San Franciso - Ailing tech giant Hewlett-Packard posted lower quarterly sales and profits Thursday, but the company's shares traded higher in after-hours transactions as H-P's performance beat the dire predictions of company management and analysts.
The Silicon Valley pioneer, which is in the midst of a comprehensive turnaround effort, said it earned 1.2 billion dollars in its fiscal first quarter, down 16 per cent from a year earlier.
Sales declined 6 per cent to 28.4 billion dollars from 30 billion dollars a year ago.
“While there's still a lot of work to do to generate the kind of growth we want to see, our turnaround is starting to gain traction as a result of the actions we took in 2012 to lay the foundation for HP's future,” chief executive Meg Whitman said in a statement. - Sapa-dpa