HP to slim headcount by 2025

Lores: Future Ready strategy will drive long-term value creation
Lores: Future Ready strategy will drive long-term value creation

HP Inc said it expects to reduce its gross global headcount by around 4,000 to 6,000 employees by the end of its 2025 fiscal year.

Alongside its results for Q4 and the full-year, the manufacturer announced a fiscal year 2023 Future Ready Transformation plan, which it said would drive significant structural cost savings through digital transformation, portfolio optimisation, and operational efficiency.

The company said it estimates the actions of its new plan will result in annualised gross run rate savings of at least $1.4bn (£1.18bn) by the end of fiscal 2025.

It estimated that it will incur approximately $1bn in labour and non-labour costs related to restructuring and other charges, with approximately $0.6bn in fiscal 2023, and the rest split approximately equally between fiscal 2024 and 2025.

As of 2021, the business employed 51,000 staff globally. In late 2019 it had said it was to shed between 7,000-9,000 jobs over three years as it implemented “a new simplified structure”. At the time it planned to achieve this headcount reduction “through a combination of employee exits and voluntary early retirement”.

Further specifics on the latest planned job cuts were not disclosed.

The manufacturer recorded total sales of $63bn for the 12-month period ended 31 October 2022, down 0.8% – or up by 0.7% in constant currency – from the prior-year period. For the three-month Q4 period its revenue was down by 11.2% year-on-year to $14.8bn.

Revenue in the firm’s printing division was down by 6% from $20.1bn to $18.9bn for the full-year, and by 7.1% from $4.88bn to $4.53bn in Q4. The Q4 operating margin for the segment, which comprises supplies, commercial, and consumer, however, was 19.9%, an increase on the 17% margin in Q4 last year.

HP’s Personal Systems division, which comprises workstations, notebooks and desktops, saw an increase of 2% in revenue for the full-year, from $43.4bn to $44.1bn, but revenue was down by 13% year-on-year in Q4, from $11.8bn to $10.3bn.

Printing segment profits were up by 8.8% in Q4 from $830m in Q4 2021 to $903m, while profits in Personal Systems were hit badly – falling by 40% from $764m in Q4 2021 to $458m.

The largest amount of sales in the Printing division was contributed by Supplies, which saw year-on-year revenue drop in Q4 by 10% from $3.1bn to $2.7bn.

Commercial sales climbed by 1% year-on-year, from $1.1bn to $1.11bn in Q4, while consumer was down by 7%, from $725m to $677m.

For the full-year, Printing segment profits climbed slightly by 0.4%, from $3.64bn to $3.65bn, while profits in Personal Systems dropped by 6.2%, from $3.1bn to $2.9bn.

The largest amount of sales in the Printing division was again contributed by Supplies, which saw a year-on-year revenue decline of 7%, from $12.6bn to $11.8bn.

Commercial sales for the full-year were flat at $4.2bn, while consumer was down by 11% on last year, from $3.29bn to $2.92bn.

“We had a solid end to our fiscal year despite navigating a volatile macro-environment and softening demand in the second half. In Q4 we delivered on our non-GAAP EPS target, while also completing our three-year value creation plan and exceeding our key metrics," said HP president and CEO Enrique Lores.

“Looking forward, the new Future Ready strategy we introduced this quarter will enable us to better serve our customers and drive long-term value creation by reducing our costs and reinvesting in key growth initiatives to position our business for the future.”

HP’s board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.2625 per share on the company’s common stock, payable on 4 January 4 2023. It said this is an increase of 5% from the prior dividend.