Posted on 08/13/2004 11:45:48 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Hewlett-Packard shocked Wall Street Thursday by announcing disappointing sales and profits even as some of its top competitors are thriving.
HP Chief Executive Carly Fiorina blamed a series of internal missteps for the shortfall, which she called ``unacceptable.'' She immediately fired three top executives. But some analysts said the poor performance reflected deeper problems raised by HP's $19 billion purchase of Compaq Computer two years ago.
In a conference call with investors, Fiorina said, ``Execution issues cost us and therefore we are making immediate management changes.''
The financial bombshell came a week before the company was scheduled to release its earnings report. HP's stock tumbled 13 percent in response, taking $7.8 billion off the company's market value.
Already battered by warnings from Intel, Cisco and National Semiconductor, the Nasdaq fell to its lowest level in a year. Larger economic concerns related to rising interest rates, terrorism worries and high oil prices also are putting a damper on markets.
Underscoring HP's troubles was good news from rivals Dell and IBM on Thursday. Dell announced a 29 percent jump in profits, while IBM said it expects to hire 18,800 new employees this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Carly Fiorina destroyed an American icon.
Who says a medieval history major can't drive a tech company into the ground? And what kind of name is Carleton for a woman?
Fiorina was hired to save the company and turned it into Hewlett-Patel. So now after all the shipping of US jobs overseas the comapny is still failing? Hmmm....
HP stock rises .42 on small volume.
I worked for HP for a while int 2002 and 2003. I quit one step ahead of the outsourcing. I saw the hand writting on the wall then. They let go alot of good experienced people for cheap labor in asia. You get what you pay for.
HP has become a wimpy politically correct SF Bay company. They picked a fight with Dell and they got beat up by Michael Dell and his army of tough Texans. I expect Dell to continue to demolish HP because Mr. Dell is a much better manager and leader than Ms. Fiorina.
As opposed to "external missteps?"
This sentence just caught my eye.
Imagine if she had "blamed it on a series of missteps," leaving out the word "internal." Stated in this way, the sentence would clearly have indicated that the missteps were hers, and there would have been only one possible next sentence: "...therefore I am today tendering my resignation to clear the way for someone else to come in and try to put right a great name of American technology."
But no. The missteps were "internal." And we're firing three other shlubs whose names are other than Carly Fiorina.
(steely)
I believe she made some sneering comment a while back regarding outsourcing. It something to the effect of "Americans don't have the right to a job".
Ha.
The only thing I can think of offhand that I have that is an HP product is my HP-48GX calculator. I used to use it all the time. It’s excellent but you don’t run around buying graphing calculators every year (or even every decade).
Well, according to the constitution of the U.S.A., they don't.
My company bought a bunch of HP equipment a couple of years ago. Big mistake IMHO. After having to deal with that unreliable crap I'll never spend a nickel on any HP product.
What's HP? Oh, it's that printer ink company. They oughta diversify!
Word on the street is, they've had some severe supply chain issues. Managing CMs in the PRC can be a challenge.
Interesting, but she was not discussing a constitutional issue - rather she was defending sending jobs out to foreigners. It's not quite the best face to put on it, especially when you are trying to sell your product to Americans.
I think her duty is to the shareholders. Let's see if they can her or not.
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