CALDEIRÃO DE BOLSA

Lucro da Dell cai devido a custo fiscal

O lucro da Dell, maior fabricante mundial de computadores pessoais, caiu 11 por cento no quarto trimestre, devido ao impacto negativo com custos fiscais, anunciou hoje a empresa.



A Dell lucrou 667 milhões de dólares (518 milhões de euros), ou 26 cêntimos por acção, abaixo dos 29 cêntimos conseguidos no período homólogo.

Os analistas esperavam um lucro por acção de 36 cêntimos, sendo que a empresa teria um lucro de 37 cêntimos não fosse esse impacto fiscal, não calculado pelos analistas.

As vendas cresceram 17 por cento, para 13,5 mil milhões de dólares (10,48 mil milhões de dólares), em linha com as previsões dos analistas.

As vendas da Dell foram ajudadas pela continuação da sua agressiva política de corte de custos, que lhe permitiu ganhar quota de mercado aos rivais Hewlett-Packard e IBM.

Segundo dados avançados pela Bloomberg, a Dell terminou 2004 com uma quota de 17 por cento, a HP de 16 por cento e a IBM de 5,7 por cento.

A empresa afirmou ainda que espera, para o actual trimestre, uma subida de 16 por cento nas vendas (ligeiramente abaixo do esperado) e um lucro de 37 cêntimos por acção (ligeiramente acima do esperado).

Na sessão de hoje da bolsa de Nova Iorque, as acções da Dell ganharam 1,41 por cento, para 41,57 dólares.

Agência LUSA
2005-02-10 21:55:00

Dell Net Falls on Tax Costs; Sales Rise on PC Demand (Update1)
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Dell Inc., the world's largest personal-computer maker, said fourth-quarter profit fell 11 percent because of tax costs. Revenue rose after the company cut prices to win sales.

Net income fell to $667 million, or 26 cents a share, from $749 million, or 29 cents, a year earlier, the Round Rock, Texas- based company said in a statement today. Sales rose 17 percent to $13.5 billion.

Chief Executive Officer Kevin Rollins took advantage of a 17 percent drop in memory-chip costs in November to slice laptop and PC prices and take market share. Dell's success came at the expense of International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., which yesterday ousted CEO Carly Fiorina after she failed to keep pace with Dell.

``They can take advantage of price drops,'' by building PCs to order, Daniel Morgan, a portfolio manager at Synovus Investment Advisors in Tampa, Florida, which has $6.5 billion in assets including Dell shares, said before the report. ``They therefore can lower their selling prices to maintain their margins and they can undercut a lot of companies like HP.''

Net income in the fourth quarter included a tax expense of 11 cents a share, taken in anticipation that the company will repatriate some earnings to take advantage of a favorable tax rate, Dell said. Before the charge, Dell earned 37 cents a share, beating the 36-cent average estimate of 26 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Dell expects sales to rise 16 percent to $13.4 billion this quarter as product shipments rise 21 percent from a year ago. Net income will be about 37 cents a share, the company said.

Dell shares, up 25 percent in the past year, fell $1.13 to $40.44 in extended trading. They earlier rose 58 cents to $41.57 at 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.

Printers, PCs

Rollins marshaled Dell's low-price strategy to steal printer sales from Hewlett-Packard. Dell shipped 5.2 million printers last year, compared with its forecast of 5 million.

Lower PC prices helped Dell become the ``uncontested market leader'' in 2004 after trading the No. 1 spot with Hewlett-Packard throughout 2002 and 2003, Framingham, Massachusetts-based researcher IDC said. Dell's PC shipments jumped 21 percent in the calendar fourth quarter, outpacing the market's 14 percent growth and Hewlett-Packard's 9 percent, IDC said.

Dell held 17 percent of the PC market in the quarter, compared with 16 percent for Hewlett-Packard and 5.7 percent for IBM, according to IDC.

Increased corporate spending on notebooks as well as customer concern about IBM's planned sale of its PC unit to China's Lenovo Group likely helped Dell win sales last quarter, said analysts including Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.'s Toni Sacconaghi in New York.

Opportunity

Fiorina's ouster may present an opportunity for Dell to win new business clients for its PCs and server computers, which run corporate networks, said IDC analyst Roger Kay.

``They get to go and frighten HP's customers about the instability of HP and they can go after those customers and tell them that HP is leaderless and directionless,'' Kay said before the report. ``It always works a little bit. Fear is a big motivator and enterprise customers are very conservative.''

Rollins, 52, is applying pressure on competitors with his discounting. The cost of a 17-inch liquid crystal display monitor dropped 11 percent from November through January. On Feb. 3, Dell cut 25 percent off consumer desktop and notebook prices, two months after he cut prices on notebook PCs and servers, computers used to run corporate networks and Web sites.

The ability to offer lower prices, dubbed by Rollins as the ``Dell effect,'' may allow the company to reach $60 billion in annual sales a year sooner than his 2007 projection, Rollins said Nov. 11 at a Forrester Research conference in Boston.

To reach that, Rollins, who took over from founder Michael Dell in July, needs to increase sales about 22 percent this year.

``That's a reasonable number,'' Michael Sansoterra, an analyst at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines, Iowa, which owns 2.6 million Dell shares, said before the report. ``Dell has done a great job of executing, of having the lowest cost advantage.''