What's Dell Brewing The Day Before Its EMC Mega-slurp? A Latte Money? Oh, A Flat White

Dell has reported near-flat revenues for its second quarter of the year, up just 1 per cent from its position 12 months ago.

The company pulled in revenues of $13.1bn in the three months to July 29, compared to just under $13bn this time last year. This generated an operating income of $63m, up from a loss of $103m 12 months ago. Dell is sitting on $7.5bn in cash and investments, up $1.2 billion on the previous quarter.

Dell said it grew its commercial PC revenues by 6.2 per cent year-over-year, and sales of consumer PCs were up just 1.1 per cent in terms of unit market share. Server and networking revenues grew one per cent, its storage division saw sales rise 13 per cent in the last three months, and it has been the top shipper for flat-panel screens for 13 straight quarters.

As a private company Dell doesn't have to release these figures, but as it's closing its $67bn merger deal with EMC tomorrow, the firm put out some financial figures for market analysts to chew over. A full conference call on Dell's finances will be held on Thursday, but in the meantime the company is making bullish noises, without much to back that up.

"We executed well in the quarter," said Tom Sweet, CFO at Dell. "Our second quarter results underscore our ability to consistently balance growth and profitability, and strategically invest in areas that will drive long-term profitable growth and strong cash flow. In the quarter, cash flow from operations was $1.9bn and for the trailing twelve months was $3.2bn, an improvement of 50 per cent."

While Dell's results aren't bad, they aren't great either. Certainly the firm will have issues servicing the amount of debt it is taking on to absorb EMC into its empire. ®

Sponsored: Getting the most value from cloud phone systems