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Alexkid

HP shares slide as powerhouse faces growth fears
JORDAN ROBERTSON - The Associated Press

06:12:22AM(ET) Wednesday,February 12,2011.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hewlett-Packard Co.'s new CEO Leo Apotheker delivered some disappointing news to Wall Street on Tuesday after his first full quarter with the technology company.

Revenue growth, a persistent worry for companies of HP's size, will be slower this year than many analysts had envisioned. It was an unusual letdown that raised questions about the momentum of the company's acquisition-fueled transformation into a computing clearinghouse.

Investors punished HP's stock, one of the the Dow Jones industrial average. The stock shed 12 percent in extended trading following the release of the fiscal first-quarter results.

Few companies are as good a proxy for the technology market as HP. It's the world's biggest technology company by revenue and is a player in many far-flung markets, from personal computers and smart phones and tablets to technical services and computer servers and data storage.

Yet the latest report appears to point more toward the danger of companies setting ambitious financial targets in a shaky economy than any broad weakness in technology spending that will spill over to other companies.

Another heavyweight, Cisco Systems Inc., has also stumbled, but its problem is mainly that it relies heavily on sales to cash-strapped government buyers. That's an area that HP is far less exposed to.

HP said after the market closed that its net income jumped 16 percent to $2.61 billion, or $1.17 per share, in the three months ended Jan. 31. A year ago, it earned $2.25 billion, or 93 cents per share.

HP said that excluding one-time items, it earned $1.36 per share in the latest quarter. That was ahead of the $1.29 per share that analysts polled by FactSet expected on that basis.


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* This up and down news from HP has to be driving the investors/consumers up the wall.
Lets see what happens later this spring. *

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