HP to lay off up to 30000 more workers

HP employed nearly 350,000 workers at its peak in 2011, many of them added through the 2008 acquisition of computer-services provider Electronic Data Systems Corp.

Since coming on board in 2011, Whitman has a led a significant retrenching of the company including the planned split and reduction headcount to the tune of 55,000, not counting the latest cuts.

Shedding light on Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s cloud strategy, Whitman said the segment’s fiscal 2015 revenue is expected at about $3 billion, a growth of over 20 percent annually for the next several years.

Hewlett-Packard Co, which is splitting into two listed companies later this year, said that it expects to cut another 25,000 to 30,000 jobs in its enterprise business as the tech pioneer adjusts to falling demand.

The reductions will primarily impact workers at HP Enterprise Services, the company’s business and technology services unit.

HPI plans to release its long-awaited HP multi-jet fusion enterprise-level 3D printers next year.

Since Whitman was hired in 2011, she has presided over a huge decline in headcount at HP, eliminating about 55,000 jobs prior to this latest announcement.

At $48.75bn, HP’s market capitalisation is dwarfed by Microsoft at $351.75bn and Apple’s which stands at $663.11bn.

The stock fell 1.4 percent to $26.73 in extended trading on Tuesday.

“Hewlett Packard Enterprise will be smaller and more focused than HP is today”, said Whitman, who will be president and CEO of the new company.

“These cuts are never easy, but it’s the right thing to do because we have to now get to the next phase of the HP journey”, she said.

The company will incur a charge of about US$2.7 billion as part of the restructuring, HP said Tuesday (Sept 15) at a meeting with analysts. The job cut is aimed at saving $2.7 billion a year. The massive layoffs, announced yesterday, will mostly affect the Enterprise Services (ES) business of the HP Enterprise.

HP’s layoffs have been demoralizing blow to a company that provided a template for future Silicon Valley entrepreneurs when William Hewlett and David Packard founded it 76 years ago.