jeudi 29 novembre 2012

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LONMIN (LRH)

332,70 GBp 
+2,02% | +6,60 
 18/01/2013 17:35







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Malmené en Bourse, Lonmin repousse une nouvelle fois les avances de XSTRATA




Par Les Echos | 20/11 | 07:00

Xstrata critique la gestion du britannique, dont il détient 25  %. Très endetté, Lonmin va faire appel au marché.

En février dernier, le cabinet Ernst and Young pronostiquait qu'une fusion entre Xstrata et Glencore avait toute les chances d'en entraîner d'autres dans les mines. Il ne pensait sans doute pas alors qu'Xstrata en serait encore l'un des acteurs. Le suisse fait le forcing depuis des semaines pour croquer Lonmin, le numéro trois mondial du platine, dont il détient déjà 25 %.
Tout commence il y a quelques jours, lorsque Lonmin annonce le lancement d' une augmentation de capital de 817 millions de dollars. Les grèves dans ses mines en Afrique du Sud lui ont fait perdre l'équivalent de 110.000 onces de platine et l'ont un peu plus fragilisé face à ses créanciers. Très endetté, Lonmin a perdu 700 millions de dollars lors de son exercice clos au 30 septembre.

Offre « non appropriée » 

Pour Xstrata, qui avait déjà tenté de mettre la main sur le britannique en 2008, l'occasion est trop belle. Le suisse a donc proposé de souscrire à une augmentation de capital réservée de 1 milliard de dollars, qui lui donnerait alors 70 % du capital de Lonmin. Au passage, il demande la possibilité de nommer ses hommes à des postes clefs, dont celui de directeur général. Pas question, rétorque Lonmin, jugeant cette offre « pas attractive et non appropriée ». C'en est trop pour Mike Davis. Le directeur général d'Xstrata réagit vivement et s'en prend à la direction de Lonmin, qu'il juge incapable « dedévelopper une stratégie réaliste de restauration de la valeur pour les actionnaires ». En témoigne le parcours de l'action, qui a perdu plus de la moitié de sa valeur en un an. Si le patron d'Xstrata reconnaît qu'une «recapitalisation substantielle de la société est nécessaire », il ajoute qu' « elle doit être soutenue par une équipe dirigeante et un business plan adéquat ». Pas vraiment ce que l'on appelle un chèque en blanc.
Mais face à l'opposition de Lonmin, l'heure n'est pas au lancement d'une OPA hostile. Xstrata n'a pas eu d'autre choix que de suivre l'augmentation de capital pour ne pas diluer ses 25 %. Il a donc voté hier en faveur du plan, comme plus de neuf actionnaires sur dix. « Nous pouvons maintenant aller de l'avant, avec confiance, en poursuivant la réalisation de notre plan de redressement », s'est félicité le président de Lonmin, Roger Phillimore. Mais l'ombre de Xstrata risque de planer encore longtemps sur sa tête.
pierrick Fay, Les Echos



Lonmin: les actionnaires approuvent la recapitalisation

Londres (awp/afp) - Les actionnaires du groupe minier Lonmin ont approuvé lundi la recapitalisation de 817 millions de dollars que le groupe va lancer pour renforcer sa solidité financière après les violences meurtrières dans sa mine de Marikana en Afrique du sud, a-t-il annoncé dans un communiqué.
91,1% des actionnaires présents lors d'une assemblée générale et représentant 77,7% du capital ont approuvé cette opération, a-t-il indiqué.
"Le conseil d'administration remercie les actionnaires pour leur soutien et est impatient de poursuivre son dialogue avec eux. Nous pouvons maintenant aller de l'avant, avec confiance, en poursuivant la réalisation de notre plan de redressement", a déclaré le président de Lonmin, Roger Phillimore.
Une minute de silence en mémoire des victimes des violences de Marikana a été observée lors de cette assemblée.
Les événements de la mine de platine de Marikana (nord), qui ont traumatisé l'Afrique du sud, ont fait au total 46 morts dont 34 grévistes tués par la police lors d'une fusillade le 16 août rappelant les pires heures de l'apartheid.
Fragilisé par ces violences meurtrières qui ont fortement perturbé sa production, Lonmin avait annoncé fin octobre le lancement de cette augmentation de capital, visant à lever 817 millions de dollars afin de renforcer sa solidité financière.
Son premier actionnaire, le groupe minier suisse Xstrata, avait annoncé la semaine dernière son intention de souscrire pleinement à cette augmentation de capital mais avait en revanche réitéré son appel à changer l'équipe dirigeante de Lonmin.
A la Bourse de Londres, Lonmin bondissait de 8,74% à 512,5 pence vers 14H30 GMT dans un marché en hausse de 1,62%.

(AWP / 19.11.2012 15h53) 


#suisse #vautours Lonmin: Xstrata appelle au changement de l'équipe dirigeante

 Lonmin: Xstrata appelle au changement de l'équipe dirigeante
Londres (awp/afp) - Le groupe minier Xstrata a adressé une lettre au président du directoire de Lonmin pour lui annoncer son intention de souscrire pleinement à son augmentation de capital et réitérer son appel au changement au sein de l'équipe dirigeante.
"Nous estimons également qu'une recapitalisation substantielle de la société est nécessaire. Toutefois, la recapitalisation doit être soutenue par une équipe dirigeante et un business plan adéquats", a indiqué jeudi dans un communiqué le géant zougois, principal actionnaire de Lonmin.
La semaine dernière, le groupe minier Lonmin avait rejeté une proposition de prise de contrôle par le groupe suisse, estimant que son offre n'était pas "attractive" et "non appropriée".
Xstrata proposait que Lonmin lui rachète ses activités sud-africaines dans le platine et le chrome en échange d'une augmentation de capital réservée de 1 milliard de dollars. Xstrata serait ainsi monté à au moins 70% du capital contre 24,5% actuellement.
En échange, le groupe suisse avait demandé la possibilité de nommer ses hommes aux postes-clés de Lonmin, dont celui de directeur général.
Fragilisé par les violences meurtrières dans sa mine platine en Afrique du sud, Lonmin a annoncé en octobre une augmentation de capital, visant à lever 817 millions de dollars afin de renforcer sa solidité financière.
En 2008, Xstrata avait déjà tenté d'avaler Lonmin mais avait finalement renoncé à son offre d'achat hostile tout en montant à près de 25% du capital.
rp
(AWP / 15.11.2012 18h12)

Xstrata: vers une offre sur Lonmin?

