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HP Reports Year End

HP announced its fourth quarter and fiscal year end figures which saw revenues from its printing equipment activities fall five percent compared to 2011. Commercial hardware units were down 15 percent with consumer printing hardware sales down 22 percent.

Revenues from its printing division (encompassing both consumer and commercial units) fell from US$26 billion in 2011 to US$24.5 billion for 2012. Earnings of its printing division, before taxes, declined roughly US$342 million.

“As we discussed during our securities analyst meeting last month, fiscal 2012 was the first year in a multi-year journey to turn HP around,” said Meg Whitman, HP President and CEO. “We’re starting to see progress in key areas, such as new product releases and customer wins. We’re particularly pleased that in Q4, we were able to improve our balance sheet, generating US$4.1 billion in operating cash flow, and we returned US$384 million to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends.”

As a whole, HP’s full year net revenue was US$120.4 billion, down five percent from the prior-year period and down four percent when adjusted for the effects of currency.

Based on these results, as well as fraud allegations in the company’s acquisition of Autonomy which will see the company write-down US$8.8 billion, the company’s share prices sank to under $12, the lowest value seen in a decade.