Dell beats revenue estimates as remote working lifts workstation demand

• Revenue from client solutions group, that accounts for half of the revenue and includes desktop PCs, notebooks and tablets, rose 2% to $11.1 billion in its fiscal first quarter.
• "In Q1, we saw orders with banking and financial services, government, healthcare and life sciences customers up 15% to 20%," Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in a statement.

Dell Technologies Inc beat analysts' estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, boosted by demand for its workstations from companies moving more employees to work from home due to the coronavirus crisis.

Revenue from client solutions group, that accounts for half of the revenue and includes desktop PCs, notebooks and tablets, rose 2% to $11.1 billion in its fiscal first quarter.

Commercial notebooks reported double-digit unit and revenue growth, while mobile workstations posted high-single-digit revenue growth, the company said.

"In Q1, we saw orders with banking and financial services, government, healthcare and life sciences customers up 15% to 20%," Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in a statement.

But higher spending by companies towards enabling remote work, as well as weak demand in China weighed on Dell's data center business.

Revenue in that business fell 8% to $7.57 billion in the three months ended May 1.

Total revenue fell marginally to $21.90 billion, but topped estimates of $20.81 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Net income attributable to the company fell to $143 million, from $293 million a year earlier.

Dell in March scrapped its financial year 2021 forecast due to uncertainty over the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

Sales from its software unit VMware jumped 12% to $2.76 billion.