13/11/2012 à 12:54
(CercleFinance.com) - Xstrata envisagerait de déposer une offre révisée sur le producteur de platine Lonmin, après le rejet par ce dernier d'une première proposition, d'après Bloomberg qui cite des sources proches du dossier.
Le géant minier basé en Suisse, qui détient déjà environ un quart du capital de Lonmin, étudierait notamment une participation à l'augmentation de capital pour 817 millions de dollars prévue par la société, précisent les sources, avec en contrepartie des changements à la direction de Lonmin.
Vendredi dernier, Lonmin a indiqué avoir rejeté une première offre de Xstrata, qui proposait un investissement d'un milliard de dollars au capital de Lonmin et une prise de participation à hauteur de 70% dans son capital. Ce plan prévoyait aussi une cession par Xstrata de ses activités de platine et d'alliages en Afrique du Sud à Lonmin.
Copyright (c) 2012 CercleFinance.com. Tous droits réservés.


Xstrata: Lonmin rejette une proposition de prise de contrôle

LUNDI, 12.11.2012
Le groupe minier Lonmin, fragilisé par les violences meurtrières en août dans sa mine de platine de Marikana en Afrique du sud et qui a fini l’année dans le rouge, a indiqué avoir rejeté une proposition de prise de contrôle par son premier actionnaires, le suisse Xstrata. Dans un communiqué présentant les détails de son augmentation de capital de 817 millions de dollars, dont le lancement avait été annoncé fin octobre, Lonmin a révélé que Xstrata lui avait fait cette proposition le 12 octobre. Le suisse proposait que Lonmin lui rachète ses activités sud-africaines dans le platine et le chrome en échange d’une augmentation de capital réservée de 1 milliard de dollars. Xstrata serait ainsi monté à au moins 70% du capital contre 24,5% actuellement.

LONDRES, 30 OCT 2012 -

Lonmin annonce une augmentation de capital après les violences de Marikana

AFP - publié le 30/10/2012 à 12:20

LONDRES, 30 oct 2012 - - Le groupe minier Lonmin a annoncé mardi qu'il allait lancer une augmentation de capital d'environ 800 millions de dollars afin de renforcer sa solidité financière après les violences meurtrières qui ont fortement perturbé sa production dans sa mine de Marikana en Afrique du sud.

Dans un communiqué, Lonmin, qui avait reconnu dès la fin du mois d'août qu'il pourrait avoir besoin d'argent frais, a indiqué qu'il comptait "lever approximativement 800 millions de dollars de nouveaux capitaux à travers une émission d'actions afin de réduire le niveau d'endettement du groupe et augmenter sa solidité financière".
Lonmin, dont le premier actionnaire est le groupe minier suisse Xstrata, donnera les détails de cette opération prochainement.
"Les tragiques évènements de Marikana en août sont gravés de façon indélébile dans la mémoire de Lonmin et vont influencer la réflexion durant de nombreuses années chez Lonmin et plus largement en Afrique du sud", a souligné Roger Phillimore, président du groupe qui est le troisième producteur mondial de platine.
"Néanmoins, l'entreprise a repris sa production et doit regarder l'avenir. Il y a beaucoup à faire et pour cela, Lonmin a besoin de fondations financières solides", a-t-il ajouté.
A la Bourse de Londres, l'annonce de cette augmentation de capital était saluée par les investisseurs. Vers 11H00 GMT, l'action Lonmin prenait 2,50% à 492 pence, dans un marché en hausse de 0,85%.
Les événements de Marikana (nord), qui ont traumatisé l'Afrique du sud, ont fait au total 46 morts dont 34 grévistes tués par la police lors d'une fusillade le 16 août rappelant les pires heures de l'apartheid.
Les 28.000 employés de la mine de platine ont repris le travail le 20 septembre après six semaines de grève, ayant obtenu des augmentations allant de 11 à 22%.
Ces violences meurtrières ont profondément perturbé la production de la mine, qui est le principal actif de Lonmin. Elles lui ont fait perdre une production de 1,8 million de tonnes de minerai contenant une estimation de 110.000 onces de platine, a indiqué le groupe mardi.
Sur l'ensemble de son exercice 2012, sa production a par conséquent baissé à 687.372 onces contre 731.273 onces en 2011.
Lonmin assure que la reprise de la production se déroule "mieux que prévu" et que les premières onces de platine devraient être extraites mercredi.









vendredi 23 novembre 2012

Reading @ The Fool ...


How to Read Financial News



The amount of financial news published these days is staggering. The volume of news and analysis could drop 90% and it would still be completely overwhelming.
How do you make use of it all? As a financial writer who spends an embarrassing amount of time sifting through news, here are a few things I've come to terms with.
Read things you know you're going to disagree with
There is so much media content today that you can always find someone who agrees with you. Bullish on Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL  ) ? Thousands of writers are, too. Think the government is a giant conspiracy? There are countless blogs for that. Think the global recession was caused by celestial bodies falling out of alignment? I'm not kidding, folks-- there are blogs for that (and I'm doing you a favor by not linking to them).
The huge diversity of opinions makes readers vulnerable to something called confirmation bias. It's when you start with an answer, and then dig for information that backs it up. It's really dangerous because once you find someone else who agrees with you, you become more convinced that you are right -- even though you can find someone who agrees with you about literally anything.
In investing, Berkshire Hathaway  (NYSE: BRK-B  ) Vice Chairman Charlie Mungeradvocates the intellectual approach of Charles Darwin, who regularly tried to disprove his own theories. I'd recommend doing the same with financial news. You will probably learn the most from people you disagree with. They cause you to challenge your existing beliefs, many of which may be driven more by emotion than by fact.
You don't have to get crazy with this. But whenever you're convinced of a trend or a theory, go out of your way to read the counterargument. At worst, you continue to disagree with it. At best -- and quite frequently -- you gain a perspective you'd never thought of before.
Read old news
As Black Swan author Nassim Taleb writes, "To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's newspapers."
It is treated as a given that old news loses value. I disagree. Reading old news can provide far more insight than current news.
Consider this, from a December 2008 Wall Street Journal article:
Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control ...
California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. 
The value in these prediction-type articles -- which make up a big portion of financial news -- comes months or years after they are published, when you can see how hopelessly inaccurate they were.
Or take this headline, from August 2011: "Dow falls 512 in steepest decline since '08 crisis."
That wasn't a bad prediction, of course. It's what actually happened, and it felt like a big deal at the time. But 14 months later, how many people still care about it? No one. The Dow Jones (INDEX: ^DJI  ) has regained all of its losses and then some. What seemed monumental then is irrelevant now. You only gain that perspective in hindsight.
These are both extreme examples. But read enough old news, and you quickly realize two things: The majority of predictions never come close to being true, and most of what we think is important news is trivial in the long run. Once you become convinced of this, you react differently to today's newspaper.
Read a mix of professional and amateur content
Professional journalists -- those at The Wall Street JournalNew York Times, Financial Times, and so on -- will always be more factually accurate, have better access to reputable sources, and can dig deeper into a subject than most amateur bloggers. 
But they also have deadlines, quotas, and bosses with quarterly earnings to worry about. That makes them susceptible to turning non-news into something meant to sound important. The best examples are journalists ascribing reason to daily market moves. "Dow Falls on Profit-Taking," for instance. No one knows what that means.
On the other hand, amateur bloggers tend to write only when they have something meaningful to say (though there are exceptions). When stumped, they just don't publish anything. Sometimes for days on end. It's no big deal. They only answer to readers, who demand quality and nothing else.
Ideally, you should read a healthy mix of both. Never one or the other.
Don't think every news story is actionable
This might be the most important. There are thousands of news articles published every day. Very, very few of them should ever compel you into action.
Quarterly earnings news stories rarely provide anything substantive enough to cause you to buy or sell. Same for industry trade news, analyst upgrades and downgrades, and -- especially -- economic reports.
Most financial news should, at best, be treated as something that incrementally helps you understand the big picture. If you find yourself tempted to tweak your portfolio after reading news, do your future self a favor and read less of it.
The good reads
Opinions vary, but here's a short list of my favorite financial writers and websites (besides, of course, Fool.com).
  • Any half-serious investor should have a Wall Street Journal subscription. It's $15 a month and covers 90% of relevant financial news.
  • Read James Surowiecki of the New Yorker's columns every month. Twice.
  • Derek Thompson of The Atlantic consistently writes thought-provoking pieces.
  • Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg digs deeper than 99% of his journalist peers.
  • Carl Richards of The New York Times is one of the best personal-finance writers in history. No exaggeration.
  • Robert Johnson of Morningstar writes a good weekly piece on the economy. They're well written and data-driven.
  • Take 30 minutes every weekend to read The Economist (bonus tip: narrate it in your head with a British accent and you'll feel smarter).
 Read on!
Check back every Tuesday and Friday for Morgan Housel's columns on finance and economics. 
Warren Buffett's long track record of success has made him one of the best investors of all time. With Buffett at the helm, Berkshire Hathaway has grown book value per share at a compounded annual rate of 19.8% for nearly 50 years! Despite an incredible historical track record, investors have to understand the key issues to watch moving forward. To help investors, the Fool's resident Berkshire Hathaway expert, Joe Magyer, has created this premium research report on the company. Inside you'll receive ongoing updates as key news hits, as well as reasons to both buy and sell the stock.

