Happy 20th anniversary Lexmark NYSE LXK

Scott Sloan at the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com has an interesting piece saluting the IBM printer efforts centered in Lexington 20 years ago, that became stand-alone printer-maker Lexmark (NYSE LXK) a few years later. In "Laser printer project in 80s led to Lexmark", Sloan interviews current Lexmark and former IBMers Gregory Ream, Paul Curlander and Harry Cooper, on some of the before-and-after stories related to the introduction, on October 10, 1989, of the IBM 4019 Laser Printer. Fascinating is the focus on the industry leader HP (NYSE HPQ) and its LaserJet printer, and the improvements IBM targeted, including a product size (weight) that would be half of the HPs, and, interestingly, "correct order output", which the LaserJet didnt offer.

HP, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the LaserJet printer earlier this year (see "HP celebrates 25th anniversary of its LaserJet printer"), remains the market leader in laser printing, with Lexmark, which split from IBM as a corporate spin-off in the early 1990s and assumed its own identity a few years afer that, continues as a major player in the category, too.

Read More..

HP NYSE HPQ Q2 2009 Printer Metrics

The HP (NYSE HPQ) Q2 2009 earnings announcement conference call is continuing into the Q&A, but heres my regular quarterly summary of the printer and supplies details released as part of the presentation.

Looking for any good news, or at least anything better than the rest, is a challenge. The "Indigo page growth" is the only positive percentage on the chart, but at 15% thats stair-stepped down significantly from the baseline 40% growth we were seeing for a long period of quarters. Operating margins, at 18.2%, seem amazingly good, in light of everything else, until considering that the lower-margin hardware units comprised only 31% of HP IPG revenues for the second fiscal quarter of 2009. (Seems not long ago when that metric passed the 50:50 mark.) And profit dollars, still over $1Billion, are definitely nothing to sneeze at!

One question that comes to mind relates to the success of HPs initiative to make inkjet more successful in the office. The color laser printer categorys 42% year-over-year decline could at least in part be attributed to success on the inkjet front. (Disclaimer -- my multimedia capability failed me for the conference call, so Im relying on the transcripts, when I will see if someone else listening in addressed the question with HP management.)

Read More..

HP NYSE HPQ Guarantees Print Savings

In an announcement this morning, HP rolled out their "Payback Guarantee for Managed Print Services Customers", along with accompanying full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

The press conference, hosted by none other than Ferris Buellers Ben Stein, is ongoing, with numerous interesting tidbits offered by HP execs and MPS customers ST Microelectronics and Intel. Notable tidbits are showing up in the tweetstream (#HPMPS) and will be summarized here later.

Read More..