As expected, Dell reports miserable $0.21 per share profit on revenue of $14.1B in Q1

Earlier this week, Dell’s first quarter earnings leaked: The company would report a massive profit shortfall, on better than expected revenue for its first fiscal quarter.

That leak has been borne out: Today Dell reported a profit of $0.21 per share, on revenue of $14.07 billion. That per-share figure is dramatically below the street-expected $0.35, but the revenue figure is more than a half billion higher than the prior-estimate for the quarter of $13.5 billion.

A small detail: The leaked earnings information pegged per-share profit at $0.20, not $0.21. I could only speculate on the source of the gap. Naturally, we’re discussing non-GAAP EPS data. On a GAAP basis, Dell earned $0.07 per share.

The $14.07 billion revenue figure, while beating expectations, represented a 2 percent decline on a year-over-year basis.

Dell’s fading profitability is a key reason why the company intends to leave the public market; its founder, Michael Dell, along with Silverlake, are in the process to take the firm private for $24.4 billion, or $13.65 per share.

That bid attracted scorn, before the last two quarters’ financial performance were reported by Dell; bids faded. There is only one functional competing offer live at the moment. As before, Dell declined to provide guidance for its coming quarter, citing its impending descent into the world of private companies.

The PC market has been in a long, protracted decline, squeezing the revenue of large OEMs, while not abating the competition inside of their sector. Dell has suffered a fall from former heights as its efforts to penetrate the tablet and smartphone markets.