Operations

Dell announced first-quarter fiscal-year 2010 financial results on May 28^th. Brian Gladden, Senior Vice President and CFO, discusses the results and the company's outlook. Please review earnings materials on the Dell Investor Relations Q1 events page.  All comparisons are year-over-year unless otherwise noted.

We announced Q1 results today.  Revenue was down 23% to $12.3 billion.  EPS was $0.15 per share and cash from operations was $761 million.     

I am pleased to have Brian Gladden join us on Dell Shares to provide his view on the first quarter, the economy, industry demand, and the company's outlook. 

Also, we strongly encourage investors to read the full press release and earnings presentation; and listen to our conference call that can be found on the investor relations web site.   As always, we encourage you to ask questions or leave comments on Dell Shares.

I recently sat down with Jeff Clarke, Vice Chairman, Technology and Operations, to discuss a range of topics that have received investor attention including:

• Declining Client ASPs in the commercial customer business
• Desktop and mobility virtualization
• Progress on our $4 billion cost initiative
• Optimization of our global manufacturing and logistics network
• What we are going to do with the savings we realize from some of these initiatives

As always, I look forward to your questions and comments!

Dell announced fourth-quarter fiscal-year 2009 financial results on Feb. 26. Brian Gladden, Senior Vice President and CFO, discusses the results and the company's outlook. Please review earnings materials on Dell Investor Relations Q4 events page.  All comparisons are year-over-year unless otherwise noted.

We announced Q4 results today.  Revenue was down 16% to $13.4 billion.  EPS was $0.18 per share and cash from operations was $729 million.  For the full year fiscal 2009, revenue was $61.1B and EPS was $1.25. Cash flow from operations was $1.9B, and we completed the year with $9.5B in cash and investments.

Each quarter we evolve the format here on Dell Shares to provide you with a little more insight into what is going on in our business.   This quarter, instead of writing our traditional earnings blog, I am pleased to have Brian Gladden join us on Dell Shares to provide his view on the fourth quarter, the economy, industry demand and the company's outlook. 

 Also, we strongly encourage investors to read the full press release and earnings presentation; and listen to a replay of our conference call that can be found on the investor relations web site after the earnings call.   As always, we encourage you to ask questions or leave comments on Dell Shares.

In March last year, we announced actions to enhance the company's competitiveness, improve our cost structure and optimize operations.  At that point, we announced the closure of desktop manufacturing in Austin.  More recently, we announced a new global segmentation and the migration of computer systems production in EMEA to Dell facilities in Poland and contract manufacturers by the beginning of Dell's fiscal 2011.  The combination of these efforts, in addition to a revitalization of our entire product and service portfolio , continue to help us drive toward delivering on $3 billion in annualized cost savings by the end of fiscal 2011.

Today we announced that we expect to recognize in our fiscal 2009 fourth quarter a pretax expense of $135 million associated with further optimizing our global manufacturing and distribution network, and the continued rationalization of Dell's workforce. 

In addition, we will incur $145 million in pretax, non-cash stock option expense, including $106 million in accelerated vesting of previously awarded stock options.   Dell routinely evaluates its compensation program, including the use of stock options.  The acceleration, effective Jan. 23, covers 20.4 million shares with a weighted-average exercise price of $22.02.  The action means Dell will recognize all expenses associated with these options in Q4, rather than over time.  This action is a non-cash expense based on SFAS 123R stock option accounting.  The remaining $39 million of stock expense is related to an annual true-up of full-year stock-based compensation forfeitures. 

Together the cost-reduction and stock-option actions will total pretax $280 million, or 11 cents per share.  The company will announce its Q4 and full fiscal-year 2009 financial results on Feb. 26.

Thanks for joining us on Dell Shares.  I recently sat down with Brian Gladden, Senior Vice President and CFO, to discuss our recent announced actions to further globalize our operations around four key customer segments including large enterprise, public, and small and medium businesses. In this conversation, I ask Brian about what this new organization means for Dell, its customers, and why now was the right time to make this change.  We also touch base on the impact of this announcement on our financial statements and reporting structure and how this affects our broader cost savings initiatives. 

I invite you to watch the v-log.  We will respond to your questions and comments posted on this blog site as well as via email and over the phone. We look forward to hearing from you!  Thanks!