mercredi 21 novembre 2012

Compaq


HEWLETT PACKARD CO COM USD0.01 (HPQ)

12,73 USD 
+2,99% | +0,37 
 28/11/2012 22:00





Qu'en pensent-ils ?






November 23, 2012 7:28 pm

Hewlett-Packard: Down in the valley

HP is vowing to focus on new technology and end the dealmaking that has put it deep in debt
Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard©Getty
The vision thing: Meg Whitman, HP’s CEO, blames her predecessor for the decision to buy Autonomy but she backed him last year when he proposed the acquisition
The story of Hewlett-Packard, an outwardly staid technology company, has come to resemble the plotline of an improbable corporate soap opera.
It has included, during the past decade, the firings of three chief executives, one after a probe into claims of sexual harassment; a salacious boardroom spying scandal that resulted in the resignation of its then-chairwoman; and a spate of highly controversial multibillion-dollar deals, including one that sparked a public feud between management and heirs of the company’s founders.

More

ON THIS STORY

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IN ANALYSIS

Now, to top it off, come claims of massive accounting distortion at Autonomy, the British software company that was the object of the latest of those deals. By the end of this week at least one criminal investigation had been launched into the affair, by the FBI.
This trail of destruction has done more than shred management reputations and clean out boardrooms. There has also been a significant financial toll. The latest $8.8bn charge this week, largely caused by the Autonomy mess, has lifted the total write-offs at HP during the past year, taken against a decade of acquisitions, to $19.7bn.
And that does not even count a seemingly endless round of restructuring charges that have topped $100m in every one of the past 13 years, reaching $11bn in all.
The numbers are a stark reminder of what has befallen a company that played a central part in the postwar rise of Silicon Valley. HP has become ensnared in an endless cycle of deals, reorganisations and job cuts, as successive managers have tried, and failed, to jolt its moribund business back to life.
Meg Whitman, the former eBay boss and Republican candidate for governor of California, took the helm last year with a promise to break this pattern. Yet, contemplating the Autonomy scandal, she ruefully admitted this week: “When we have an event like this, you have to work harder. It doesn’t make it any easier.”
No wonder Mike Lynch, the former Autonomy boss, has been having a field-day in the media, defending himself against charges of accounting impropriety by turning the fire back on to HP.
“There is a part of the HP management that would like to blame other people for failures,” he told the Financial Times. “They ought to look to themselves.”
Deserved or not, Mr Lynch’s barb will have hit a nerve with long-suffering shareholders. As HP’s reputation as the company that cannot shoot straight has grown to almost legendary proportions, its stock price has collapsed. Though third to Samsung and Apple in the ranks of global technology companies judged by sales, HP’s stock market value has slumped to $23.5bn, from more than $100bn in early 2010.
“Every time there’s a disaster, the management says it’s the last person who was responsible – but it’s the shareholders who keep holding the bag, over and over,” said Charles Elson, a professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “At some point, the music has to stop.”
Ms Whitman, already fighting long odds in her effort to turn HP round, now finds herself with another crisis on her hands. It doesn’t help that she was among the directors who unanimously backed CEO Léo Apotheker last year when he proposed the Autonomy acquisition. The exorbitant price, about 80 per cent more than Wall Street had thought the company was worth before HP showed up, was a big part of the reason that Mr Apotheker was later shown the door.
Ms Whitman now tries to distance herself and other directors from the decision, putting the blame squarely on the former CEO. “We decided to vote for what he thought was the right thing to do,” she says. “We thought it was a high price. You do rely on the CEO that you hired.”
Absolving HP’s directors of responsibility for this latest debacle may not be so easy. In their eagerness to pull off a deal that seemed to promise a partial answer to HP’s business challenges, they failed to dig as deeply as they should into possible problems at Autonomy, according to critics. That is despite warnings from some analysts about suspect accounting.
“It was a desperation move and I think things were maybe overlooked,” said Mark Williams, an academic at Boston University’s School of Management. Advisers, including the company’s accountants and investment bankers, also slipped, says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, although he adds that some of the blame rests with HP’s management and board, “for not asking enough questions or spotting signs of trouble”.
Ms Whitman can at least point to a thorough board overhaul, undertaken just before the Autonomy deal, that was designed to put paid to HP’s reputation of bad governance once and for all. And she claims a more direct personal management style that has led to the latest directors being better informed than their predecessors.
“I tell my board everything,” she says. “That’s quite a different board management style than, I think, my predecessors.”
“HP probably had more governance problems than any large company in America but Meg cleaned house in 2011,” says Mr Yoffie. “It is hard to ascribe deeper systemic governance problems when the board and the CEO are new.”
Whether justified or not, meanwhile, the accounting scandal has contributed to a public perception of HP as a dysfunctional company let down by inadequate leadership. As Ms Whitman herself conceded, “there have been questions going back to the beginning of the [last] decade” about failures in the HP boardroom. Those will linger.
Ms Whitman must now prevent the Autonomy debacle from derailing her efforts at a turnround. Wall Street has voted with its feet: the stock market wiped 10 per cent off HP’s bargain-basement stock price on the news of the Autonomy debacle. This week’s news “adds further weight to the overall view that they are not really competent enough to turn this company around,” says Richard Windsor, a former analyst.
. . .
The catalogue of HP’s problems makes daunting reading. One of the arguments for conglomerates has always been that they offer investors greater stability: if one part of the business is losing money, others will be doing better and help even out the performance. HP, however, is a conglomerate in which all the cylinders have stopped firing at once.
Its giant PC division, struggling with a secular downturn as customers turn to tablets, was further dented last year by Mr Apotheker’s public musing over whether to sell the business. Its IT services operation has struggled ever since the $13.9bn acquisition four years ago of EDS, leading to an $8bn writedown of its own in August. And in the servers and hardware it sells to corporate IT departments, HP has long suffered from a creeping commoditisation that has hurt profit margins.
Even the one division whose profits had long bailed out the rest of the company, based on ink-jet printers, is facing decline. With customers printing fewer photographs on their home PCs as they turn to the cloud, sales of ink cartridges – the cash cow that funded HP for more than a decade – are under pressure.
As Ms Whitman says: “This is an enormous company with an extraordinary list of challenges.” Her remedy: stop the dealmaking, which has left HP deeply in debt, and get back to doing the basic research and development needed to give the company back a technology edge lost during a long period of under-investment by previous management.
Having cleared the decks with a series of write-offs, including at Autonomy, she now faces two possible futures. In one, says Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester Research, HP will “soldier on, there’s nothing that will force an immediate change in their structure – but there’s no quick fix to their problems either”. Ms Whitman has asked shareholders for five years to complete a turnround, an almost unimaginably long time given the short horizon of most investors.
Like other analysts, Mr Gillett also says that HP has promising new technologies it is nurturing – including from smaller acquisitions – and the main challenge will be to overcome the perceptions of failure that dog the company, made all the worse by the Autonomy news.
Alternatively, however, the weight of the past could prove too much and Ms Whitman may be forced to sell assets or even break up the company.
“People just have no confidence that management has made the right strategic decisions to turn this company around and invest for growth – it’s trading on the assumption that HP will fail,” says Richard Windsor, a Nomura analyst and author of the Radio Free Mobile blog.
The HP chief completely rules out the break-up option. “There isn’t a Plan B,” she insists. “I’m confident we can turn this company around.”
But in the wake of the latest bombshell from a company now notorious for having America’s most dysfunctional boards, such assurances risk sounding increasingly hollow.



