarter revenue and profit were lower than expected by Wall Street. This could exacerbate investors’ skepticism about the sector.
Analysts on Wall Street currently expect Dell to earn $1.64 per share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $23.5 billion in the January quarter. Dell earned $1.72 per share on $27.8 billion in revenue during the same period last year. Its stock dropped about 3% in extended trading following the forecast, reversing a 6% rise on estimate-beating fourth-quarter results. Dell expects revenue to fall between 17% and 21% in the first quarter. According to Refinitiv data, analysts expected it to be down 17.4% on average.
Dell’s earnings per share are expected to be $1.38 by the six analysts who follow the stock. This figure represents a 19.77% decrease from the same quarter the previous year. Dell fell -11.79% short of the consensus earnings per share in the first calendar quarter of 2022. Dell’s 2023 Price to Earnings ratio is 6.30, compared to an industry ratio of 8.40.
In the fourth quarter ended Feb. 3, revenue in the company’s infrastructure solutions group, which includes servers, storage devices, and networking hardware, increased 7%. Meanwhile, revenue from commercial and consumer units fell 17% and 40%, respectively, indicating a decline in PC demand.
This is reportedly due to a continuing demand slump in its PC business as a result of consumers and businesses postponing system upgrades.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.