TMCnet Feature

According to a report by business news site Business Insider, computer maker Dell’s (News - Alert) performance in the third quarter PC sector has not been encouraging. In fact, as per this report, Dell missed Wall Street's revenue estimates for its third quarter, as consumer PC revenue dropped six percent from last year. However, despite weak PC sales, the company’s earnings estimates were on target, showing once again how Dell is great at squeezing more profit out of less, wrote Business Insider reporter Matt Rosoff.

As per the BI report, revenue was $15.37 billion, down slightly from last year and behind consensus estimates of $15.65 billion. The one big factor for this weak PC sales performance is attributed to weak consumer revenue, which was down six percent from last year at only $2.8 billion.

Likewise, the report shows that the public sector revenue was lower, dropping two percent to $4.4 billion. But, in spite of lower revenue, Dell managed to turn that weak revenue into a nine percent EPS gain from last year, at $0.54 (non-GAAP), wrote Rosoff. The average estimate was $0.48.

However, “investors know this "more from less" performance can't continue forever, and sent the stock down about one percent after hours,” Rosoff wrote.

Meanwhile, revenue for Dell’s enterprise solutions and services business, including sales of servers, storage, networking, and services, increased eight percent over the same quarter last year to $4.7 billion, an all-time high. As the revenue mix steadily shifts more to the higher-value enterprise portfolio, Dell is delivering on its commitment to improve profitability, with operating income up 12 percent for the quarter and at 7.6 percent of revenue for the fiscal year to date.