HP s'enfonce encore dans la crise
Le leader mondial des ordinateurs, imprimantes et serveurs a subi une très lourde perte de près de 9 milliards de dollars au troisième trimestre, HP étant contraint d’ajuster la valeur de sa division services.
Au total, HP a comptabilisé 8 milliards de dollars de dépréciations dont l’essentiel concerne EDS racheté en 2008 pour pas moins de 13,2 milliards de dollars. Le groupe américain a également revu à la hausse ses provisions pour pension anticipée dans le cadre de son plan de restructuration.
Au total, HP a ainsi subi une perte de 8,86 milliards de dollars au cours de son troisième trimestre fiscal (de mai à juillet). Hors éléments non-récurrents, le groupe a enregistré un bénéfice de 2 milliards de dollars, en baisse de 14% en glissement annuel. Par action, le profit ressort à 1 dollar, ce qui est un peu mieux qu’attendu. On épinglera toutefois la déception au niveau du chiffre d’affaires qui a reculé de 5% 29,7 milliards de dollars, seule la petite division Software ayant vu ses ventes progresser – de 18% à 973 millions de dollars. Même les pôles Services et Stockage (serveurs) ont vu leurs ventes reculer tandis que la division PC a sombré avec une chute de 10% de son chiffre d’affaires à 8,6 milliards de dollars.
La réorganisation décidée par Meg Whitman est donc quasiment vitale pour le groupe. La nouvelle Chief executive officer mise tout d’abord sur les réductions de coûts avec 27 000 suppressions d’emplois en deux ans dont 10 à 15 000 dans la division Services qui connait une baisse de sa rentabilité. D’ici la fin octobre, pas moins de 11 500 employés auront déjà quitté le groupe. Parallèlement, HP mise sur la sécurité, le cloud computing et les logiciels d’analyse de données pour redonner du tonus à ses ventes. Mais le pari est loin d’être gagné tant ces débouchés sont convoités tout comme celui des tablettes. Afin de limiter ses pertes de parts de marché, HP va en effet lancer une nouvelle tablette après le flop de la HP Touchpad dont les stocks ont été bradés l’année dernière. Le groupe mise cette fois sur le système d’exploitation Windows 8 de Mircrosoft et sur le segment professionnel afin de contourner la mainmise d’Apple. L’iPad est toutefois le produit qui permet au groupe à la pomme d’entrer dans le segment des entreprises. Ce dernier est par ailleurs déjà au centre de la stratégie de Research in Motion dont la menace est d’autant plus grande que le groupe cherche des alliées. IBM pourrait ainsi reprendre sa division Services aux entreprises tandis que Microsoft pourrait s’allier au canadien dans les smartphones et tablettes.
Cédric Boitte
HP's Whitman: Cloud push to counter services drag
Posted by Stuart Lauchlan on Fri, 24/08/2012 - 13:23
"Make no mistake about it: We are still in the early stages of a turnaround," Whitman told analysts during a conference call.
That has become Whitman's mantra since HP hired her as CEO 11 months ago. Later in the call, Whitman acknowledged "the very serious executive issues" facing HP as it tries to catch up to its rivals and cope with a weakening economy, particularly in Europe.
Whitman, who became one of the world's best-known chief executives during a decade-long stint running eBay, has been shaking things up at HP by reorganizing divisions, ushering in new managers and slashing costs through the job cuts.
As Whitman's remarks underscored the enormity of the challenge facing HP, more investors bailed out of the company's stock.
A major push further into Cloud Computing is among the solutions on offer from Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman as the firm reels under its biggest ever quarterly loss.
HP this week posted a quarterly loss of $8.9bn after a gigantic write-off of value of its services division, including the former EDS. The US stock market took the news calmly. It had been flagged up as coming and in any case the recently appointed CEO Meg Whitman has made no secret of the pain ahead in turning around a company that has been rudderless in recent years.
“There are a number of headwinds we face that fall into 3 areas: macroeconomic and industry trends as well as challenges in HP's execution,” she said this week. “I've talked before about the tectonic plate shifts in the industry that are occurring: Cloud, mobility, virtualization and more. All are impacting the way customers, both enterprise and consumer, are leveraging technology. This means HP needs to shift its portfolio. This will require some trade-offs and some time.
“We have great opportunities in front of us, but we also have a number of challenges. Some of them are macroeconomic, others are industry trends and, frankly, some are about HP's execution. Make no mistake about it, we're still in the early stages of a turnaround. There will be challenges ahead that could create some variability in performance. But I'm confident in our ability to work through them and get to where we want to be.”
