The quarterly revenue and profit at Hewlett-Packard continued its familiar trajectory downward on Thursday, but the earnings report sent the company stock in the opposite direction: up.
The net income for the tech company based in Palo Alto, California declined by 16%, as revenue was down 6% during its fiscal first quarter from the same period one year ago.
However, the results did not turn out as bad as had been forecasted by HP earlier and gave a glimmer of hope to company investors that the company were starting to turn the corner. HP did not announce any job cuts, write-downs or reversals of strategy as has been customary in some of the past quarters.
CEO Meg Whitman announced that the turnaround plan at HP was headed in the right direction, while she said she expects some setbacks, she hopes those will be minor based on the difficulties experienced in 2012.
Since 2010, three CEO have run HP, as the company has experienced heavy turnover at its executive level and has pursued a number of different strategies. Last November when the company reported its last quarterly earnings, it announced a write down of $8.8 billion for its acquisition of Autonomy, blaming a fraudulent accounting practice at the European software maker.
Business fell in all operational units at HP last quarter. Sales of PCs have been hit hard due to an industry wide drop and last quarter fell to $8.2 billion, a drop of 8%.
