HP Software Business Grows as Headcount Set to Shrink

Meg Whitman has been the CEO of HP for six months now and she’s clearly not just sitting around waiting for things to happen. HP reported second quarter fiscal 2012 results late Wednesday that were in line with the company’s expectations. In order to drive future growth, HP is reducing its workforce and replacing leadership within its Autonomy business unit.

For the quarter, HP reported net revenue of $30.7 billion for a 3 percent year-over-year decline. Net Earnings were reported at $1.6 Billion, for a 31 percent year-over-year decline. The year over year declines for the second quarter were an improvement over the declines reported by HP for their first quarter results back in February.

“Overall, I feel cautiously optimistic coming out of Q2,” Whitman said. “Our results appear to be stabilizing and while I wouldn’t say we turned the corner, we are making progress.”

Part of Whitman’s plan for an HP turnaround involves restructuring the operations of the company. The most impactful part of that restructuring is a workforce reduction of 27,000 HP employees by the end of 2014. The employee layoffs will save HP approximately $3 billion to $3.5 billion by their fiscal year 2014.

“Workforce reductions are never easy,” Whitman said. “They adversely impact people’s lives, but in this case, they’re absolutely critical for the long-term health of the company.”

Whitman stressed that HP’s restructuring is about better aligning HP’s cost structure to its revenue portfolio.

Read the full story at Datamation:
HP Trims Workforce in a Bid to Boost Profits

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.