UPDATED 16:31 EDT / AUGUST 15 2011

Dell Expects Growth in Q3 Despite Market Declines

Dell will be holding its earnings call tomorrow afternoon, and it’s expected to report some growth, despite seeing a decline in a few areas.

The average profit forecast of 32 analysts stands at $0.49 per share, or a $0.07 decline in earnings compared to the last quarter, and a drop that’s $0.17 more than in the same period last year.  Dell is expected to report revenue of $15.76 billion, and could beat estimates from the previous five straight quarters.

The PC market has seen mobile tech biting into sales in recent time months, which has had an impact on Dell, HP and the rest of the industry. This will likely show up in the company’s report, though it is not overly invested in the consumer computing market, having already instituted a shift to software services.

“On the PC demand front, Dell may be in the best shape relative to consumer demands. After all, Dell isn’t all that exposed to consumer demand. However, Dell is tethered to corporate PC upgrades and the public sector, which accounted for 27 percent of revenue in fiscal 2011.”

On the flip side of the coin, declining PC sales may actually help boost profits for the company, considering Dell’s notoriously low margins in this space.  Another thing that may show up in Dell’s bottom line is the decline in component prices we’ve seen recently, which is also likely to come up during Hewlett Packard’s earnings.

What investors and analysts will be looking at is Dell’s growth and expansion into the datacenter equipment and enterprise services markets.  The company’s competitors are doing the same in an effort to avoid a decline driven by a slow consumer business, and the big question is whether or not they will be able to pull it off (and subsequently increase their margins).  We’ll have a bitter idea by the end of this week, as Dell and HP both have their earnings calls in the coming days.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU