Profit piranhas want a bite of HP

TPM and his Big Blue Pompoms ride again!

So all hp's acquisitions are poor but they somehow helped hp overtake IBM as the largest IT company in the World? Strange that. And having a monopoly revenue stream like mainframes is great, like you said. As long as it stays healthy. The problem for IBM is the mainframe biz is shrinking, so much so that IBM is having to offer mini-mainframes in an attempt to stop migrations to other vendor's kit. The constant shrinking of the mainframe pool is a fact TPM has admitted himself many times. Meanwhile, the less margin-rich x64 sector is growing nicely, but IBM is being rapidly chased out of the sector by a rampant hp. How many lines has IBM offloaded to Lenovo? In the longrun, having a less-margin rich but much larger and growing sector will probably be of more benefit than having a shrinking one.

Then there is the laughable attempt to somehow compare IBM to Apple! And a dig at hp as being "people intensive". The latter is so funny as IBM has for years been trying to convert itself from a hardware company to a services company (because IBM also see that their hardware biz is under threat), and nothing is as expensively people intensive as services.

Yes, there will always be technically-illiterate people on Wall Street that will call for hp to be less diverse in the hope of making a quick profit. The same type of idiot applauded Schwartz's decision not to support Windows or x86 and to stay with SPARC rather than going with Itanium. By the time Sun realised they'd been stupid then and twice as stupid not to diversify later, those same Wall Street "gurus" had sold their Sun shares and bought hp ones instead.

This is a long time coming.

In 1995, I went to an (NDA) talk given by HP. In it they lauded their future as a commodity computer company. Their "new' CPU ("Itanic" which they were developing with Intel) would allow them to sell computers to 'fill every need'. HP-UX or Windows, server room or desktop, HP had the computer for you. It seems as if they executed their plan (with updates, of course) well.

On the other side, for fiscal year 1999, HP revenues were up 17%, and profits increased by 16%. BUT, after the earnings announcement (which sounded pretty damned good to ME) HP stock fell $5.00 per share. In other words, Wall Street wants something (as expressed by analysts' predictions of MORE than a 16% growth) and punishes you greatly if you don't conform to THEIR requirements.

In other words, HP is most likely a company you can invest in, and reap rewards 5 or more years down the road. No problem. While Wall Street is still (apparently) stuck in the pre-2000 mode of requiring VERY high profit increases. And Wall Street has the temerity to punish you if you don't confirm to THEIR needs.

Time to FLATTEN and re-construct what we know as "Wall Street". It is an unbearable DRAG on the US economy, ESPECIALLY the future economy. [See General Electric under Jack Welsh, and his RADICAL curbing of GE's basic R&D. Plus the more than 50% stock price drop between Oct., 2000 and Feb, 2003 as a result of him leaving and his policies showing their REAL "return".]

Uncanonical unit alert!

I thought that ElReg's unit system covered everything physical, but stuck with the sterling for cash?

And now you introduce a rogue unit, the "bottle of Lafite 1787". Is this a one-off [comparing two rare beasts --- I've never bought neither of them]? Is this new policy now you're freer post-moderatrix-departure? We should be told.

Wall Street

Exactly - there's nothing like churning the structure of large companies to generate big profits for the banks who will sell the breakup as "stimulating innovation" - it's ironic really because how many of these "Masters of Finance" would have invested in a couple of guys setting up a company in a garage - especially since they didn't have a "business plan".

"Best Shore"

EDS cut staff ruthlessly and HP has done more of the same over the years since that merger. Most of the teams in my area are now woefully undermanned while constant "Reorgs" continue to shunt managers around. My area makes a good profit but they are never happy and are pushing things to breaking point.

Wonder which logo will be on my ID Card in a year....

Wall street is a cancerous tumor

It needs to be excised and incinerated as such

Sharks..

Well, Larry drew some blood from HP with his whole "cancel Oracle software stack for Itanium" thing. And when there is blood in the water, the sharks from Wall Street comes sniffing, for some cheap meat. And he did put the fork in the BCS crown jewels, so to speak.

But IMHO there is not a lot of meat to be had. Cause although HP's BCS division is pretty much showing a flat revenue, I personally don't think that HP can back out of that business, as the BCS revenue indirectly gives HP a lot of revenue in other parts of the company

// Jesper