HP makes impression with superlative results

Even Wall Street was surprised last week by the momentum of Hewlett Packard, which increased sales, turnover and profit during its 1996 Q1.

US analysts hailed HP's performance in all sections of its business, but Deskjet printers and home PCs sold especially well. HP entered the US home PC market during the quarter, which ended on January 31.

Chairman, president and CEO Lew Platt has run out of adjectives to describe HP's success. He called the growth and sales of its PC business 'outstanding', its Unix system business 'very good', its servers 'superb' and its profitability 'excellent'. He reverted to 'outstanding' when discussing HP's product demand.

Compared to HP's Q1 1995, worldwide sales rose 29 per cent to $10.1 billion, revenue increased 27 per cent to $9.3 billion and earnings jumped 31 per cent to $790 million.

In the UK, HP maintained the pace as orders rose 32 per cent and exports increased by 38 per cent, said UK chairman John Golding.