Stefan Mileschin

Supply chain problems getting worse

Dell Technologies said it expects PC backlog to balloon in the first quarter due to supply chain constraints and reported a quarterly profit miss.

Dell shares fell seven per cent in extended trading.

A pandemic-fuelled demand for PCs helped the company draw in billions of dollars in sales over the past year. However, an ongoing global chip shortage and supply chain issues are pinching Dell as longer lead times and parts shortages have led to higher component and freight costs.

Dell finance chief Tom Sweet said: "We expect operating expenses as a percentage of revenue to be slightly higher than FY22 as the company invests in the business.

Revenue surged 16 per cent to $27.99 billion in the fourth quarter to beat analysts' expectations and the first-quarter forecasts for revenue and profit were above estimates.

In the three months to 28 January, revenue jumped by a quarter at Dell's client solutions group - the business that includes desktop PCs, notebooks and tablets.

In November, the company completed the spin-off of its cloud computing unit VMware in which it owned an 81 per cent stake. Dell had said VMWare would become a standalone public firm.

https://fudzilla.com/news/54438-dell...ts-pc-backlogs