Dell, the PC maker embroiled in a takeover battle between its founding chief executive and activist investor Carl Icahn, on Thursday reported a 72 per cent slide in quarterly earnings as PC sales extended their downward spiral.
Dell once led the world in computer sales and was held up as a model of production-chain innovation, but in recent years has become one of the more prominent victims of PC market erosion from mobile devices.
Sales from its end-user computing division, which incorporates computers, slid 5 per cent to US$9.1 billion.
The world’s No. 3 PC maker reported sales of US$14.5 billion in the fiscal second quarter, flat from a year earlier and surpassing the US$14.2 billion analysts on average had expected.
But net income fell sharply to US$204 million or 12 cents a share in the fiscal second quarter, compared to US$732 million or 42 cents a share in the year-earlier period. Excluding items, it earned 25 cents a share, barely edging past a 24-cent average forecast, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Gross margins slid a percentage point from the previous quarter to 19.6 per cent.