Hewlett Packard prints its way to strong first-quarter profit

High growth in its printing and imaging division spurred Hewlett Packard to strong first-quarter results, prompting executives to predict revenue for the year to move towards a 12 to 15 per cent growth range.

High growth in its printing and imaging division spurred Hewlett Packard to strong first-quarter results, prompting executives to predict revenue for the year to move towards a 12 to 15 per cent growth range.

HP reported revenue of $11.7bn (£7.3bn), a growth of 14 per cent, in its first quarter ended 31 January, with the printing and imaging segment growing by 13 per cent.

Carly Fiorina, chief executive of HP, said: "The renewal and reinvention of Hewlett-Packard is under way."

Bob Wayman, chief financial officer at HP, added: "Given the strong first quarter, we hope to come in towards the high end of this range for revenue growth."

The manufacturer saw some slowdown in commercial PCs, which was at least partly to do with year 2000 issue-related problems, Wayman said.

While both commercial and consumer PCs were profitable, HP had expected higher profitability and was disappointed that it did not achieve more.

"We have room to improve our profitability by moving more of our business to a direct model. That's one of our strategies and we would expect to see improved profitability as that plays out," Wayman said.

While pleased with HP's performance in high-end and low-end systems, Fiorina said the midrange segment was flat. "We will be announcing significant enhancements to the HP 9000 N-class server later this month. We think those enhancements will provide a substantial improvement in performance and price and so we think that's going to continue to serve us very well," she said.

Fiorina also spoke about HP's Linux strategy, noting that Linux is complementary to HP-UX, the Unix operating system that powers HP's midrange servers.