HP: Okay quarterly figures, measures against US tariffs

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The PC and printer manufacturer HP has announced its business figures for the fiscal quarter ending January. According to the figures, turnover rose slightly by 2.4 percent to 13.5 billion US dollars compared to the same quarter last year, while profits fell from 622 to 565 million US dollars. CEO Enrique Lores was satisfied that HP had achieved "the third consecutive quarter of sales growth". Nevertheless, as part of the "Future Ready" restructuring program, 1,000 to 2,000 redundancies are to be announced in order to save 300 million US dollars.

Less production in China

According to CRN, Lores announced that 90 percent of PCs destined for the US market will no longer be manufactured in China by the end of October. He did not say where he intends to relocate production. According to Statista, HP manufactured around 13.5 million PCs and notebooks in each of the previous quarters and achieved a share of around 25 percent of the US market, with this market comprising around 18 million units. Accordingly, HP would sell around 4.5 to 5 million PCs and notebooks in the USA per quarter, i.e. around a third of its production. The production shift would therefore amount to around 4 million units per quarter. The Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo had also announced that it would shift more production abroad. It remains to be seen whether manufacturers are using these measures to counteract increased production costs in China, react to US conditions or generally make their supply chains more resilient.

In any case, HP's CFO Karen Parkhill also wants to increase US inventories in order to anticipate US import tariffs. Acer announced just a few days ago that it would be raising notebook prices for US end customers by 10 percent, thus passing on the tariff surcharge to customers.

PC and printer business

According to quarterly figures, sales in the PC and notebook division grew by 5 percent to 9.2 billion US dollars. Within this, the business segment grew by 10 percent to 6.6 billion US dollars, while the consumer segment fell by 7 percent to 2.6 billion US dollars. According to CEO Enrique Lores, a significant part of the growth in business PCs resulted from the "Windows 11 refresh". Due to changed hardware requirements, many PCs with Windows 10 can only be upgraded to Windows 11 with tricks that are not necessarily practical for companies.

The turnover of the printer division fell by 2 percent to 4.3 billion US dollars. More than one million subscribers have now been gained for the Instant Ink subscription. The consumer business grew by 5 percent and the business business fell by 7 percent.

Hotline waiting times and AI pin

A few days ago, HP hit the headlines when it announced that it would intentionally put callers to its support hotline on hold for 15 minutes. However, following critical media reports on the project, HP backed down a few days later.

Shortly before this, HP had taken over the start-up Humane, which had presented the AI Pin a year and a half ago, an AI-controlled pin box that was supposed to be the successor to the smartphone. The project failed, the servers behind the AI Pins have since been switched off and the devices are no longer functional. The acquired Humane team at HP is said to be working on integrating AI technology into HP's device portfolio. (jow)