Personal computer maker Dell Inc. said Tuesday its net income more than doubled in the most recent quarter to handily beat expectations, as businesses spent more on computers, servers and other technology.
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Dell also issued annual revenue guidance for the current fiscal year that beat Wall Street’s forecast. The results sent Dell’s shares soaring in extended trading after the report was released.
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Companies that clamped down on spending during the economic downturn continued to upgrade technology in the quarter. Dell’s business is more heavily weighted toward corporate customers than its competitors, so this resurgence in spending is giving it a relatively big boost.
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Those increases helped Dell offset sluggish consumer spending on computers. Dell Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said he expects the consumer PC business will remain weak this fiscal year, in part because people are thinking about buying tablets such as Apple Inc.’s iPad.
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Dell’s results bring an extra month’s perspective to an earlier report from technology bellwether Intel Corp. The strong corporate spending and the weakening of the consumer PC market that Intel, the world’s largest maker of PC processors, observed in the last three months of 2010 continued through January.
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For the quarter that ended Jan. 28, net income soared to $927 million, or 48 cents per share, from $334 million, or 17 cents per share, a year earlier.
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Excluding certain items, Dell earned 53 cents per share, blowing past Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast earnings of 36 cents per share.
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Revenue rose 5 percent to $15.69 billion from $14.9 billion in the year-ago quarter. That’s less than the $15.75 billion analysts predicted.
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Revenue from large enterprises and from small and medium-size businesses rose 12 percent each to $4.7 billion and $3.7 billion, respectively. Public-sector revenue increased 4 percent to $4 billion.
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Revenue from the consumer segment fell 8 percent to $3.3…