Whitman says she’s committed to job on earnings call
PALO ALTO >> Hewlett Packard Enterprise Chief Executive Meg Whitman used her company’s quarterly earnings call to try to lay to rest any speculation that she might be looking for the exit door at the the datacenter technology company.
Whitman, who had been a candidate for the CEO job at Uber, was asked on a conference call about where she stands with regards to her position at HPE. If she has another career plan in mind, Whitman didn’t let that on.
“I was called in late in the Uber search,” Whitman said, adding that she feels Uber has “a very interesting business model,” and that it reminded her about her former company, eBay, in that both companies were upending traditional industries.
However, Whitman said that “in the end, it wasn’t the right thing” for her to leave HPE.
“I’ve dedicated the last six years of my life to this company,” Whitman said. “I actually am not going anywhere.”
Whitman’s comments came as HPE delivered third-quarter earnings and sales that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.
After the stock market closed, HPE said that for the quarter ending July 31 it earned 31 cents a share, on $8.2 billion in revenue, which topped analysts’ forecasts of a profit of 26 cents a share on sales of $7.5 billion. During the same period a year ago, HPE earned 40 cents a share on $8 billion in revenue.
Whitman called the company’s performance “encouraging,” and said HPE is making “progress” with its latest business strategy.
“Overall, I’m very pleased,” Whitman said. “We had strong momentum across key segments of the (company’s) portfolio.”
In after-hours trading, HPE shares rose as much as 5 percent, to $14.75.
HPE said its results were led by its enterprise group, and its $6.8 billion in sales, which rose 3 percent from a year ago. Among its enterprise offerings, HPE said storage revenue rose 11 percent, while sales of networking equipment climbed 16 percent over last year’s third quarter. Server revenue dipped by 1 percent. Software sales fell 3 percent, to $718 million, while financial services revenue of $897 million climbed 10 percent on a year-over-year basis.
While Whitman and HPE were touting the company’s latest business performance, not everyone was sold on where HPE is heading.
“HPE was a mixed bag this quarter but that would seem to be a big improvement over last quarter where there was only bad news,” said Rob Enderle, president of technology research firm the Enderle Group. “With an outlook suggesting profit declines will likely increase, regardless of the firm’s structural changes, this is a firm that still appears to be in trouble and there is, as yet, no bright light at the end of the tunnel.”
The results came less than a week after HPE finalized the spinoff of most of its software business to British software company Micro Focus, in a deal valued at $8.8 billion.
As a result of the software spinoff, HPE cut its full-year earnings forecast to a range of $1.36 to $1.40 a share from a previous estimate of $1.46 to $1.56 a share. HPE also said that for its fourth quarter, it expects to earn between 26 cents and 30 cents a share, while analysts had forecast HPE to earn 40 cents a share for the period that ends in October.