Jim, I think the miss is just about guaranteed. The calendar quarter ending in March showed a 6% decline in year over year unit growth rates for Dell. I think April was much worse than January, so you throw out the good number and paste in the April sales and it could be kinda gloomy for unit sales growth. Notebook sales have been awful. The cheesy pc server market has been awful, but Dell has the best deck chair on this sinking ship. So, here is how it breaks down: unit growth rates will be down year over year. Notebooks bad, servers good. What does that mean for ASPs? To tell the truth, I don't know. I suspect we see ASPs down at least 10% year over year, which will be a 35% or so revenue increase against a weak target and a small miss on earnings.
Next quarter will be much worse, as it is not a pushover y to y comparison. But I would hate to be out of my puts this quarter as the co., originally set the bar low, but has had it reraised for them thanks to an inability to do arithmetic by Ashok Kumar. Kumar still thinks the co. makes sales in units instead of dollars. <g> And, of course, at this silly pe ratio, even a 35-40% growth rate is death on a stick. |
