Hewlett Packard (HPE) Q1 Earnings & Revenues Beat Estimates
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company HPE delivered first-quarter fiscal 2021 non-GAAP earnings of 52 cents per share, which surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 30%. The reported figure also came in higher than the year-ago number of 44 cents.
Revenues of $6.83 billion were down 1.7% from the prior-year quarter. However, the reported figure beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $6.78 billion.
The top line was affected by lower revenues from HPC & MCS businesses. However, strong growth in Intelligent Edge was a positive.
Also, growing traction of its cloud-native Aruba Edge Services platform has benefited the company’s quarterly results.
Further, the annualized revenue run-rate (ARR) was up 27% year over year to $649 million.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company Quote
Quarterly Details
Segment-wise, the company registered sequential sales growth across most of its business segments.
Total as-a-service orders rose 26% year over year, fueled by solid performance in Europe and Japan. Notably, the Aruba Central SaaS platform also witnessed triple-digit growth year over year.
Revenues from the Storage business were down 5% sequentially to $1.2 billion. HPC & MCS revenues declined 9% quarter on quarter to $762 million, primarily due to unfavorable timing of deals. Nonetheless, Nimble grew 31% from the prior-year quarter when adjusted for currency. Moreover, All Flash Array Storage increased 5% year over year, driven by solid adoption of Primera All Flash.
Revenues in the Intelligent Edge division rose 11% year over year to $806 million during the quarter. Financial Service revenues were up 0.1% year over year to $860 million.
However, the Compute division’s sales declined 1% year on year to $3 billion.
Further, this was the first full quarter following Hewlett Packard’s acquisition of Silver Peak. Notably, Silver Peak contributed about 500 basis points toward the growth of Intelligent Edge revenues.
Operating Results
Non-GAAP gross margin of 33.7% contracted 30 basis points (bps) on a year-over-year basis.
HPE’s non-GAAP operating profit climbed 130 bps year over year to 11.3%. Non-GAAP operating profit margin of 11.5% improved 80 bps from the year-ago quarter’s level.
Balance Sheet and Cash Flow
The company ended the fiscal first quarter with $4.17 billion in cash and cash equivalents compared with $4.23 billion recorded at the end of the previous quarter.
During the reported period, Hewlett Packard generated operating and free cash flows of $1 billion and $563 million, respectively.
Moreover, management provided an update on its cost-optimization plan, which will be implemented through fiscal 2022, including changes to the company’s workforce, real estate model and business process improvements. Hewlett Packard continues to expect at least $800 million in annualized savings by the end of fiscal 2022.
The company declared that a regular cash dividend of $0.12 per share will be paid out on Apr 7, 2021.
Guidance
For second-quarter fiscal 2021, Hewlett Packard expects non-GAAP earnings between 38 cents and 44 cents per share.
Additionally, the company raised its fiscal 2021 non-GAAP earnings outlook to $1.70-$1.88 per share from $1.60-$1.78 forecasted earlier.
Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider
Hewlett Packard currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
A few better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector are Skyworks Solutions SWKS, Zoom Video Communications ZM and Shopify Inc. SHOP, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
The long-term earnings growth rate for Skyworks Solutions, Zoom and Shopify is currently pegged at 18.98%, 25% and 32.5%, respectively.
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