Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares rose as much as 8% on Tuesday after the company said it was raising its full-year earnings guidance.
Here are the key numbers:
- Earnings: 45 per share, excluding certain items, vs. 40 cents per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
- Revenue: $7.22 billion, vs. $7.26 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
HPE’s revenue declined 7% on an annualized basis in the fiscal third quarter, which ended July 31, according to a statement. The company’s revenue has now declined year over year for three consecutive quarters.
With respect to guidance, HPE raised full-year guidance to $1.72 to $1.76 in earnings per share, excluding certain items. Analysts polled by Refinitiv were expecting $1.68 in earnings per share, excluding certain items, for the full fiscal year.
The majority of HPE’s revenue comes from its Hybrid IT business segment, which includes servers, storage and networking equipment for data centers. The segment produced $5.55 billion in quarterly revenue in the fiscal third quarter, down 9% on an annualized basis and below the $5.70 billion consensus among analysts polled by FactSet. Compute revenue, which represents more than half of Hybrid IT revenue and includes sales of servers, fell 10% on an annualized basis in the quarter.
“While elongated sales cycles persist and remain more pronounced for large enterprise deals there are not materially worse than in June,” Tarek Robbiati, HPE’s chief financial officer, told analysts on a Tuesday conference call. “HPE’s broad portfolio and global footprint makes us well diversified to handle choppy markets. We have also been able to successfully navigate all of the recent tariff increases on China exports that have been factored into our outlook.”
HPE executives disclosed sales execution issues one quarter earlier, with CEO Antonio Neri saying the company had taken steps to improve.
“Fiscal year 2019 was not a year where we wanted to dial up the growth,” Robbiati said on Tuesday’s conference call. “Fiscal year 2019 is a year where we had to deliver on EPS commitment drive free cash flow. These are the two most important metrics prepare ourselves to dial up the growth in the subsequent quarters.”
In the fiscal third quarter, HPE made a one-time arbitration award to DXC, a company that was formed as HPE’s Enterprise Services Business spun out and merged with CSC in 2017. Also in the quarter HPE announced its intent to buy supercomputing company Cray in a deal valued at around $1.3 billion. HPE now expects the deal to close by the end of the 2019 fiscal year, which is earlier than expected.
Shares of HPE are down 2% from the beginning of 2019.
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