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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rupert1 who wrote (61626)	5/19/1999 6:15:00 AM
From: rupert1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

DJ Dell CEO: 30% Of Business Comes From Online Sales Dow Jones Newswires By Christopher Grimes NEW YORK -- Dell Computer Corp. (DELL) Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dell said his company is now generating about 30% of its sales online, placing some distance between the company and its competitors in the PC business. Dell's Internet sales, which touched $18 million a day in the first quarter, are bringing costs down and boosting efficiency, Dell told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview. "We're seeing reductions in our cost structure from an online standpoint," he said. "This is enhancing our competitive advantage." Dell reported first-quarter earnings of 16 cents a share, in line with Wall Street targets, compared with a split-adjusted 11 cents a share in the period a year ago. Sales totaled $5.5 billion, up 41% from the $3.9 billion in the same period a year ago. While Dell's peers - Compaq Computer Corp. (CPQ), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HWP) - have made moves to streamline their PC businesses recently, Dell said they still lag his company's efficiencies. "The interesting thing to note is most of (those) companies ... are losing money in the PC business," he said. "For them to make money, they have to raise prices or make dramatic changes in their cost structure or a combination of both." As Compaq searches for a replacement for ousted Chief Executive Eckhard Pfeiffer, Dell sees some "short-term opportunities" to gain on the world's top PC maker. "We're not going to be shy about going after them," he said. He said Dell isn't likely to see demand slacken later in the year as companies prepare for the Year 2000 computer glitch. "Our customers are more comfortable with the millennium changeover," he said. "We aren't expecting a lot in disruptions to our business." Wall Street has tempered its enthusiasm for Dell recently as its sequential growth - meaning revenue growth from one quarter to the next - has slowed. Although sales increased 41% from a year ago, they rose 6% from the fourth quarter. But Dell said in the interview that he is "pleased" with his company's growth rate. "You'd be hard-pressed to find companies that are growing and aggregating (market) share at the level Dell is," he said. "We see a tremendous opportunity to continue to do better and we'll be focused on that." Asked if Dell could overtake the top market share spot from Compaq this year, Dell said he wouldn't press the company to grow at an unreasonable rate. "We could accelerate our growth and do so at the expense of our disciplined asset management," he said. "(But) our primary focus is on profitability and profitable growth. We're already the most profitable company in our space." He said the current quarter is off to a good start, and he sees the company growing at a multiple of the industry rate, projected to be in the mid-teens. "The second quarter looks like another good quarter for us," he said.