Almost-Flat Earnings Expected At Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard Company HPQ is scheduled to announce its second quarter financial results after the market closes on Thursday, and management has guided a small year-over-year decline in earnings.

The company expects earnings to come in at $0.86 per share, versus $0.88 per share a year ago.

According to Estimize, the Street anticipates earnings in line with guidance, and revenue of $25.837 billion, also down from the $27.3 billion in revenue reported in the same quarter last year. The crowd is marginally more optimistic, and projects earnings of $0.88 per share on revenue of $25.992 billion.

As it can be seen in the chart above, actual results can be expected to fall pretty close to estimates and guidance, as they usually have.

The second chart here shows how sentiment has evolved over time. As it can be noted, consensus estimates have fallen considerably since the beginning of the year and now stand at their lowest.

Street Talk

Analysts at Wells Fargo previewed Hewlett-Packard’s results on Wednesday. The analysts anticipate in-line EPS at $0.86 and upside potential to the Wells Fargo revenue estimate of $25.2 billion. "We believe currency is unlikely to have an incremental impact beyond guidance (6pts to FY revenues and $0.30 to EPS)," they assure in the note.

Related Link: HP Earnings: Will Aruba Acquisition Help?

RBC Capital Markets also weighed in. They model EPS of $0.86 on revenue of $26.1 billion for the first quarter. A recent Benzinga article explains that “the analysts believe the ‘near-term bias is to the upside’ with the upcoming earnings call expected to provide data-points indicating that the company's free cash flow is not getting worse. “