Acer manages slight profit despite sales plunge

Taiwanese back in the black after two tough years but numbers still make for fairly grim reading

Acer's revenues shrivelled by almost a fifth in 2013's opening quarter but the embattled Taiwanese PC maker did manage to post a small post-tax profit after two years of losses.

Revenue for Q1 2013 dropped 18.9 per cent year on year to $3.08bn (£2bn), although the vendor claims its results were "in line with the original shipment outlook". The operating loss of $112.8m posted in Q1 2012 was turned into a profit of just under $1m this time out.

Additionally, "foreign exchange and stock disposal gains" took profit after tax up to $17.24m. Although this still equates to margins of little more than half a per cent.

Acer is surely not the only client vendor feeling the pinch at the moment, with recent IDC figures revealing that during Q1 the market posted its worst performance since quarterly records began, with worldwide shipments slumping 13.9 per cent annually to 76.3 million.

But even by these muted standards Acer's performance came up short when measured against its rivals. The firm saw its shipments nosedive 31.3 per cent to 6.15 million.

This compares with year-on-year shipment declines of 23.7 per cent for HP, 19.2 per cent for Asus and 10.9 per cent for Dell. Lenovo has gained significant ground in the last year and saw unit shipments remain flat in Q1.