HP announces new guidance, and it's not dire

One must take one's good news where one can, and HP on Tuesday announced that other than some currency-related unpleasantness, the company's outlook for fourth quarter and for 2009 isn't bad.

The company, whose fourth quarter earnings call was already scheduled for Monday, said that it expects to report revenue of $33.6 billion and profits of $1.03/share excluding certain acquisition-related after-tax adjustments. (HP completed its acquisition of EDS back in August.) That's a 19% year-over-year increase... until you factor in currency fluctuations.

Even then, it's 16% -- a rare bright moment in the current Wall Street gloom.

And next year, though a bit softer than hoped, so far looks reasonably good. The company predicts revenues of between $32 billion and $32.5 billion, with per-share non-GAAP profits between 93 and 95 cents. Beyond that, HP predicts 2009 profits between $127.5 billion and $130 billion, with per-share non-GAAP profits between $3.88 and $4.05.

HP calculates that currency fluctuations will have appreciable impact on its revenues both in the first quarter, during which the company predicts a 5% effect on revenue totals, and for the rest of 2009, during which the company predicts a 6-7% revenue hit.

The market, however, continues beleaguered. HP's own stock is having a lively Tuesday, and at press time was fluttering between 31.75 and 33.84 for the day after opening near the top of that range. The markets as a whole, however, continued skittery and bleak, with the Dow Industrial Average down 18 points at 8,255 at 3:20 pm EST. (HP is a Dow Industrials component.)

The company says that it was "providing this preliminary earnings information due to the current economic environment and its year-end earnings announcement being scheduled to occur later in the month relative to most quarters." So Tuesday's guidance was not only a little ray of sunshine for investors, but it helps to draw attention away from the week's highly entertaining news of memos detailing HP's furious response to last-minute tweaks in Vista.

In those memos, HP consumer-division executive Richard Walker told Microsoft that "you not only let us down by reneging on your commitment to stand behind the WDDM requirement, you have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money in the process." Even some Microsoft execs were ashamed of the mess, with then-co-president Jim Allchin moaning in a memo that "Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft destroyed credibility, as well as my own credibility shot."