Dell beats revenue estimates as remote working lifts workstation demand

ROUND ROCK,Texas: Dell Technologies Inc beat analysts' estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday (May 28), boosted by demand for its workstations from companies moving more employees to work from home due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Shares of the company rose 8.3 per cent to US$49.38 in extended trading.

Revenue from client solutions group, that accounts for half of the revenue and includes desktop PCs, notebooks and tablets, rose 2 per cent to US$11.1 billion in its fiscal first quarter.

Commercial notebooks reported double-digit unit and revenue growth, while mobile workstations posted high-single-digit revenue growth, the company said.

"In Q1, we saw orders with banking and financial services, government, healthcare and life sciences customers up 15 per cent to 20 per cent," Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in a statement.

But higher spending by companies towards enabling remote work, as well as weak demand in China weighed on Dell's data center business.

Revenue in that business fell 8 per cent to US$7.57 billion in the three months ended May 1.

Total revenue fell marginally to US$21.90 billion, but topped estimates of US$20.81 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Net income attributable to the company fell to US$143 million, from US$293 million a year earlier.

Dell in March scrapped its financial year 2021 forecast due to uncertainty over the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

Sales from its software unit VMware jumped 12 per cent to US$2.76 billion.

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