Jeff Clarke (Dell Technologies)
Dell Technologies has beat analysts' estimates for quarterly revenue, boosted by demand for its workstations from companies moving more employees to work from home due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Shares of the company rose 8.3 per cent to US$49.38 in extended trading. Revenue from client solutions group, that accounts for half of the revenue and includes desktop PCs, notebooks and tablets, rose two per cent to $11.1 billion in its fiscal first quarter.
Commercial notebooks reported double-digit unit and revenue growth, while mobile workstations posted high-single-digit revenue growth, the company said.
"In Q1, we saw orders with banking and financial services, government, healthcare and life sciences customers up 15 per cent to 20 per cent," said Jeff Clarke, COO of Dell Technologies in a statement.
But higher spending by companies towards enabling remote work, as well as weak demand in China weighed on Dell's data centre business. Revenue in that business fell eight per cent to $7.57 billion in the three months ended May 1.
Total revenue fell marginally to $21.90 billion, but topped estimates of $20.81 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Net income attributable to the company fell to $143 million, from $293 million a year earlier.
Dell in March scrapped its financial year 2021 forecast due to uncertainty over the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Sales from its software unit VMware jumped 12 per cent to $2.76 billion.
(Reporting by Neha Malara in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Munsif Vengattil; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Amy Caren Daniel)
