Dell Thursday came in with third-quarter revenues up 9% to a record $15.6 billion and earnings of 34 cents a share, up 26%. Operating income was up 13% to $829 million.

Its stock slumped over 10% during and after the company's first conference call since last August.

Dell hasn't been heard from as HP ate its lunch and Dell twitched, lost market share, and recycled its management because of that ever-so-long investigation into its books that found mischief had been done so it could meet Wall Street expectations, an investigation that delayed its financials, which it just restated. So this call to articulate the company's turnaround plans was important.

Earnings were penny or two short of expectations and US consumer revenues were down 6% for an operating loss of 1.4% but its overall top line was a few hundred million dollars more than Wall Street thought.

Must have been Dell's black crepe-hung outlook that had the punters bailing.

Its guidance consisted of this: "The company continues to focus on strategic priorities that will provide better value to customers while driving a more optimal balance of liquidity, profitability and growth. As the company executes against these priorities it will continue to incur costs as it restructures to improve productivity and execution, reduce headcount where appropriate, and invest in infrastructure and acquisitions. These actions, which the company believes are necessary to drive long-term sustainable value, may adversely impact the company's performance. In addition, the company's near-term results could be adversely impacted by a slower decline in component costs and a seasonal shift in mix to US consumer and international regions."

And that's even before you get around to factoring in HP and its Manifest Destiny or the "winds of caution" that Dell has been feeling from certain financial customers.

Kicking off the conference call, CTO Don Carty said the company was "generally pleased" with its performance, but allowed that more work had to be done. The company isn't happy with its growth rate, but thinks it sees places where it can increase profitability.

Any strength in Q3 was traced to notebooks, enterprise sales and favorable component costs, which were offset by restructuring and other costs. A lower tax rate contributed two cents.

Layoffs took those two cents or $50 million out and that audit committee investigation took out another penny or $28 million.

It was left to Dell's recycled CEO Michael Dell to sketch out the company's sketchy strategy: It's chasing five key business priorities - consumer, emerging countries, notebooks, enterprise and small/medium business reciting the magic word "simplification" while seeking to become omnipresent in retail. It intends, for instance, to be represented in a thousand cities in China.

Despite worrying that further restructuring is going to have a negative impact, Dell is dodgy about whether it's really going to cut headcount by 10% by next April like it said - the view is murky because of acquisitions and new initiatives, Carty said, so far it's still got 81,000 people, different faces but still 81,000 - and with $14.6 billion in the bank it's planning to resume buying back share in early December but wouldn't say how much. Its ASAPs are flat, its gross margin is down 1.5% sequentially to 18.5% and its operating profit went from 5.1% a year ago to all of 5.3%.

Desktop revenues were down 1% to $4.8 billion, which is more a fashion statement than anything else. Laptops were up 19% to $4.7 billion. Dell is expecting notebooks sales to grow at six times the rate of desktop for the next few years.

The company plans to increase the speed with which it introduces new laptops, while lowering costs and tailoring the devices for specific customer segments.

Server and networking revenues were up 8% to $1.6 billion. Storage was up 8% to $600 million. Software and peripherals were up 11% to $2.5 billion.

Commerical US sales were up 7%.

Sales outside the US were up 16% and now represent 46% of Dell's revenue.

Brazil was up 45%, India 47% and China 22%. Combined Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) revenue growth during the quarter was 32%.

Revenue increased 14% and shipments 13% in EMEA. Revenue for servers and storage in the region were up 15% and 13%, respectively.

There won't be an analyst meeting until next April 2 and 3.

For more information about Kidaro's virtualization solutions, please contact Nazli Ekim at SS PR, (646) 278 6014 -office (917) 355 9650 -cell nekim@sspr.com.