Buried at the bottom of the press release announcing that founder and Chairman Michael Dell was replacing Kevin Rollins as CEO of Dell Inc. was
this statement:
"The Company also said that it expects its fourth quarter Fiscal Year 2007 results to be below the average of First Call Estimates for both revenue and earnings per share."
The average of analyst estimates point to revenue of $15.3 billion and earnings per share of 31 cents for Dell's fourth quarter. For the same quarter a year earlier, Dell reported revenue of almost $15.2 billion and earnings per share of 43 cents.
Dell, with its quarter ending in January, now says on its corporate calendar for investors that it will report its fourth-quarter and year-end earnings on March 1. That's the same day the company has said it expects to file with Nasdaq officials results of an investigation by the Audit Committee of its Board of Directors into financial and accounting issues that it's been dealing with for months.
