Ahead of the Bell: Mass layoffs looming at HP

[Zorro]

Source: AP

Hewlett-Packard Co. is expected to announce deep cuts in its workforce Wednesday afternoon when the world's largest personal computer and printer maker is scheduled to release its latest quarterly results.

The payroll purge could lay off 25,000 to 35,000 workers, based on recent media reports that quoted unnamed people familiar with HP's plans.

HP has declined to comment, but CEO Meg Whitman has made it clear that she believes the company needs to trim its expenses to offset declining revenue and free up more money to pour into research and development.

The looming layoffs could be the largest in HP's 73-year history, surpassing 24,600 jobs cuts announced in 2008 after the company bought consulting service EDS for $13.9 billion.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/ahead-bell-mass-layoffs-looming-hp-112155041--finance.html

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Republican business magic in work. At Meg Whitman's direction, no less.

Thanks to Carly, HP has been transformed from a successful, well-respected maker of quality, state-of-the-art test equipment into a less-successful manufacturer of low-priced commodity products.

[OverDone]

1. Dailyjobcuts.com

I'm sitting and waiting, as this news is a huge shake up in the tech industry

http://www.dailyjobcuts.com

[global1]

2. Are All These Jobs In The U.S. ?..........

or is this mass layoff worldwide?

[IDemo]

4. All I've seen so far

from various sources is that China and R&D labs will be spared and that printers will take the largest hit. This could have a huge impact here in Boise, which has essentially been the center of laserjet development for years.

[Beacool]

10. That's a shame.

I'm sorry for the people who will lose their jobs.

Also, their printers are much better than the ones Dell makes.

[OverDone]

8. From Reports

Saying most will be US layoffs, with a few thousands worldwide. But we wont know for a little bit.

[suffragette]

3. Well, the almost $47 million in CEO pay for 2011 has to come from somewhere

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-03/news/31020092_1_apotheker-ceo-role-million-stock-award
February 03, 2012


But all told, the company has plunked out almost $47 million in CEO pay in 2011, with Whitman making $16.5 million and Apotheker $30.4 million, including a $6.4 million bonus.

~~~

Apotheker earned a base salary of $1.1 million, plus a $6.4 million bonus and another $17.6 million in stock. But he also earned a mysterious roughly $5.2 million in "other compensation."

Could that have been his golden parachute for 11 months worth of work?

Whitman, who took the CEO role at the end of September, got her pay in a hefty $16.5 million stock award and $372,598 in the mysterous "other compensation category."



But hey , Whitman only makes a "salary" of $1 officially, so that's likely the model they hold up to the employees there. "See. She makes less salary than you do. Well, until we lay off most of you, that is."

[Fearless]

11. Yep. +1

[OverDone]

12. Amazing

How that works, Couple people making millions.
People being successful and making lots of money, thats great. But theses insanely large yearly pays, no one is worth that much.

[valerief]

5. Jobs to go out of the U.S. and into China. That's the path. nt

[Iliyah]

6. Mae Whitman at her finest again.

Vulture Capitalism at its finest. This is what the Insane Party of No are hoping for in Mittens.

[wilt the stilt]

7. This is a much more complicated

issue than just vulture capitalism. HP bought Autonomy last year in a cash deal. The shareholders had no say because it was a cash deal. They way overpaid for Autonomy.The CEO who bought Autonomy was fired. The reason why they bought it was to compete against IBM. IBM typically has people at the company's headquarters helping them with technology. IBM wraps up the deal and all the services and software. IBM hardly has best of breed software but they wrap up the deal because of consulting.

HP bought EDS about 3 years ago and they purchased autonomy to round out their offerings. IBM continues to buy companies to enhance their software.

HP wants to compete here.

Meg Whitman was dealt a bad hand.

[FarCenter]

9. Agilent was spun out in 1999 and is still in the test equipment business

The Agilent spin out was initiated by Lew Platt, and is not actually one of Carly's many screw ups. By the time she arrived, it was already a done deal.

Test equipment and scientific instruments are the highest of high tech, requiring a combination of chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science unmatched in other industries.

http://www.home.agilent.com

[OverDone]

13. Report

27,000 Layoffs, thats the number

[FarCenter]

14. Is server consolidation due to virtualization causing part of the problem?

In the late '90s a lot of applications were deployed on the one server, one application basis.

However, by 2008 the company that I worked for was starting to virtualize servers and consolidate many virtualized applications onto single servers. This worked particularly well for development, test, and disaster recovery servers.

A lot of data center consolidation was also being planned, including at HP.

I don't think that the slowdown in revenues is limited to PCs and printers. People would have been buying a lot of larger servers over the last couple of years and now are loading them up.

[OverDone]

15. At Least

Have some respect, don't announce layoffs then say it will save $3 billion, and the after hour stock price is on the rise. Not cool.

[IamK]

16. they cut 27K or 8% of the workforce n/t