HP will try to dispel fears it faces even rockier times ahead when it reports earnings a day ahead of schedule.
HP shares fell more than 4% yesterday in extended trading after Bloomberg cited CEO Leo Apotheker warning his executives in an internal memo of “another tough quarter” and asking them to “watch every penny and minimise all hiring”.
It will now report results today before US market hours, rather than Wednesday. The world’s largest technology company by revenue will be going in with sharply lowered expectations, having trimmed sales forecasts in March.
The memo leaked to Bloomberg stoked fears the company – grappling with new rivals from Cisco to Oracle, limp consumer spending on PCs, and a potentially costly expansion into cloud computing – is worse off than feared.
But analysts say Wall Street had factored all that in, plus the need to rein in costs further, while waiting to see if Apotheker’s plans to rekindle growth will bear fruit. “This is business as usual,” said Brian Marshall with Gleacher & Co. “We already knew that. No one is looking for revenue growth.”
A decent set of financial results is likely to give HP’s anemic stock a jolt as the shares have slid 17% in the past three months.
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