(Boursier.com) -- Hewlett-Packard a dévissé finalement de 12% à Wall Street mardi soir, de retour à 11,7$ dans un volume très épais, au plus bas depuis octobre 2002 ! Le géant informatique californien a annoncé pour l'exercice 2012 un bénéfice dilué ajusté par action de 4,05$, en bas de fourchette de la récente guidance. La perte GAAP par action pour l'année s'est établie à 6,41$. Les revenus totaux de l'exercice 2012 ont reculé de 5% à 120,4 Mds$.
Le bénéfice dilué ajusté par action du 4ème trimestre est ressorti à 1,16$, en baisse de 1%. Les revenus T4 ont totalisé 30 Mds$, en déclin prononcé de 7% en comparaison de l'an dernier. Le consensus était logé à 1,14$ de bénéfice par action trimestriel, pour 30,43 milliards de chiffre d'affaires. La perte GAAP par action a représenté 3,49$ sur le dernier trimestre.
Le bénéfice net ajusté a été de 2,3 Mds$ sur le 4ème trimestre, en baisse de 3%, et de 8 Mds$ sur l'exercice (-23%). La perte GAAP trimestrielle s'est élevée quant à elle à 6,9 Mds$, contre un léger profit un an plus tôt. La perte de l'exercice a atteint 12,7 Mds$, contre 7,1 Mds$ de bénéfice net un an auparavant !
Le groupe a passé également 8,8 milliards de dépréciations d'actifs relatives à l'activité d'Autonomy, firme software britannique acquise par HP l'an dernier pour plus de 10 Mds$ en cash sous la direction de Léo Apotheker. HP constate en effet "des erreurs comptables sérieuses, des manquements en terme de communication" et des représentations jugées trompeuses, intervenus préalablement à l'acquisition.
En août, HP avait déjà enregistré de très lourdes charges de 8 milliards de dollars pour dépréciation du goodwill sur le dossier EDS...
Pour son 1er trimestre fiscal 2013, HP envisage un bpa dilué ajusté allant de 68 à 71 cents, pour un bpa GAAP allant de 34 à 37 cents. Sur l'exercice, le bpa est attendu entre 3,40 et 3,60$ sur une base ajustée, pour un bpa GAAP allant de 2,10 à 2,30$.
HP, désormais dirigé par Meg Whitman, précise avoir contacté la Securities & Exchange Commission, le gendarme des marchés financiers américains, afin de lancer une enquête criminelle au sujet de la comptabilité occulte d'Autonomy. HP juge en effet la comptabilité passée de sa proie anglaise frauduleuse.


Nov. 20, 2012, 4:46 p.m. EST

H-P shares blasted by Autonomy charge














By Benjamin Pimentel and Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Hewlett-Packard Co.’s shares plunged Tuesday after the company said it would take an $8.8 billion asset-impairment charge due to “serious accounting improprieties” tied to its acquisition of software firm Autonomy Corp.
H-P shares HPQ -11.95%  fell 12% to close at $11.71 — the stock’s lowest level since October 2002 — as the disclosure offset quarterly results that were generally in line with expectations, though the company's current-quarter outlook came in significantly below expectations.

Have analysts given up on H-P?

