Tech giant Hewlett-Packard (HPQ – Analyst Report) posted fiscal Q4 and full fiscal 2014 earnings after the bell Tuesday. While earnings per share of $1.06 topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny, revenues of $28.4 billion in the quarter missed our expectations of roughly $28.9 billion. Shares had slipped about 3% in immediate after-market trading, but have since subsided to down about 1.5%.
Weighing down on HP’s sales were again the Printing and Enterprise (Group and Services) businesses, which fell 5%, 4% and 7% year over year. Total revenues in the quarter were down 2% from Q4 2013. HP saw strength in its Commercial segment, which posted revenue growth of 7%.
Fundamentals aside, the big news about HP came earlier when the company announced it will be split into two entities: HP Enterprise and HP, Inc. CEO Meg Whitman will retain Chairwoman status of both boards, but Whitman will continue as CEO of HP Enterprise. The key questions for this group will be how HP manages to monetize its services on the Enterprise side — whether by acquisitions or partnerships with other firms in the cloud space, etc.
Hewlett-Packard gave higher guidance for full fiscal 2015 than the Zacks consensus: the company expects earnings between $3.83-$4.03, whereas we had been expecting $3.73. Upward analyst revisions should pick up Hewlett-Packard’s Zacks Rank in the coming days. HP currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Clearly HP has a lot of work to do in making its split successful and profitable, but it does seem to be on the right track in the early going.
