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HP posts higher fourth quarter sales

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: Hewlett-Packard (HP) has posted higher fourth quarter sales and operating income. The company said net earnings from continuing operations, excluding results of Agilent Technologies its test and measurement business, totaled 75 cents per share, compared to 72 cents per share in the year-ago period.



Although results in the latest quarter did not include Agilent’s operations, they did include expenses related to the spin-off of Agilent. Including those costs, the company had operating income of 73 cents per diluted share, compared to 68 cents in the year-ago quarter. Net operating income rose to $760 million from $710 million and revenues from continuing operations totaled $11.4 billion, compared with $10.3 billion.



The fourth quarter earnings report represents the first time HP has excluded the results of Agilent, which will soon begin trading as a public company. Hewlett-Packard’s stock, which has been depressed for the past few months, jumped more than $2 a share after the earnings were reported, which took the stock up $1.44 to $77.44. The company also said its high-end Unix system servers posted good revenue growth, but the rest of its server lines were essentially flat, although order growth was up across all server lines. Chief executive Carly Fiorina said she had a motivated team she was confident could achieve 12 to 15 per cent growth in sales and earnings next year, and that Y2K computer problems might limit growth in the first quarter.

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