Hewlett-Packard's shares sink as the company takes an $8.8 billion charge on its Autonomy acquisition. S&P Capital IQ’s Angelo Zino has his take on H-P. (Photo: Getty Images)
The revelation also comes at a time when the Palo Alto, Calif.-based technology bellwether is facing increasing competitive pressures and reeling from changes in its core markets, particularly in PCs. Read more on H-P’s Autonomy fiasco: Who else is to blame?
In a statement, H-P said the impairment charge was largely due to “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy Corp. that occurred prior to H-P’s acquisition of Autonomy and the associated impact of those improprieties, failures and misrepresentations on the expected future financial performance of the Autonomy business over the long term.” See: How H-P was duped in Autonomy deal.
ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall cut his rating on H-P’s stock to neutral from buy, and in a research note wasted little time blasting H-P’s continuing business shocks.
HPQ’s 10 worst days 
Since 2000
DATECHANGE
Aug. 19, 2011-20%
Sept. 4, 2001-18.7%
Feb. 26, 2003-15.5%
Aug. 12, 2004-13.2%
Oct. 3, 2012-13%
Nov 13, 2000-12.8%
Jan. 5, 2001-11.6%
Nov. 11, 2002-11%
Sept. 17, 2001-10.5%
Aug. 20, 2003-10.5%
Feb. 23, 2011-9.6%
Sept. 29, 2000-9.2%
Nov. 10, 2000-8.9%
Feb. 16, 2001-8.9%
Dec. 6, 2000-8.6%
Source: FactSet
“To put it bluntly, this story has been an unmitigated train wreck,” he said, adding that H-P has dropped “more shoes than Imelda Marcos.”
Marshall also said he could no longer recommend H-P’s stock at its current levels and went on to say “We apologize to investors for our extremely poor performance on this attempted ‘value’ play.”
H-P bought Autonomy in 2011 in a deal originally priced at $10 billion, but eventually worth $11.1 billion by the time it closed, as part of the company’s bid to expand its software portfolio and its presence in the higher-margin corporate market for information technology. The acquisition was controversial, and together with H-P’s announcement that it was considering getting out of the PC business, caused the company’s stock to plunge about 20% in August 2011.Read Tech Investor: H-P overpaid for more than just Automony.
Leo Apotheker, who was chief executive at the time, abruptly left H-P shortly afterward.
“There were investor concerns that it may be an accounting fraud, and it looks like those fears were valid,” Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu told MarketWatch. See: H-P sets expensive legacy with Autonomy deal.
Leo Apotheker
The announcement overrode H-P’s better-than-expected adjusted earnings for its fourth quarter.
The company reported a fourth-fiscal-quarter loss of $6.85 billion, or $3.49 a share, compared with a profit of $239 million or 12 cents a share in the year-earlier period. Revenue was $29.96 billion, down from $32.12 billion. Adjusted profit was $1.16 a share.
Analysts were expecting the company to report earnings of $1.14 a share, on revenue of $30.44 billion, according to a consensus survey of analysts by FactSet.
For the current quarter, H-P said it expects adjusted earnings in the range of 68 cents to 71 cents a share. Analysts were expecting adjusted earnings of 85 cents a share, according to a consensus survey of analysts by FactSet.
Wu said the company’s outlook suggests the company’s business is “back-end loaded” toward the second half of the year, and that the company may have to lower its quarterly estimates further.
Wu added that H-P’s estimates reflect the changes in the computing market brought on by the impact of mobile devices from Apple Inc. AAPL -0.85%  and Google Inc.GOOG +0.26% upon the likes of H-P and Dell Inc. DELL -1.59% , which reported disappointing results last week. 
“This whole mobile revolution that Apple started is clearly taking a bigger bite of [H-P’s] business, but the speed and magnitude is greater than expected,” the analyst said. “We can talk about blaming the economy and other factors, but at the end of the day, it’s the shift to mobile that is hurting them.” 

Benjamin Pimentel is a MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco.Rex Crum is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco

Hewlett-Packard: Fraud prompted $5 billion overpayment


11:56 PM, Nov 20, 2012


Hewlett-Packard Co. said Autonomy Corporation PLC, a British company it bought for $9.7 billion last year, lied about its finances.
Hewlett-Packard Co. said Autonomy Corporation PLC, a British company it bought for $9.7 billion last year, lied about its finances. / Associated Press file

Written by
Peter Svensson
Associated Press



NEW YORK — Hewlett-Packard Co. said on Tuesday that it’s the victim of a multibillion dollar fraud at the hands of a British company it bought last year that lied about its finances.
HP CEO Meg Whitman said executives at Autonomy Corporation PLC “willfully” boosted the company’s figures through various accounting tricks, which convinced HP to pay $9.7 billion for the company in October 2011.
Autonomy’s former CEO said HP’s allegations are false.
HP is now taking an $8.8 billion charge to align Autonomy’s purchase price with what HP now says is its real value. More than $5 billion of that charge is due to false accounting, HP said.
The revelation is another blow for HP, which is struggling to reinvent itself as PC and printer sales shrink. The company’s stock hit a 10-year low in morning trading.
Among other things, Autonomy makes search engines that help companies find vital information stored across computer networks. Acquiring it was part of an attempt by HP to strengthen its portfolio of high-value products and services for corporations and government agencies. The deal was approved by Whitman’s predecessor, Leo Apotheker, but closed three weeks into Whitman’s tenure as chief executive. Whitman was a member of HP’s board of directors when Apotheker initiated the Autonomy purchase.
Among the tricks used at Autonomy, Whitman said: The company had been booking the sale of computers as software revenue and claiming the cost of making the machines as a marketing expense. Revenue from long-term contracts was booked upfront, instead of over time.
The allegations are serious, according to accounting experts.
“According to GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles), the overstatement of revenue under any tax code is illegal,” said Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University and a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve.
As a result of its alleged accounting practices, Autonomy appeared to be more profitable than it was and seemed to be growing its core software business faster than was actually the case. The moves were apparently designed to groom the company for an acquisition, Whitman said.
Once HP bought the company, Autonomy’s reported revenue growth and profit margin quickly declined. Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch continued to run the company as part of HP, but Whitman forced him out on May 23 because it was not living up to expectations.
“Little did I know that there was more than met the eye,” Whitman said.
With Lynch gone, a senior Autonomy executive volunteered information about the alleged accounting irregularities, prompting an internal investigation, Whitman said.
The case has been referred to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, she said. The company will also try to recoup some of the cash it paid for Autonomy through lawsuits.
In a statement to the Financial Times, Lynch said, “The former management team of Autonomy was shocked to see this statement today and flatly rejects these allegations, which are false.”
“It took 10 years to build Autonomy’s industry-leading technology and it is sad to see how it has been mismanaged since its acquisition by HP,” he added.
On a conference call with Whitman following the earnings report, analyst Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital asked who will be held responsible internally for the disastrous acquisition.
Whitman answered that the two executives who should have been held responsible — Apotheker and strategy chief Shane Robison — are gone. But the deal was also approved by the board of directors.
“Most of the board was here and voted for this deal, and we feel terribly about that,” Whitman said. “What I will say is that the board relied on audited financials. Audited by Deloitte — not ‘Brand X’ accounting firm, but Deloitte. During our very extensive due diligence process, we hired KPMG to audit Deloitte. And neither of them saw what we now see after someone came forward to point us in the right direction.”
Apotheker told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he was “stunned and disappointed” to learn of the allegations against Autonomy, and pointed out that they had gone undiscovered by HP’s auditors, executives and directors.
Deloitte UK said it could not comment on the matter because of client confidentiality rules.
Whitman said she still views Autonomy as a “growth engine for HP software,” albeit a weaker one than initially thought.
HP’s stock dipped $1.59, or 12 percent, to close at $11.71 in Tuesday’s trading. Just after the market’s open, the stock hit $11.35, its lowest level since 2002.
HP’s net loss for the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Oct. 31, amounted to $6.85 billion, or $3.49 per share.
That compares with net income of $239 million, or 12 cents per share, in the same period last year.





Nov. 20, 2012, 4:33 p.m. EST

How H-P was duped in Autonomy deal

Analysts say fiasco could put more pressure on company


By Benjamin Pimentel, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — When Hewlett-Packard Co. unveiled its plan to buy Autonomy Corp. in August 2011, then Chief Executive Leo Apotheker called the British firm “a highly profitable and globally respected software company, with a well-regarded management team and talented, dedicated employees.”
Autonomy’s own Chief Executive Mike Lynch, who later joined H-P HPQ -11.95%  , called the signing of the deal, now valued at roughly $11 billion, “a momentous day” for his company.
HPQ’s 10 worst days 
Since 2000
DATECHANGE
Aug. 19, 2011-20%
Sept. 4, 2001-18.7%
Feb. 26, 2003-15.5%
Aug. 12, 2004-13.2%
Oct. 3, 2012-13%
Nov 13, 2000-12.8%
Jan. 5, 2001-11.6%
Nov. 11, 2002-11%
Sept. 17, 2001-10.5%
Aug. 20, 2003-10.5%
Feb. 23, 2011-9.6%
Sept. 29, 2000-9.2%
Nov. 10, 2000-8.9%
Feb. 16, 2001-8.9%
Dec. 6, 2000-8.6%
Source: FactSet
Wall Street was unimpressed as H-P’s stock plummeted 20% that day. Part of the reason for the stock’s drop was the confusing announcement that H-P was considering exiting the PC business. But the plunge was also based on the view that the Autonomy deal was overpriced and didn’t really make sense.
A year later, Autonomy has hit H-P shares again. The stock plunged 12% to close at $11.71 on Tuesday after the company posted a nearly $9 billion impairment charge mostly related to the deal. See: Hewlett-Packard shares plummet on Autonomy charge
In a stunning announcement, H-P essentially admitted it was duped in the Autonomy transaction.
“H-P now believes that Autonomy was substantially overvalued at the time of its acquisition due to the misstatement of Autonomy’s financial performance, including its revenue, core growth rate and gross margins, and the misrepresentation of its business mix,” the company said Tuesday as it reported fiscal fourth-quarter results.
In a call with analysts, CEO Meg Whitman, who replaced Apotheker after he abruptly left H-P, told analysts that the company plans to seek redress against those involved in the fraud.
She also said, “Most of the board was there and voted for this deal and we feel terribly about that.”
H-P’s claims of fraud came to light after a senior member of Autonomy’s leadership came forward after the departure of Lynch earlier this year, and told H-P “that there had been a series of questionable accounting and business practices at Autonomy prior to the acquisition by H-P,” the company said.
H-P’s internal investigation found that Autonomy had misstated its “financial performance, including its revenue, core growth rate and gross margins, and the misrepresentation of its business mix.”
The company said there apparently was “a willful effort on behalf of certain former Autonomy employees to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company in order to mislead investors and potential buyers.”
CEO Meg Whitman says H-P has alerted the SEC to possible accounting fraud at software unit Autonomy.
The company said the “misrepresentations and lack of disclosure severely impacted H-P management’s ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal.”
On the call, Whitman said H-P has turned over the investigation to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office.
“This will take a long time to work through, but we are committed to seeking redress for the benefit of our shareholders,” she said.
Whitman also noted that the two H-P executives who led the Autonomy deal are “both gone.” She was referring to Apotheker and Shane Robison, the company’s former chief strategy officer, who left late last year.
“It’s clear to me that the blame for this is being placed on Leo Apotheker and Shane Robison, as well as the auditors,” IDC analyst Crawford Del Prete told MarketWatch. “It will be interesting to see how much pressure is placed on the current board, as most of the board is the same today.”

Have analysts given up on H-P?

Hewlett-Packard's shares sank to the lowest levels in 10 years on as the company took an $8.8 billion charge on its Autonomy acquisition. S&P Capital IQ senior analyst Angelo Zino offers his take.
Del Prete speculated that the Autonomy fiasco could put more pressure on the company’s board and management.
“I think this calls into question the governance process at the company, and will likely open the company up to a new wave of speculation around where it goes from here,” he said. The speculation, he added, could be “in terms of breakup or even an acquisition if the stock continues to trade down.”
ISI Group’s Brian Marshall agreed, as he put out a note downgrading H-P to neutral, saying the company has dropped “more shoes than Imelda Marcos,” referring to wife of the late Philippine dictator who was known for owning thousands of shoes as part of her ostentatious lifestyle.
“To put it bluntly, this story has been an unmitigated train wreck and it seems every time management speaks to the Street, there is new negative incremental information forthcoming,” he wrote.
“We can no longer recommend investors buy shares of H-P at current levels as negative information continues to pour out, the end is not in sight and we no longer understand what we are ‘playing for,’” Marshall added.


Nov. 20, 2012, 4:34 p.m. EST

H-P overpaid for more than just Autonomy

Commentary: Operational ineptitude meets board dysfunction



SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Meg Whitman didn’t just go nuclear on the fateful and short-lived reign of her predecessor, Leo Apotheker, on Tuesday.

In suing to remedy the financial disaster Apotheker created last year by agreeing to acquire Autonomy for almost $12 billion, Whitman’s charges of accounting fraud also confirmed what an operational disaster H-P HPQ -11.95%  had become in the wake of Mark Hurd’s departure two years ago.

What exactly is Autonomy and who is Mike Lynch?

H-P claims that the leaders at Autonomy, the company it acquired last year, misrepresented the software firm’s performance.

That’s because the Autonomy deal isn’t the only botched acquisition H-P has made since Hurd’s exit.

That a deal can go so bad it requires a lawsuit to fix — a year after it was announced — would be ridiculously comic if it also wasn’t financially painful to H-P stockholders.
It’s yet another blunder in a string of bizarre disasters that has made Hewlett-Packard, once the most venerated tech company in Silicon Valley, into the region’s closest thing to a reality show.
Hurd, you may recall, was an operations guy who led the company through a multiyear run of massive job cuts and little innovation, for which Wall Street rewarded H-P investors.
But that ended in August 2010, when word leaked of Hurd’s allegedly improper relationship with a woman who happened to be an H-P contractor. After an unsatisfying explanation by Hurd of his accounting for the matter, the board showed him the door.
Oracle Corp. ORCL +0.20%  Chief Executive Larry Ellison, never one to shy from controversy, hired him shortly thereafter.

