Things are getting better at HP
 

HP's latest results have caused the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street to gag on their grande non-fat vanilla latte with no foam.

While most of them expect the maker of expensive printer ink to flop around like a fish out of water for the next few years, it appears HP's latest bunch of figures were better than expected. Still rubbish, but a better standard of poo than Wall Street expected them to be standing in

CEO Meg Whitman launched a years-long turnaround and it seems to be paying off, even though the market for PCs is still drier than a speakeasy on Mercury and the figures look as anorexic as a Paris fashion show.

HP's fiscal first-quarter revenue shrank six percent to $28.4 billion in a flat to shrinking personal computing market, but it beat the $27.8 billion Wall Street analysts believed was possible.

Net income fell 16 percent to $1.23 billion from $1.47 billion a year earlier.

Forrester analyst Frank Gillett told Reuters that despite signs of progress, the business atmosphere is challenging for HP.

HP's data centre business could recover faster than its PC business, he predicted.

Revenue fell across all of HP's main business divisions with the networking department seeing sales rising four percent during the quarter.

Sales in the personal systems division, which includes PCs, slid eight percent to $8.2 billion, while printing revenue fell five percent to $5.92 billion.

The surprise results are coming at a cost. HP is laying off 29,000 employees over the next two years and has written off $10.8 billion, mostly related to the writedown of Autonomy.

So far 15,300 employees have left HP and more are expected to go in the future.

The outfit has lost over two thirds of its market value since 2010, and so far has failed to find it. Looking down the back of the sofa has yielded nothing.

Since Whitman took the helm in September 2011, the values of shares have fallen by 25 percent. You can now pick a second hand one in reasonable condition up on eBay for $17.10.

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