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HP Is Planning To Split Into Two Separate Businesses, Sources Say
mrspoonsi writes Hewlett-Packard is planning to split itself into two separate businesses, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. Sources tell the WSJ that HP will split its personal-computer and printer segments from its corporate hardware and services business. The announcement could come as early as Monday, the sources said. The company reorganized itself in 2012 under CEO Meg Whitman. That move combined its computer and printer businesses. The PC and computer segment is massive for HP. For the first six months this year, it reported $27.8 billion in revenue. That's about three times the size of HP's next biggest unit, the Enterprise Group, which makes servers, storage, and network hardware. Under the new split, Whitman would be chairman of the computer and printer business, and CEO of a separate Enterprise Group, according to one of the sources. Patricia Russo, who sits on HP's board, would be chairman of the enterprise company. The printer and PC operation would be led by Dion Weisler, a current exec in that division.
How to bail on customers, it knows! HP - stay away.
The brand-new USD$100 HP 3D printer*.
* requires spools (embedded with a security chip) of "standard" PLA (with a non-standard diameter and melting point) which will be available for only USD$99 each.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
They'll call the spinoff Compaq!
The part that makes shitty consumer hardware is splitting up from the part that makes rock solid server hardware. This is an absolute dream come true!
The Server Hardware company could be called Digital.
And the consumer company could be called Compaq.
If there were to have a third company for printers - that should be called HP!
(I'm still bitter about Alpha being killed!)
Let me guess: Under the new scheme, the top executives, including Whitman, will collect 2 salaries?
From Carly Fiorina, on, hp has been lacking in leadership, and vision. Hewlett and Packard built a great company, only to have it destroyed by poseurs. Meg Whitman is the latest one - using smoke and mirrors to drive bumps in the stock price. We all know how this is going to end - eventual parting out to companies like Lenovo, Samsung - you name it. Whitman and other insiders will walk away with millions. hp's last 10 years is perfect representation of executive and Board incompetence.
HP's printer-ink division should spin off the printer and ink division so the rest of the divisions don't have to compete with 10000% profit margins. The shareholders of the new printer/ink-free company will have reasonable performance expectations, so HP can stop shitcanning things that are "only" making normal profit.
If you can't figure out how to make one company successful, why double your workload?
So they're dropping their company's boat anchor (the lowest quality PCs, laptops, and printers in existence) and expecting it to float? Good luck with that.
Would the Integrity line a.k.a. Itanic be a part of the latter?
Whether the server and consumer products are truly distinct quality wise or the enterprise half benefiting from much gentler treatment can be debated.
However, it does weaken the position of both companies relative to Intel and other chip vendors, manufacturers, memory modules, drive vendors, and so on and so forth. Expect prices to rise and delays to start occurring in fulfillment.
The enterprise half may be glad to not show the low margin nature of the consumer business on its quarterly reports, but it is a vital component of keeping cost down.
Good. It's only a matter of time now until the PC unit fails and the HP name can be bought back by its proper owner Keysight.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
At the same time IBM's x86 server and consumer business reunite under one roof, HP seeks to reproduce the failing strategy IBM did in 2005 of breaking the businesses apart.
IBM prices suffered not only the general 'screw you we are IBM', but jumped noticeably when they suddenly represented a much smaller market opportunity for component vendors.
It's still not clear what Dell plans to do once private, but the opportunity is certainly there for Lenovo and Dell to tear HP up in both markets
I just wish HP would take a pointer from Dell on rack rails. I cut myself putting HP rails in. At least they don't need those square rack nuts any more. Those suck (I'm looking at you Supermicro 1U server rails).
Jettison the low-margin, uber-competitive market stuff to a sep. entity. Divvy up shares as appropriate. Wait some months. Release memristor. If hugely successful, that (now) smaller entity valuation is much free'er to increase in value.
Didn't the last CEO of HP pitch this? The stock fell 40%, the CEO was fired, and the board said "No, No, No, we're not going to do that."
HP consumer PC segment must be hurting bad for Whitman to revise that decision.
