HP Raises Outlook, beats Street

The leadership in the PC space may have moved to HP now. Dell seems more and more like the beaten giant that can't do anything right. They have had service woes, margin shrinkage, and now 4 million battery recall. HP however is just chugging along:

Sales in the fiscal third quarter rose 5 percent to $21.89 billion from
$20.76 billion last year. If not for currency fluctuations, sales would have
increased 6 percent.

Excluding one-time items, the company earned $1.48 billion, or 52
cents per share, up nearly 40 percent from the same quarter last
year.

On that basis, which does not comply with generally accepted
accounting principles, HP beat Wall Street expectations by 5 cents per share.
Analysts were expecting the company to earn $1.37 billion, or 47 cents a share,
on sales of $21.8 billion, according to a Thomson Financial survey.

One good thing was they were able to take market share without having to resort to margin shrinking sales. They were also able to raise their outlook for the year as well.

Looking ahead, HP said it expected earnings for the full year of $2.14
to $2.16 a share, up from an earlier estimate of $2.02 to $2.06 a share.