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Dell whiffs - why it was no surprise

Dell reported earnings after the close today. Net income dropped 17% to $616 million in the quarter on a revenue increase of 11% to $16.4 billion.

Excluding restructuring and other charges, Dell would have earned 33 cents a share. Including the charges, per share earnings are on track to be the lowest the company has recorded since late 2006 or early 2007. And this is after the company spent over a billion dollars to buy back shares.

Yesterday, I wrote a post on the Durable Goods Report (read it here). I made the point that new orders for Computers and related products were down 10.7% in July. That was more than twice the 4.7% drop that occurred in June. Shipments for Computers were down 12.9% in July after being down almost 5% in June.

Well, we recently received earnings from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). In the PC segment, where they compete directly with Dell, H-P turned in pretty good numbers on a 15% increase in sales.

Given the fact that H-P and Dell are the two largest U.S. PC manufacturers, if one is doing well while orders and shipments are falling, it stands to reason that the other will not be doing so well. That other one had to be Dell.

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November 3, 2008 at 6:55:00 AM EST

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