Hewlett-Packard Co., the technology company splitting into two separate entities, said it will cut 25,000 to 30,000 more jobs as part of a $2.7 billion restructuring, primarily focused on its enterprise-services division.
The company will incur a charge of about $2.7 billion, Hewlett-Packard said Tuesday at a meeting with analysts. The company had previously disclosed $2 billion in probable cost cuts at the services division within Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and has found an additional $700 million in savings across the business, said Tim Stonesifer, chief financial officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The additional cuts will “be things such as site closures and the reductions of those, and further reductions of workforce across the broader portfolio,” Stonesifer said at the event. The cuts announced Tuesday, in addition to 54,000 that have already taken place, are the most among North American companies this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
November Breakup
Hewlett-Packard is scheduled to break into two distinct entities in November, with one named Hewlett Packard Enterprise supplying businesses with high-end technology, and the other, HP Inc., selling personal computers and printers. The split, announced last October, is designed to enable each company to be better positioned in their respective markets.
“We have an opportunity to be more successful as two companies than we would as one,” Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman said at the event. “We’ll read the winds of change and we’ll course correct faster.” Whitman is scheduled to become president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise while serving as board chairman of HP Inc.
The company’s enterprise services business has lost about $4 billion in annual revenue since 2011. At the event, Whitman likened the losses to water draining from a bathtub.
Plug the Drain
“A big step forward would be if enterprise services can stop shrinking,” she said. “Before you can grow you have to fill the bathtub up.”
Hewlett-Packard executives suggested that they’ve made enough changes to enterprise services to stem the bleeding. In 2013, three accounts represented 65 percent of the division’s total operating profit, said Mike Nefkens, general manager of enterprise services. “Today, no single account represents more than 10 percent,” he said.
The company expects to generate $3 billion in sales relating to cloud computing this year, Whitman said, and sees that growing by 20 percent year-over-year for the next three years.