Cloud push
The firm’s push into the Cloud Computing space is one priority. “In the area of Cloud and information, we introduced a number of innovations, including an enhanced version of our flagship product, HP CloudSystem. CloudSystem enables enterprises and service providers to create private, managed and public cloud environments. We now have almost 750 unique CloudSystem customers,” said Whitman.
“We also announced HP Converged Cloud services for airlines, a hybrid delivery approach to the Cloud specifically designed to help airlines create new revenue streams, deliver better service to their customers, lower their costs and increase productivity.
“And we released our first public Cloud services, backed by an industry-leading Service Level Agreement. Built on proven HP technologies, HP Cloud Services also leverages OpenStack, providing a foundation for one of the most open and scalable set of Cloud services in the market.”
Dragged down by services
But the firm’s wider services arm is still a major drag on the company. “I've said from the very beginning of my tenure at HP that this was a business that was in need of a turnaround,” said Whitman. “Here's the things that we need to do to fundamentally get this business on a better track.
“First is, we've got to change the accountability model. Somewhere along the line, the account basis of accountability with the account leader got diffused across the organisation. And in the end, the person who leads these accounts needs to be in charge, have control of revenue and control of the costs.
“We then need to shift the business mix from some of the low-end services that, frankly, EDS was founded on to where we want to be, which is profitable ITO, the Strategic Enterprise Services, in Cloud, in security, in information optimization. And over time, that will shift the margins in the way we want to be and will, frankly, add a lot more value to our customers, which will in turn allow us to sell in more hardware and other products into those very important top 200 accounts that account for a big chunk of that revenue.
“So we're on a journey here. I feel more confident today about the paths forward in that business than I have any time in the last 12 months. But make no mistake about it, we've got a little ways to go here,” she concluded.
A long way to go
It will be a long journey, argued Anthony Miller of research house TechMarketView. “The strategy seems fine – but it will need a really good management team under acting ES chief, Mike Nefkens, to make radical changes to the ingrained EDS culture,” he predicted.
“In many ways, HP is facing the same ‘mid-leap’ crisis that has befallen Dell, realising too late how fast the market was moving (be it products or services), and then finding it difficult to catch up,” he added. “HP has the bigger challenge, though, as there are many more moving parts. Whitman will need only the finest leaders at the top of each of HP’s businesses if she has any chance to get all the parts moving in the same direction.”
Hewlett-Packard absorbs record $8.5bn loss with more job cuts
- AP
- August 24, 2012
The loss of $US8.9 billion ($8.5 billion) didn't come as a surprise. HP telegraphed the news earlier this month when it disclosed plans to take an $US8 billion charge to reflect the shrinking value of Electronic Data Systems, a technology consulting service it bought for $US13 billion in 2008.
It represented another mortifying setback for a 73-year-old company that once had the reputation for being a fountain of innovation and a great place to work, to boot.
Now, HP is struggling to reverse perceptions that it's becoming a technological dinosaur bogged down in bureaucracy as it slashes its work force to help offset a downturn in revenue.
The company is counting on Meg Whitman, its third CEO in slightly more than two years, to be its saviour. While stressing she believes HP can still be great again, Whitman made it clear that it will be a long slog.
It represented another mortifying setback for a 73-year-old company that once had the reputation for being a fountain of innovation and a great place to work, to boot.
Now, HP is struggling to reverse perceptions that it's becoming a technological dinosaur bogged down in bureaucracy as it slashes its work force to help offset a downturn in revenue.
The company is counting on Meg Whitman, its third CEO in slightly more than two years, to be its saviour. While stressing she believes HP can still be great again, Whitman made it clear that it will be a long slog.
"Make no mistake about it: We are still in the early stages of a turnaround," Whitman told analysts during a conference call.
That has become Whitman's mantra since HP hired her as CEO 11 months ago. Later in the call, Whitman acknowledged "the very serious executive issues" facing HP as it tries to catch up to its rivals and cope with a weakening economy, particularly in Europe.
Whitman, who became one of the world's best-known chief executives during a decade-long stint running eBay, has been shaking things up at HP by reorganizing divisions, ushering in new managers and slashing costs through the job cuts.
As Whitman's remarks underscored the enormity of the challenge facing HP, more investors bailed out of the company's stock.