Russ Britt/MarketWatch
H-P CEO Meg Whitman
While everyone was distracted by Hurd’s messy exit, and before Apotheker was hired, H-P engaged in a bidding war for 3Par with its chief rival, Dell Inc. DELL -1.59% 
When that bidding war was over, H-P agreed to pay $2.35 billion, a price that was triple what 3Par’s stock had been before news broke of Dell’s initial offer. In other words, H-P paid a 200% premium on the stock’s market value.
Throw in Apotheker’s swollen offer for Autonomy, and it’s not hard to see how you get to an $8.8 billion write-down — the company’s second straight multibillion-dollar accounting charge.

Land sharks in Silicon Valley

The 3Par bidding war was orchestrated over three weeks by investment banker Frank Quattrone, who now heads his own firm, the Qatalyst Group, after a long career for several large, multinational investment-banking firms.
From left: Tech exec Mark Hurd, deal maker Frank Quattrone and Autonomy’s Mike Lynch
























It makes sense that when it came time to sign the Autonomy deal in October 2011, the investment bankers sitting across from H-P’s team were led once again Quattrone and his top negotiator, George Boutros.
More than a decade ago, when I covered investment banking for Bloomberg News, one of Boutros’s former clients told me that people often hired him just so they wouldn’t have to face him across a negotiating table.
After having the sense to walk away from Boutros and a deal for 3Par, Dell pocketed a $75 million termination fee from the company H-P was about to acquire. Three months later, to add injury to insult, Dell picked up a rival data-storage firm, Compellent, for $820 million, or a third of H-P’s price.
If the accounting allegations made by H-P against U.K.-based software maker Autonomy prove true, the company has made two massive strategic mistakes (at least) upon Hurd’s departure.
The end result was a perfect storm for any investor in a public company: H-P’s famously dysfunctional board ended up with dysfunctional management. The company’s announcement of the 3Par deal wasn’t even signed by a chief executive, but instead by Dave Donatelli, an executive vice president in charge of the H-P enterprise and storage unit.
Apotheker fared even worse than Donatelli and Cathie Lesjak, who was interim chief after Hurd left, after Quattrone, a tough-as-nails native of South Philadelphia, once again paid a call to H-P.
Quattrone knew an opportunity when he saw it, because neither Apotheker nor any other former H-P executive knew as well as Quattrone did what a young, fast-growing tech company might be worth to a stagnant giant like Hewlett-Packard.

HEWLETT PACKARD CO COM USD0.01 (HPQ)
11,71 USD 
-11,95% | -1,59 
 20/11/2012 22:00



His ability to convince people to sign off on that kind of arbitrage is what has made Quattrone, his team and his investors wealthy.
The existence of an internal acquisitions team that would sign off on a deal this bad, paired with the leadership vacuum at the top, was like a mixture of blood and chum in the water for a banker like Quattrone.
Given the longstanding dysfunction of the H-P board, the power vacuum was almost guaranteed to surrender shareholder value when faced with the negotiating expertise of Qatalyst.
Cue the entrance of Quattrone and Boutros and — badda-bing, badda-boom — a few more billion dollars worth of cash and equity go flying out H-P’s doors, and into the coffers of Qatalyst and its clients.

Where were the auditors?

Apotheker and anyone else at H-P involved in approving the Autonomy deal will, of course, say that they relied on the audits of accountants, consultants and investment bankers to form their opinions on it.
That raises the question of what has happened to the financial-auditing industry, since two large firms, including Deloitte and KPMG, were hired to do the accounting. Neither of those companies were commenting Tuesday, to no one’s surprise.
Whomever else H-P hired to represent the company in M&A negotiations for these deals was out of his or her league in dealing with Quattrone.
The problem with hiring bad accountants is that’s it’s worse than hiring outmatched investment bankers, because the former can’t protect a company from the latter.
There is nothing that can protect H-P shareholders right now, because the long slide has been going on for too long. The problems with Hewlett-Packard are too big and too numerous for Whitman to fix, as I argued in a column last month. Read column: H-P missed the boat, Whitman can’t change that.
That’s why I’ll repeat what I said then: If Whitman really wants to do a favor for H-P’s investors, she’ll hire some bankers who know what they’re doing and split the company into several different businesses.
The columnist has no position in H-P stock. Follow John Shinal on Twitter @johnshinal.

John Shinal, a former technology editor of MarketWatch, is based in San Francisco

Oracle apparently was right on Autonomy

November 20, 2012, 2:41 PM
Oracle Corp. ORCL +0.07% had a minor, but noisy role in Hewlett-Packard’sHPQ +0.43% controversial acquisition of Autonomy Corp. last year – a deal H-P is now having to take a huge impairment charge due to “accounting improprieties.”

Reuters
Former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch in 2008.
After the roughly $11 billion deal was announced in August 2011, Oracle had weighed in saying Autonomy was also shopped to the software behemoth. But Oracle said it “wasn’t interested because the price was way too high,” the company said in a statement then.
When Autonomy Chief Executive Mike Lynch denied the claim, Oracle essentially accused him of lying.
“Another whopper from Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch,” read an Oracle statement.
The company offered details of a meeting in which Autonomy executives supposedly made their sales pitch. The company even created a ‘Please Buy Autonomy’ page on the Oracle site, and posted what it said were the PowerPoint slides Lynch used for his presentation.
Oracle also said Lynch was aided in his sales pitch by “Silicon Valley’s most famous shopper/seller of companies, the legendary investment banker Frank Quattrone.”
“After the sales pitch was over, Oracle refused to make an offer because Autonomy’s current market value of $6 billion was way too high,” the company said.
The dustup over Autonomy erupted at a time when relations between H-P and Oracle had grown strained.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had publicly blasted the H-P board’s decision to oust former CEO Mark Hurd, who later joined Oracle as a co-president. He also criticized H-P’s decision to name Leo Apotheker as CEO, and Ray Lane as non-executive chairman.
Apotheker once was CEO of Oracle rival, SAP, while Lane had been a top Oracle executive who left the company reportedly after a dispute with Ellison.
An Oracle spokesperson said the company had no comment on H-P’s disclosure on Autonomy.
– Benjamin Pimentel
Follow Ben @MWBenPimentel
Follow The Tell on Twitter @thetellblog




[image]
Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ -13.58% said on Tuesday it had been duped into overpaying for one of its largest acquisitions, contributing to an $8.8 billion write-down and a huge quarterly loss.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Autonomy founder Mike Lynch said he wasn't aware Hewlett was preparing these allegations and that they are "utterly wrong." Ben Rooney has details on The News Hub. Photo: Bloomberg.
Hewlett-Packard leveled serious accusations against a software company it bought last year, saying it would take a $8.8 billion write-down after it claimed Autonomy's leadership misrepresented its performance. Scott Austin reports on Markets Hub. Photo: Reuters.
Hewlett-Packard's shares sank to the lowest levels in ten years on as the company took an $8.8 billion charge on its Autonomy acquisition. S&P Capital IQ senior analyst Angelo Zino joins digits to discuss. Photo: Getty Images.
The technology giant said that an internal investigation had revealed "serious accounting improprieties" and "outright misrepresentations" in connection with U.K. software maker Autonomy, which H-P acquired for $11.1 billion in October 2011.
"There appears to have been a willful sustained effort" to inflate Autonomy's revenue and profitability, said Chief Executive Meg Whitman. "This was designed to be hidden."
Michael Lynch, Autonomy's founder and former CEO, fired back hours later, denying improper accounting and accusing H-P of trying to hide its mismanagement. "We completely reject the allegations," said Mr. Lynch, who left H-P earlier this year. "As soon as there is some flesh put on the bones we will show they are not true."
H-P said Tuesday it alerted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.K. Serious Fraud Office and requested that they open investigations. The SEC and Federal Bureau of Investigation are launching inquiries, according to people familiar with the probes.

