In the first full quarter of new CEO Mark Hurd’s tenure at the computer giant, HP has posted good results marred only by a big tax bill resulting from overseas earnings.

HP beat analysts estimates to deliver a net revenue result of US$20.8 billion which was a 10 per cent increase year on year. The turnover delivered a modest US$913 million operating profit, just shy of an even billion.
Amongst the results, HP’s PC division grew by 8 per cent year on year to stand at US$6.4 billion in revenues with unit shipments actually up 14 per cent. The result details were interesting as desktop revenues fell three per cent, while notebooks grew 21 per cent. Similarly, the printing group turned in revenues of $5.9 billion a 5 per cent growth over the prior year, though profits fell in the face of serious price competition from the likes of Dell in the US market.
Servers also performed well with revenues 20 per cent up on the enterprise front and X86 servers up by 28 per cent. Even networked storage revenues grew 15 per cent to turn last year’s loss of US$211 into a US$150 million profit.
During the quarter, on a year-over-year basis, revenue in the Asia Pacific grew 15% to US$3.5 billion.
However, getting all that cash back to the States resulted in a big tax bill for the company. A significant $988 million in tax adjustments and other charges (including US$788 million in taxes) slugging the company’s bottom line to just US$73 million, or 3 cents a share. That’s down from US$586 million, or 19 cents a share, a year ago.