Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s stock gained in extended trading Tuesday after the company reported quarterly results in line with analysts’ estimates and offered strong revenue guidance.
The company forecast fiscal first-quarter sales of between $7.2 billion and $7.6 billion, while analysts polled by FactSet on average have modeled $6.98 billion.
“The results are a culmination of a three-year effort in reallocating resources” to work around supply constraints and enter a new phase of sales growth, HPE Chief Financial Officer Tarek Robbiati told MarketWatch.
HPE HPE, -0.58% reported a fiscal fourth-quarter net loss of $304 million, or 23 cents a share, compared with net earnings of $409 million, or 31 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Adjusted earnings were 57 cents a share.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected on average net income of 57 cents a share on revenue of $7.37 billion.
After initially surging 7% in after-hours trading following the report, HPE shares retreated and ended the extended session up 2%. Shares of HPE are down 2% this year, while the broader S&P 500 index SPX, -0.16% has slid 17%.
As HPE and other enterprise heavyweights prepared their results, financial analysts like Barclay’s Tim Long fretted over “lingering component and logistics issues, as well as FX headwinds, though supply constraints and logistics costs are starting to ease,” he wrote.
Long was particularly keen on HPE’s numbers following recent cautious demand commentary from Dell Technologies Inc. DELL, -0.14% last week.
Similarly, Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani worried supply-chain constraints and wobbly IT spending could hurt HPE’s October quarter and fiscal 2023 outlook.