Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) announced its earnings report for the first quarter of 2012 this morning before the market opened. The company showed earnings of $0.23 per share and revenues of $5.5 billion. The company is doing solidly in a business that is forecast to contract in the future as enterprises moves to more cost efficient and environmentally friendly electronic documents. The increase of tablet computer presence in businesses means the company’s long term strategy will need to adapt but for the near and medium term it can expect steady business.
In the same quarter last year the company earned 23 cents per share on revenue of $5.3 billion. The company’s stock has fallen in recent months down from a peak of $8.76 early in the year on January 20th to a close of $7.87 on Friday. That fall was caused by the company’s less than convincing earnings in the fourth quarter of 2011 when the company’s revenue fell for the first time after a streak of three quarters. The drop in stock of almost 10% occurred in just one day leading up to that announcement.
Analysts in the lead up to the announcement had expected the firm to report earnings of 23 cents per share on revenue of $5.49 billion. The results today were picture perfect in line with forecasts from analysts, no surprises from Xerox. That estimate has fallen as the quarter ran on owing to poorer than expected growth in the US economy that has worried some analysts. Xerox, as an enterprise facing business, is particularly prone to suffering from such moves and it suffers from delayed recovery. As the economy does pick up the firm can expect better returns in its business.
Xerox Corporation deals in the document processing and technology business. It operates in three different departments, technology, services and other. The technology sector deals with the company’s products and services relating to the those technologies while the services sector deals with outsourcing business processes and information technology. The company is in a sector which is increasingly becoming besieged by software and other electronic solutions to the problems it solves across the board.
The company has been aggressive recently, making two acquisitions in the first quarter of 2012. The first of these, Laser Networks, is a Canadian firm dealing with printer technologies including service tracking and centralizing. The second, made in February, was of RK Dixon an imaging firm based in Iowa. That company specializes in IT services and printer technologies, though on a much smaller scale than Xerox. They are based in just seven cities around Iowa.
