Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) president Antonio Neri will become the company’s CEO from 1 February, succeeding Meg Whitman, who will remain on the HPE board of directors. Whitman was appointed CEO of HP in September 2011. Since then, she has executed a five-year turnaround strategy, including the separation from HP Inc, the company's PC business. She also led the subsequent spin off and mergers of HPE’s Enterprise Services and Software businesses, as well as strategic acquisitions including Aruba, SGI, SimpliVity and Nimble Storage.
Neri joined HP in 1995 as a customer service engineer in the EMEA call centre. He went on to hold various roles in HP’s Printing business and then to run customer service for HP’s Personal Systems unit. In 2011, Neri stated heading the company’s Technology Services business, then its Server and Networking business units, before running all of Enterprise Group beginning in 2015. He was then appointed president of HPE in June 2017, responsible for the company’s four primary lines of business, as well as HPE Next, a programme to accelerate the company’s core performance and competitiveness.
HP Enterprise also reported results for the fiscal fourth quarter, with revenues rising almost 5 percent year-on-year to USD 7.8 billion. The figure includes USD 7.7 billion from continued operations (+5%), and USD 174 million from Software, which is now included in discontinued operations. The net profit passed expectations, lifting to USD 0.23 per share from USD 0.19, or USD 0.29 on an adjusted basis. The net profit advanced to USD 524 million from 302 million.
Enterprise group revenues were flat year-on-year at USD 6.9 billion, with an operating margin slipping 2.7 percentage points to 10.6 percent. Revenues fell 5 percent at Servers, rose 5 percent at Storage, lifted 21 percent at Networking and were up 2 percent at Technology Services. At Financial Services, revenue lifted 24 percent to USD 1.0 billion, with an operating margin of 7.7 percent.
For the full year, revenues reached USD 37.4 billion, including USD 28.9 billion from continuing operations and USD 8.5 billion from Enterprise Services and Software, which is now included in discontinued operations. Revenues from continuing operations went to USD 28.9 billion, down 5 percent year-on-year and up 1 percent when adjusted for divestitures and currency. EPS from continuing operations fell to USD 0.26 from 1.86 the year before, with the adjusted figure sliding to USD 0.96 from 1.09. The numbers from continuing operations exclude after-tax costs of USD 1.2 billion and USD 0.70 per diluted share, respectively.
Looking towards the first quarter, HPE is guiding for EPS at USD 0.01-0.05 and adjusted EPS at USD 0.20-0.24. For the full year, the company kept its outlook for an adjusted EPS of USD 1.15-1.25 and reported EPS of USD 0.43-0.53.