HP shares sank 94 cents, or nearly 5 per cent, to $US18.26 in Wednesday's after-hours trading, reversing earlier gains after the latest quarterly results were released.
The shares have lost more than half their value in the past two years, a factor that contributed the EDS charge during the three-month period ending in July.
HP also had to absorb charges to cover severance payments for the first wave of the 27,000 workers it is jettisoning to dramatically reduce its expenses as its revenue shrivels.
The company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, now expects to drop 11,500 employees from its payroll by the end of October, up from its previous target of 9,000. Another 15,500 employees will be let go through October 2014.
The cutbacks are driven by the rising popularity of mobile phones and tablet computers - devices that are reducing demand for personal computers. That's bad news for HP, which is the world's largest maker of PCs and printers.
To cope with the upheaval, HP has been expanding into technology consulting, computer software, data storage and high-end servers made for companies and government agencies.
The shares have lost more than half their value in the past two years, a factor that contributed the EDS charge during the three-month period ending in July.
HP also had to absorb charges to cover severance payments for the first wave of the 27,000 workers it is jettisoning to dramatically reduce its expenses as its revenue shrivels.
The company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, now expects to drop 11,500 employees from its payroll by the end of October, up from its previous target of 9,000. Another 15,500 employees will be let go through October 2014.
The cutbacks are driven by the rising popularity of mobile phones and tablet computers - devices that are reducing demand for personal computers. That's bad news for HP, which is the world's largest maker of PCs and printers.
To cope with the upheaval, HP has been expanding into technology consulting, computer software, data storage and high-end servers made for companies and government agencies.
All those specialties are more profitable than the fiercely competitive PC market, but HP hasn't been evolving rapidly enough to avoid an alarming deterioration in its financial performance.
Like several other major technology companies, HP has also been hurt by the recent economic turmoil in Europe. The uncertainty caused by unwieldy government debt in Europe has curbed spending on the continent.
If HP's slump worsens, management warned it may have to register additional charges in the current quarter to account for trouble in other acquisitions.
Without citing specifics, HP executives pointed to the company's software operations as one area that could be lumped with a major accounting charge. That division includes Autonomy, a business software service that HP bought for $US11 billion last year.
The fiscal third-quarter loss Wednesday translates to $US4.49 per share for a period covering the three months ending in July. The company earned $US1.9 billion, or 93 cents per share, at the same time last year.
HP's revenue sank 5 per cent from last year to $US29.7 billion. That was about $500 million below the projections of analysts polled by FactSet. It marked HP's fourth consecutive year-over-year quarterly decrease in revenue.
PC sales during the latest quarter fell by about 10 per cent from the same time last year, Whitman said.
She traced the decline to fierce price competition, a growing preference for tablet computers and smartphones, and postponed purchases among buyers waiting for the release of a new line of machines running Windows 8, a radical overhaul of Microsoft Corporation's operating system set for release October 26.
Whitman's clampdown on expenses also appeared to be delivering savings more quickly than Wall Street anticipated. If not for the company's various charges, HP said it would have earned $US1 per share. That figure was 2 cents per share above analyst estimates.
Like several other major technology companies, HP has also been hurt by the recent economic turmoil in Europe. The uncertainty caused by unwieldy government debt in Europe has curbed spending on the continent.
If HP's slump worsens, management warned it may have to register additional charges in the current quarter to account for trouble in other acquisitions.
Without citing specifics, HP executives pointed to the company's software operations as one area that could be lumped with a major accounting charge. That division includes Autonomy, a business software service that HP bought for $US11 billion last year.
The fiscal third-quarter loss Wednesday translates to $US4.49 per share for a period covering the three months ending in July. The company earned $US1.9 billion, or 93 cents per share, at the same time last year.
HP's revenue sank 5 per cent from last year to $US29.7 billion. That was about $500 million below the projections of analysts polled by FactSet. It marked HP's fourth consecutive year-over-year quarterly decrease in revenue.
PC sales during the latest quarter fell by about 10 per cent from the same time last year, Whitman said.
She traced the decline to fierce price competition, a growing preference for tablet computers and smartphones, and postponed purchases among buyers waiting for the release of a new line of machines running Windows 8, a radical overhaul of Microsoft Corporation's operating system set for release October 26.
Whitman's clampdown on expenses also appeared to be delivering savings more quickly than Wall Street anticipated. If not for the company's various charges, HP said it would have earned $US1 per share. That figure was 2 cents per share above analyst estimates.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire