The biggest scandal in today's release of Hewlett Packard Q2 earnings was not that it hit 30 minutes prematurely, catching algos unaware and unable to BTFD when the stock tumbled on what was a revenue miss and 1% decline from last year, nor that the company guided below estimate, pushing its stock some 3% lower in the last minutes of trading.
The biggest scandal was this disclosure in the second quarter results press release: "As HP continues to reengineer the workforce to be more competitive and meet its objectives, the previously estimated number of eliminated positions will increase by between 11,000 to 16,000." This is in addition to the 34,000 layoffs already noted previously, meaning HP will fire a total of 50,000 in the near future.
Want to know why HPQ is forced to fire so many well-paying jobs it once again makes a mockery of anyone who claims there is some economic recovery going on?
The chart below, which compares the company's quarterly CapEx, declining (so no, not increasing as some clueless sellside analyst hacks claim) by 16% from last quarter and down 4.5% from a year ago to $840 million and thus leading to less growth opportunities for the company and resulting in tens of thousands of pink slips, and the soaring amount of stock buybacks, which rose by nearly 50% in Q2 from Q1 to $831 million and by 27,600% (!) from a year ago, the most since 2011, should provide all the answers.
[3]
So dear soon to be laid off Hewlett Packard employees, if you want to direct your anger somewhere, please direct it at the company's "activist" shareholders who have forced management to invest not in growth for the future, and thus you, but to reward its shareholders immediately, right now with what otherwise would have been your future salary.