Hewlett-Packard Set to Unveil Spectrum; Stock Tops Active List

Hewlett-Packard officials said on Tuesday that the company still expects to ship the first of its delayed Spectrum computers by midyear, but cautioned that the new machines will not contribute significantly to 1987 revenue.

John A. Young, HP’s president and chief executive, said at a meeting with securities analysts that the computer and instrumentation company anticipates “modest growth” in earnings and revenue in its fiscal 1987, which ends in October. In fiscal 1986, HP earned $516 million on revenue of $7.1 billion.

Young also said that while international sales continue to be strong, domestic orders have been nearly flat and are the “real question” facing revenue growth this year. In the first two months of the company’s fiscal 1987, he said, orders overall increased 14% from the year-earlier period.

Analysts attending the meeting continued to view the delivery date of the Spectrum computer products as uncertain. John Dean, analyst with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, said he interpreted Young’s remarks to mean that the company expected “extremely low-volume” shipments this year.

When asked if shipments are still expected for the May-to-August period, Young declined to be more explicit than to say midyear. “And we are using the Gregorian calendar,” he said, displaying the humor that punctuated the two-hour meeting.

Investors’ reaction to the meeting was swift, if mixed. HP’s stock was the volume leader on the New York Stock Exchange as nearly 4 million shares traded hands. Although the stock bobbed up and down throughout the day, it closed at $49 a share, up only 12 1/2 cents.

Stock Has Climbed

The stock is up nearly $10 from September, when the company announced a delay of at least six months beyond the original target of late 1986 for bringing the Spectrum to market.

HP began the Spectrum project, based on a new design called reduced instruction set computing, in 1981 to update its aging line of minicomputers. The RISC architecture removes many complicated instructions from the computer hardware, thus reducing parts and manufacturing costs. The company intends to use the new architecture in all of its future computer products.