NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Mark Hurd showed Wall Street he means business when it comes to turning Hewlett-Packard around.

Strong growth in its notebook and printer divisions boosted HP's earnings for its fiscal third quarter, its second with CEO Hurd at the helm. Non-GAAP earnings beat analyst estimates, as did revenue, which rose 10 percent year-over-year.

"It appears they have made fundamental, largely sustainable changes in the business," said Cindy Shaw, an analyst at Moors & Cabot Capital Markets. "The guidance they offered today was above expectations, and we're seeing fundamental improvement in margins in this business pretty quickly under this new CEO. Margins in both the PC and imaging and printing businesses, which each account for 30 percent of revenue, were better than expected."

HP announced non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.36 after a three-cent tax benefit, above analyst estimates of $0.31, and revenues of $20.8 billion, beating estimates of $20.47 billion.

The Palo Alto company's net income, however, fell sharply due to tax adjustments from the repatriation of $14.5 billion in foreign earnings.

On a GAAP basis, HP earned $73 million, or 3 cents per share, in the three months ended July 31, compared with $586 million, or 19 cents per share, in the same period last year.

The company's stock traded up sharply after hours on the news, drifting up nearly 7 percent on the Inet electronic brokerage from its closing price of $23.70. This was music to tech investors' ears, following Dell's surprise revenues miss and lower-than-expected guidance announcement last week.

"The numbers are surprisingly strong," said Barry Mills, vice president, sector portfolio manager and senior research analyst with the Boston Company Asset Management. "I normally expect HP to miss Q3 and I expect Dell to beat it, so this is a big role reversal."

The company has yet to see the impact of the most recent component of Hurd's restructuring plan – the 10 percent reduction in the company's work force, or about 14,500 jobs, announced July 19. The company is also getting a final headcount on how many people are planning to enroll in an early retirement program that was announced at the same time.

"We continue to look for anything in the company to make sure we have an appropriate level of spending," said Hurd in a conference call to analysts. "We are not about having waste in the company; we are trying to be as efficient as we can."

The company also issued better-than-expected earnings guidance for the next quarter, with the company expecting to post non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.44 to $0.47 cents, better than the analyst consensus of $0.43, according to Thomson First Call estimates and based on a range of $0.39 to $0.47.

HP said it expects fourth quarter revenue to be between $22.4 billion and $22.8 billion. Wall Street analysts previously expected the company to announce fourth quarter revenue guidance in the range of $22.2 billion to $23.1 billion.

It appears that HP did not have the same pricing problems for personal computers as its largest competitor, Dell, which admitted last week that it mishandled pricing on its low-cost computers and failed to sell customers higher-priced models instead.

HP's Personal Systems Group, its PC division, reported $6.4 billion in revenue, an 8 percent rise year-over-year, with a 14 percent increase in shipments. Notebook revenue grew 21 percent over the previous year, while desktop revenue fell 3 percent over the same period. The company's notebooks outperformed desktops, indicating that HP is serious about focusing on higher-margin products.

"We were bullish on HP before the earnings annoucement, and we remain bullish," said Bill Fearnley Jr., a senior analyst for PC and enterprise hardware at FTN Midwest Securities. "We do a lot of survey work with contacts and resellers. What our research has shown us is its PC business remains strong, and the company is happy with channel inventories."

One of the biggest surprises for analysts was HP's improvement in operating margins for the quarter. They reached 2.6 percent in its PC division, a figure that the Boston Company's Mills pointed out is the highest for the company in recent memory. Non-GAAP operating margin rose to 5.7 percent, up from 4.5 percent for the same quarter last year.

"It's nice to see that kind of improvement," said Moors & Cabot's Shaw. "It still doesn't compare to Dell's margins, but HP is headed down the right path."

The company's enterprise storage and servers division also performed well, reporting revenue of $4 billion, a 20 percent increase year-over-year. The division reported an operating profit of $150 million, versus a loss of $211 million recorded in the third quarter last year.

HP's imaging and printing division posted quarterly revenue of $5.9 billion, up 5 percent year-over-year, but saw that group's operating profit dip to $771 million, down from $836 million in the prior-year period. Color laser printer shipments grew 31 percent year-over-year, while multi-function printer shipments spiked 67 percent over the previous year.

The company lost money in its software division, posting a $40 million loss, compared with a $48 million loss in the same quarter a year ago. Revenues hit $249 million, an 11 percent increase year-over-year. But HP executives said the division is on track to turn a profit next quarter, another pleasant surprise for analysts and investors.

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The Boston Company owns shares of Hewlett Packard. Moors & Cabot Capital Markets does not own shares of HP, nor does it have banking ties with the company. FTN Midwest Securities does not have banking ties to HP, nor does it own more than 1 percent of the company's shares.