Dell's new president of global operations, Michael Cannon, may be set to experience a baptism by fire at the Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker.
Named on Wednesday to become the top operations executive at the company, Cannon will be on the payroll for Dell's next earnings announcement, set for March 1.
It should be ugly.
According to remarks by both Dell and Wall Street analysts, the consensus forecast is bleak: For the first time in memory, Dell will not be a growth company. It is on track to report a year-over-year revenue decline for its most recent quarter -- going by the Thomson Financial average of analyst forecasts that calls for Dell to post sales of $14.9 billion. That compares to $15.2 billion for the same quarter a year earlier.
It has been a steep decline, as the following chart (prepared by CRN's Marcos Sinconegui) shows:
(The chart depicts Dell's quarterly, year-over-year revenue growth for the past two-plus years.)
At various points along the way, Dell executives (most of them now having resigned their jobs) blamed the declines on pricing pressures, "mis-execution," falloffs in customer satisfaction or the natural leveling-off for a big company. In 2005, Dell Chairman and founder Michael Dell and then-CEO Kevin Rollins predicted several times that the company would reach $80 billion in annual revenue by 2009.
At this rate, Cannon has his work cut out for him to make good on that prediction.
