Hewlett-Packard shares dive over likely earnings miss

Hewlett-Packard shares plunged 13 percent Wednesday after a slew of analysts cut their fourth-quarter and fiscal 1999 earnings estimates on concerns that its UNIX workstation business was struggling and corporate PC sales were lagging.

Although HP didn't make a formal announcement, it did confirm late Wednesday that it had spoken individually to different analysts, telling them that weak North American server sales could weigh on results for the fourth quarter.