Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's second-largest maker of personal computers, said on Wednesday its quarterly profit surged from a year ago, much more than analysts estimated.

For the quarter ended July 31, HP brought in 21.9 billion dollars in net revenue, up 5 percent from the same quarter a year ago. It earned about 1.5 billion dollars, or 52 cents per share, an increase of nearly 40 percent from the same quarter last year.

On that basis, HP beat the consensus predictions that HP would report 21.8 billion dollars in revenue and earnings of 47 cents per share.

Led by Chief Executive Mark Hurd, HP has been gaining market share at the expense of rival Dell Inc. the No.1 PC maker, as it cut costs while chipping away at Dell's traditional price advantage. Hurd is eliminating 15,300 jobs, or 10 percent of the workforce, to save 1.9 billion dollars annually.

HP also announced Wednesday that its board of directors has approved repurchasing 6 billion dollars shares of stock, the largest share repurchase in the company's history.

Source:Xinhua/Agencies