back to article In the E in HPE stands for Eroding revenues... Intel chip shortage, hardware supplies, coronavirus punish IT titan

HPE endured a rough few months thanks to a hardware crunch and manufacturing headaches caused in part by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, it said Tuesday. For the first quarter of fiscal 2020, ending January 31: Revenues of $6.9bn were down eight per cent from this time last year's $7.5bn, and short of the $7.24bn …

  1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    the E in HPE stands for Encoding revenues

    There, fixed it for you.

    A bad cash crunch on the books means a nice tax return a lot of the time.

  2. simonlb Silver badge
    Meh

    Don't worry...

    It's HPE so they will embark on yet another round of workforce reduction so as to 'Increase revenue for our stakeholders.' That works every time.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't worry...

      While I understand your pessimism, HPE have lost a lot of the business and it will take a miracle (a cloud company failing or cloud-type services being banned from government contracts) to arrest that.

      HPE are stuck with legacy DC's, legacy service contracts and legacy systems (I'm looking at you Itanium) when the world is moving to cloud.

      Looking at geographical breakdowns, the figures are being propped up by sales in Asia/Middle East/Africa - in NA/Europe they are worse.

      Yes...it really is that bad for HPE, so downsizing is inevitable unless HPE have some miracle product to pull out of the bag.

      1. JohnSheeran

        Re: Don't worry...

        It's bad for every non-cloud company that delivers these technologies. Whether or not cloud-based computing is a good idea may become irrelevant if the market drives all of the non-cloud businesses out of business.

  3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "Coronavirus has [..] injected a new degree of uncertainty"

    I'm guessing it's not the last time we'll be hearing words like that. Containment has failed, so the impact of this thing can only get worse.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: "Coronavirus has [..] injected a new degree of uncertainty"

      Just getting their excuses in early... so that this time next year the top bods can all walk away with a big fat bonus saying 'didn't we do well' (or not but that won't stop them filling their pockets)

  4. Korev Silver badge
    Joke

    Compute was the big loser, with revenues of $3bn representing a 15 per cent plunge, year on year. In addition to Intel processor shortages

    Well "Itanic" chips can be very hard to find these days...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Still waiting

    on laptops and workstations ordered last year. We just changed supplier Dell > HPE and it's not filling us with warm fuzzies.

    1. Gothmog

      Re: Still waiting

      That's HP Inc. Different company entirely to HPE. Not that HP Inc don't have their own issues of course - mostly Xerox related.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Market Cap

    Market cap is only $15.25B now. Ready to be purchased like their HP sister

  7. Ubermik

    They have only brought this on themselves

    I "USED" to recommend HP to many of my enterprise customers until maybe 10 years ago when I discovered a rather troubling problem with the company

    I had a customers server in for a rebuild and found a small incompatibility with one of the changes to the machine, no problem, a new bios will fix it.....or so I thought

    This was when I found out that many HPE files including a bios were ONLY available to people who had a current care package active for that device which is just insane

    Pretty much EVERY SINGLE OTHER COMPANY has theirs available for free to ANYONE, even with some extremely old legacy products that I doubt many people are still using, BUT, if you are theyre not only available, but are free and available to EVERYONE

    When I asked my account manager WHY he gave me the most retarded and moronic exciuse imaginable

    "Because a hacker could get, for example a bios file and alter it"

    I was like DUH, but for that they would HAVE to actually have the product, if they bought it new they CAN download it and do that anyway, if not they can either open a carepack and THEN get it or find someone who DOES have one and ask them for a copy, so it stops NOTHING

    What it DOES mean however, is a LOT of hardware that enthusiasts and users on a budget "might" have used keeping them out of landfills but now cant or wont because of the cost

    They have also made quite a few machines with non standard PSU power cables and delivery, but dell has also done that. But you can get adapters from ebay and banggood etc to allow a normal PSU to be used instead, so thats not AS bad in my mind, but certainly doesnt help me to want to recommend a product

    So since then I have not just stopped recommending HP products but have gone MILES out of my way to ensure EVERY SINGLE customer of mine knows to avoid HP products like the plague and have shared my views with several other people who work in IT and several have been doing the same for years

    Now I am only self employed, so over the last decade or so its only cost HP around 200 servers at most and maybe 1000-1500 desktops and laptops which isnt really much for a company that size

    But I also doubt very much I am the only person who took exception to hiding drivers and bios files behind a paywall for ANY equipment, but especially so for older or retired/redundant equipment especially as it tends to massively increase its likelihood of it ending up in a landfill instead of being reused or repurposed and saving the need to add another NEW machine to the market to make up for that

    So as far as I am concerned it just serves them right, and if it means they go broke or pull out of the enterprise if the trend continues then perhaps it will be a warning to other manufacturers to show some fucking respect to their customers instead of just viewing them as walking wallets to be raped at every possible chance

    So I for one will NOT miss HPE at all if this decline continues and if it did ever happen they folded or pulled out of the enterprise I would be sitting there with my popcorn smiling as I watch then sink beneath the waves of the technological ocean

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