Weak Toner Sales Saw Supplies Revenue at Hp Fall in Q1 2014

Weak Toner Sales Saw Supplies Revenue at Hp Fall in Q1 2014
Toner drags on HP supplies sales

In its Q1 2014 results, HP revealed that “softness” in its toner category meant supplies sales fell to $3.8 billion this year compared to $3.9 billion the year before.

During yesterday’s earnings call, CEO Meg Whitman blamed “aggressive” price competition from Japan-based vendors and an increase in clones and remanufactured products.

Overall sales in the company’s Printing division were down 2% year on year to $5.8 billion, while operating profit was $979 million. This meant a 50-basis-point improvement in operating margin at Printing to 16.8%.

While supplies fell, there was better reading for sales of print hardware with:

    Consumer sales up 4%
    Commercial sales up 6%
    Total hardware sales up 5%

There was also encouraging news for HP from its personal systems category, which performed better than expected with sales of $8.5 billion – a year-on-year increase of 3.6%.

This included a 5% rise in sales of laptops and an 8% increase in commercial sales.

Weaker toner sales saw supplies revenue at HP fall 3% in its first quarter. –