Timeline: A History of Hewlett-Packard

Bios: On H-P's Board for the Troubled Purchase

The accounting-fraud claim adds to a string of recent setbacks and controversies for Palo Alto, Calif.-based H-P, whose board faced criticism over its handling of the departures of its last two chief executives. Mark Hurd resigned in 2010 after he acknowledged having a personal relationship with a company contractor. His successor, Leo Apotheker, who spearheaded the Autonomy purchase, was forced out in 2011 and replaced by Ms. Whitman.
H-P General Counsel John Schultz said the internal investigation into the Autonomy deal began in May when he told Ms. Whitman he had just spoken with a senior executive in the Autonomy software business, who had alleged that executives at Autonomy had been cooking the books before the acquisition. The identity of that senior executive couldn't be determined.
A spokesman for Autonomy's accounting firm, Deloitte LLP, said Tuesday: "Deloitte UK categorically denies that it had any knowledge of any accounting improprieties or any misrepresentations in Autonomy's financial statements, or that it was complicit in any accounting improprieties or misrepresentations."
[image]
Mr. Lynch, the former Autonomy CEO, said H-P is "completely and utterly wrong." He said of Autonomy: "It is a business we spent 10 years building. It was a world leader. It was destroyed in less than a year by the petty infighting at H-P."

The accounting-fraud allegations punctuated another grim set of financial results for H-P, one of the world's largest sellers of personal computers, printers and other technology products and services. In recent years, it has been hurt by executive turnover, cost cuts, mounting debt and slowing demand for some products.

H-P said Tuesday it swung to a $6.9 billion loss for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Oct. 31, while revenue fell 7% from a year earlier. The charge for writing down Autonomy totaled $8.8 billion, of which more than $5 billion is related to the accounting issues, with the balance related partly to the unit's performance. Revenue fell across H-P's PC, printer, services, and server and networking divisions.

Hewlett-Packard has claimed that the leadership at Autonomy, the software firm it acquired last year, misrepresented its performance as the deal was being negotiated. WSJ's Ben Rooney profiles the company and its founder, Mike Lynch. Photo: Bloomberg


It was the technology giant's fifth straight quarter of big declines, a trend Ms. Whitman said is likely to continue.
H-P's stock, which was already trading near a 10-year low, ended 4 p.m. trading at $11.71, down $1.59, or 12%, on the New York Stock Exchange.
When the deal was announced in August 2011, Autonomy was Britain's biggest software company and second-largest in Europe, after Germany's SAPSAP.XE +2.34% AG. Its customers include intelligence agencies, big corporations, banks and law firms. H-P said then that Autonomy was key to its transformation into a higher-margin seller of software.
H-P said Tuesday that Autonomy, before it was acquired, had mischaracterized some sales of low-margin hardware as software and had recognized some deals with partners as revenue, even when a customer never bought the product.
At least one year before the H-P acquisition, an Autonomy executive brought concerns about the company's accounting practices to U.S. regulators including the SEC, according to people familiar with the matter. Autonomy didn't trade on U.S. exchanges prior to the H-P deal, so it is unclear whether U.S. agencies had jurisdiction.
H-P's internal team was aware of talk about accounting irregularities at the time the deal was struck, people familiar with the matter have said. At the time, one of these people said, H-P was looking for a way to unwind the deal before it closed, but couldn't find any material accounting issues.
Mr. Lynch, in an interview at the time, denied any accounting irregularities. On Tuesday, he blamed any problems at Autonomy on poor management by H-P and executive turnover.
Ms. Whitman said Tuesday the company relied on Autonomy's regular auditor Deloitte and had hired KPMG for an additional review before the deal closed. Neither firm found any irregularities then, she said. KPMG declined comment.
Mr. Schultz, H-P's general counsel, said H-P was shown "significant documentation from former Autonomy executives refuting the allegations" of any accounting issues. In hindsight, "it's fair to say those refutations were questionable," he said.
After H-P completed the deal, Autonomy's sales suffered. On several occasions, H-P said the unit didn't meet expectations.
In May 2012, Mr. Lynch left H-P. Shortly after, the unidentified Autonomy senior executive approached Mr. Schultz. Mr. Schultz said that during a phone call to discuss other matters, the Autonomy executive asked to speak with him in person.
The pair met in a conference room at H-P's Palo Alto headquarters, where the executive provided an outline of the alleged accounting fraud, Mr. Schultz said. The executive later provided some emails and financial information that Mr. Schultz said substantiated the claim.
Working with auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an H-P team re-created Autonomy's books. People familiar with the investigation said that the team found that for at least two years, Autonomy booked sales of low-margin hardware products as software and would label the cost of that hardware as marketing or other expenses, which made products appear faster growing and more profitable than they really were.
In late June 2012, Mr. Lynch met with H-P to discuss issues including "transition and obligations to the company," said Mr. Lynch's spokeswoman. She added that at the meeting, he was asked about the operation of a small number of deals, which he explained.
Mr. Lynch, who founded Autonomy in 1996 and took it public in 1998, said Tuesday he was saddened by the allegations and that he hasn't been contacted by regulatory authorities.
Ms. Whitman, who was on H-P's board when the Autonomy deal was announced, blamed the acquisition on her predecessor, Mr. Apotheker, and the company's former strategy chief, Shane Robison. "The two people who should have been held responsible are gone," she said. Mr. Robison didn't respond to requests for comment.
In a statement, Mr. Apotheker said he was "both stunned and disappointed" to learn of H-P's allegations. He said "the due diligence process was meticulous and thorough, and included two of the world's largest and most respected auditing firms working on behalf of H-P." He added that he will assist H-P and the authorities "to get to the bottom of this."
—Ben Rooney, Joann S. Lublin, Justin Scheck
and Jean Eaglesham contributed to this article.

Write to Ben Worthen at ben.worthen@wsj.com