Dell and Hewlett-Packard dismissed worries about weakening technology demand, reporting broad-based strength from corporate customers and only hints of weakness from consumers.
Both faced questions yesterday about the strength of the recovery in spending on technology, after Cisco Systems chief executive John Chambers' warned last week about "unusual uncertainty" in the global economy.
Analysts said fears persisted about the strength of any recovery in consumer spending, as growth moderates in Europe and China as well as in the United States.
But executives from the two largest US personal computer makers waved off such fears, even as shares of Dell fell 3 per cent after it posted slightly weaker-than-expected growth margins and HP fell about 1 per cent.
"We saw better-than-normal quarterly seasonality, as well as good balanced performance across all of our three regions," said Cathie Lesjak, HP's interim chief executive, on a conference call with the media.
HP said earnings rose 6 per cent as expected, helped by strength in servers and personal computers. Storage and server revenue rose 19 per cent, while PC revenue rose 17 per cent and sales in the printing group climbed 5 per cent. Ms Lesjak did not point to any particular weakness in the market, other than in consumer notebooks.
"Europe has held up well and the printing group is skewing towards commercial versus consumer, which is a positive. They also showed solid progress in networking, which is a key segment we're watching in the battle against Cisco," said Morningstar analyst Michael Holt.
Ms Lesjak also fielded queries on a successor for former CEO Mark Hurd - who stunned Wall Street by resigning two weeks ago over expense account inaccuracies linked to a female marketing contractor.
Though Mr Hurd's exit has proved to be messy for the company, HP is doing its best to move on, naming an executive headhunting firm on Wednesday to lead the search for a new CEO. The company will consider both internal and external candidates.
Ms Lesjak said HP is "looking forward, not back" and reiterated that shareholders are behind the company. She also suggested HP was not looking for major change in a new leader.
"When you have a winning strategy, I don't see the motivation to change it," she said.
It is unclear whether HP will go for an established technology veteran, or try to snag up-and-coming talent - as it did in 2005 with former NCR chief Hurd, who is credited with reviving the company's fortunes.
Dell chief financial officer Brian Gladden said the corporate refresh cycle was proceeding as forecast, adding he expects component costs to start to come down in the fiscal third and fourth quarters.
Dell beat Wall Street's profit and revenue estimates, and said it expected a continued pick-up in demand for PCs from corporate customers. But the company's gross profit margin lagged Wall Street expectations and its shares fell in after-hours trading.
Dell said it expected demand for PCs among corporate customers to continue for the "next several" quarters. It said it expects "seasonal improvements" in the third quarter, thanks to sales to the federal government and business customers, with a resulting "pick-up in the low single digits."
"This is a pretty stretched-out cycle and we think it'll continue for several quarters," Gladden said in an interview with Reuters. For the fiscal second quarter, "commercial growth was really the key for us, servers, networking systems, storage, services. That was up about 43 per cent."
Shares of Dell, which are down roughly 31 percent since April, fell 2.4 percent to $11.75 in extended trading. HP closed at $40.76 on the New York Stock Exchange, and dropped to $40.39 after hours.
Reuters