Good news is that Enterprise half just shot themselves in the foot. Dell and Lenovo have a golden opportunity to smack down HP. It's really astonishing, as if HP isn't paying attention. Not only to what happened to IBM server business in 2005 or what happened when previous CEO even broached the topic, but what they themselves did over the last year. When the latest IBM/Lenovo deal got announced, HP scared away a non-trivial chunk of IBM/Lenovo server business by talking about how scary and uncertain things were and how they were a business that wasn't screwing around with itself. Now they are on the path of IBM a decade ago, their stock likely to do what it did last time this was discussed, and their future business is going to act like IBM's business this year. Just after the dust has settled on the Lenovo deal and Dell is done going private, HP surrenders the benefit of being the only vendor not 'reinventing' itself to perhaps the most dubious potential benefit.
Bad news is that historically HP's spinoffs have done well and without being beat up by the enterprise groups, they may have a revival in the consumer space. The server group benefits from the scale of the consumer group, but the consumer group really doesn't have the converse situation. If they are a company that can focus on the mission of consumer devices, they may make a pretty compelling effort.
... each other. The printers are well known, they have an impact in small business and medium business. When those businesses get larger they feel more comfortable contacting with HP because it is a company they know.
Take that away and they will will see other options as equally attractive.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
EMC merged with the enterprise division, bringing Donatelli back to the fold would be very interesting.
...Merge, downsize, split the stock and/or split the business, rinse, lather, repeat. Corporations are in constant motion and adjustment of their books in order to manage the market, the labor costs, the tax laws, SEC, and the international equities market. All is a hedge on a future that is profitable to a select few, but it impacts all of us. It seems that the interests of these large corporations cause a great deal of uncertainty for their employees and the market in order to be competitive. It was a lot simpler when HP made money by having a superior, high value, affordable product . Now that is no longer the focus because of the complexity of our laws and the incentives offered to a select few who benefit more from a dose of chaos and uncertainty and losses. Especially loss of labor costs whenever it suits them.
I got an email ad from HP saying it was my 'last chance'' to get a Win 7 PC
Perhaps compaq will be revived as a consumer brand. Then compaq will start selling budget business hardware. Then hp. Business will start selling high end consumer stuff. This way the companies end up in the scenario of a few years ago halfway through the hp/compaq merger.
The Gen9s have some of the memory tech starting in a couple of months.
I really hope they take the labs, both the ProLiants and the Integrity gear and keep them running as they have been. The Mark Hurd years were hard on them, and things fell behind. From a customer standpoint, it seems like Meg's been letting them be engineers again.
I hope those teams survive. My blades and my Integrity boxes are the only things that haven't died in my datacenter. My storage vendors haven't been remotely as solid.
My mom says I'm cool.
whaa..?
Will people be buying an H Printer, or a P Printer?
I've lost count of how many times HP split off/spun off parts of the company in the last 20 years ...
More important: will the new company finally start offering free singles of "Still" (by Geto Boys) with each new laser printer purchase? and maybe a free baseball bat, too?
No, Bean counters and MBAs have wrecked HP. Pointy Haired Bosses know no gender.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
They will probably keep the consumer side as HP and name the business side something else. Now what could this new company be called. Oh hey! Let's call it Compaq!
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
"according to one of the sources, Patricia Russo"
Not THE Pat Russo, of Alcatel + Lucent fame?
Because if so, my condoleances to HP employees; you've drawn a truly short straw!
captcha: "suffer"
You know what? I won't be sad to see them go. After the garbage that they loaded on to the consumer market, and they way that they have mismanaged their company why should they deserve to slog on with reputation alone?
It makes me happy to see that even a behemoth like HP is mortal, and producing lousy products can result in the brow beating of a company no matter how long it takes and how much money they make. .
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Out of the slppery depths of Hell the Leviathan rises once more. DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION has returned. Say it with me Brothers and sisters: all hail the PDP- 16894. Hoozaah. Hoozaaah. Is that a tear of joy or despair. We will never know.
Beware the wood elf!!!
go with EMC, they just buy everything up and rebrand.
I agree with that. The men have been just as bad if not worse.
I think they will sell-off one of them
Casteism