HP’s notebook business is doing excellently in times of the coronavirus pandemic: In the fiscal year 2020, which started on 31. October 2020 ended, the PC manufacturer took 25 , 77 billion US dollars with notebooks – about 10 percent more than a year earlier. In the last quarter it was even 17 percent more at 7.4 billion US dollars.

However, HP was unable to fully absorb the other business areas with notebooks: Annual sales fell by 3.6 percent to 56, $ 6 billion, profit by 10 percent to 2.8 billion US dollars.

Due to the high demand in home offices and homeschooling, notebooks are currently in great demand. In contrast, demand for desktop PCs has fallen, in particular due to a lack of acquisitions in companies. In the entire fiscal year 2020 HP’s sales of desktop computers fell by 19 percent to 9, 81 billion US dollars, last quarter by high 28 percent to 2, 25 billion US dollars.

Workstations detached The workstation division with particularly powerful desktop PCs was doing well Even worse year-on-year – 1. 82 billion US dollars in sales meant a loss of 24 percent. HP ended the last quarter with a minus of 31 percent to 355 Million US dollars for workstations.

A breakdown of the markets shows that HP has lost orders especially with companies: minus 23 Percentage is the bottom line there. In the end customer area there was a strong upward trend in the last quarter with an increase of 21 percent – remains for the entire year it at minus 1 percent. The large PC manufacturers cannot meet global demand due to a lack of components.

Little margin The operating margin was most recently 6.5 percent, with Drucker taking the average with 14, 8 percent pushed up – desktop PCs and notebooks only came to 5.1 percent, which adds up to 6.1 percent. The figure cannot be directly compared with the high double-digit gross margins of AMD, Intel and Nvidia, because no tax benefits flow into the operating margin. Nevertheless, the profit margin for PC manufacturers is comparatively low.

With quarterly sales of 4.8 billion US dollars (-3 percent), the printer business has stabilized in the fall; the annual turnover however fell by 12 percent to 17, 64 billion US dollars. (mma)