The market has been waiting for the news for months, but now it's official: Hewlett-Packard intends to fire others 25-30 thousand people, after 54 vacated so far since 2012. HP warned last May that it expected restructuring costs of $2,7 billion. Yesterday the total rose to XNUMX billion, charges that will begin to show in the accounts for the fourth fiscal quarter, which ends at the end of the month.
The new redundancies are equal to 10% of the total workforce and will concentrate on one of the two companies that will be born on November XNUMX next, when the HP group will split into two autonomous companies: one specializing in servers, services and software (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, the one on which the ax of layoffs will fall) and the other centered on PCs and printers (the new HP Inc.). With this move, the current HP CEO Meg Whitman intends reduce HP Enterprise annual costs by $2,7 billion of dollars.
"These restructuring activities will enable a more competitive and sustainable cost structure for the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise," Whitman said in a statement. We have done significant work over the past few years to reduce costs and streamline processes, and these final actions will eliminate the need for future corporate restructurings." Whether this will actually be the case remains to be seen, given that Whitman had guaranteed that HP would not see any more restructurings.
IERI (Yesterday) HP also provided Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's fiscal 2016 outlook. For the company, which will be led by Whitman herself, the road is uphill. While the market for business technologies is expected to grow 4-5 percent a year, HP's businesses are likely to expand at a slower pace due to performance in China, Russia and Brazil, Whitman concluded. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will trade publicly under the ticker "HPE," will be "smaller" than HP, and have annual revenues above $50 billion.
HP shares yesterday closed up 0,26 percent at $27,11. After the market, it lost about 1,4 percent.
