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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: invictus who wrote (47124)	1/28/2002 6:18:31 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Dell CFO sees stable PC demand, won't call recovery Monday January 28, 5:54 pm Eastern Time SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Demand for personal computers appears to be stabilizing after falling for about two years, although when sales will actually pick up is not clear, a senior Dell Computer Corp. (NasdaqNM:DELL - news) executive said on Monday. Consumers gave a big, unexpected boost to Dell's sales for the fourth quarter ending Feb. 1, the company said. On Jan. 18 it raised its revenue forecast for the period by about $400 million to $8 billion. ``Probably a little more than half of that upside to our original guidance worth about $400 million was due to our consumer business,'' Dell Chief Financial Officer Jim Schneider told investors at a conference organized by Banc of America. ``When I look at the overall demand environment, I think what we've done is we've stabilized,'' he said. But he added on the sidelines of the conference that consumer business would likely fall off in the first quarter, which is the typical post-holiday season trend. In the presentation he added that businesses, though getting ready to spend, had not made it clear when they would open their wallets. ``I think there is a fair amount of pent-up demand,'' said, referring to business customers. ``Whether exactly in the next quarter or whether it's the second half, I think we are just feeling that the demand environment is better.'' Dell has been gaining market share from rivals, but the PC market shrank in the United States last year for the first time since the mid-1980s, researchers say. Schneider was wary of calling a rebound. ``Q4 we expected to be up a bit, but I think our expectations, consumer aside, were just slightly better than what we might have thought. I think the corporate demand environment from small businesses up to large corporates, is still pretty soft. I think we need some turnaround in those markets before the whole PC business will recover,'' he said. ``A lot of this is economy driven.''