HP is getting so good now at negative growth, it should patent it

HP CEO Meg Whitman said on Thursday that she was pleased with the company's performance during the third quarter of its fiscal 2015, despite the fact that nearly every reporting segment was down annually. The PC and printer giant missed analysts' estimates on revenue, with total sales for the quarter of $25.35bn, an 8.1 per …

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just HP

I suspect a lot of major Western economies are not living up to the spin, at the moment. Combine that with huge structural changes in the IT business (the shift to cloud and virtualisation, for example), and I think we live in interesting times. And I haven't even added Asia to the vicious concoction of problems.

[Hans 1]

Title

> HP is getting so good now at negative growth, it should patent it

Thanks, made my day!

Now where is MattBryant when you need him?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Title

Now where is MattBryant when you need him?

Signing on at his local Jobcentre Plus?

[Clive Harris]

Vintage HP

Only this afternoon I was using my trusty HP 200-series wide-range oscillator (1950's vintage) to test a piece of prototype equipment on my bench. It still works as good as new - as well as being pretty effective room heater. Those were the days when HP was at the top of their form. They seem to have completely lost direction now. Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard must be turning in their graves. I wonder how much of the stuff they're making now will still be in regular use half a century later?

[JB79]

Re: Vintage HP

Half a century later? Most of it won't be in use half a decade later. We've ditched HP completely after over 20 years of being a loyal customer, they just seem to churn out cheaply made junk these days.

Every printer we've had from them over the last 3 years has lasted no longer than 3-6 months before being replaced, usually for the same fault over and over again. I seriously miss the days of the old super reliable HP printers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Vintage HP

Working with the Laser group at HP in Boise some years ago, I remember being asked what I though the major competition to their latest printers was. Canon (OK Canon did at the time do much of HPs engine R&D for them - and shared the revenue), Epson? Nope, the Laserjet III - the buggers just kept on working, at a reasonable operating cost and adequate quality for most b&w printing requirements.

[Hans 1]

Re: Vintage HP

> Nope, the Laserjet III - the buggers just kept on working, at a reasonable operating cost and adequate quality for most b&w printing requirements.

Here we have the father of built-in obsolescence at HP, now, for your info, that has now caused their downfall, yes, AC, it is ALL YOUR FAULT!

[James 100]

Itanium?

"But the higher-margin "business critical systems" saw sales slump 21 per cent, year on year."

Oh dear. Isn't that where their Itanium business gets listed?

Quite how the boss can be "pleased", when almost all of the company seems to be in a nosedive, is worrying ... does she have a plan to fix it, somehow, or just have a really good parachute handy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Itanium?

Always felt the golden parachute, beloved by execs at HP amongst others, is a cruel misnomer - it ought to crush them, but as Fiorina has shown, rarely does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Itanium?

Meg is "pleased" because HP met one of the financial forecasts to Wall Street - non-GAAP EPS. HP did not meet the (arguably more important) GAAP EPS forecast.

Meg thinks she has a plan to fix it, in the form of the separation. Time will tell whether the plan will work.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that HP is still a huge, profitable company. Even after paying $1bn this quarter for various charges it still managed to make $854m net profit. The problem HP has is growth (or lack of it). It will be interesting to see whether the separation brings the needed growth.

[Hans 1]

Re: Itanium?

HP is like Microsoft, they've lost the plot. They are big and will take time to die, but just like IE, when they start diving, they plummet.

Layoffs, price hikes across the board, now HP are not as desperate as MS, they are not giving away crown jewels just yet, but that will happen soon, too ... expect $0 printers, soon, betting on cartridge sales to make up for the loss (ala Office360, Windows Server 2003 upgrades, Windows 10) ... LOL