By
Temitope Olatunji
April 19th, 2024
HP’s ability to maintain impressive performance amidst market volatility is an assurance of a stronger company as the years unfold.
Shares of computer hardware company Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) are down in pre-market trading after announcing that it is exiting Russia. HPE is currently trading at $14.80 in pre-market trading, losing more than 6%. HPE said it is shutting down its operations in Russia and Belarus due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Similar to HPE, many industry players have left Russia due to its attack on Ukraine. It started with companies suspending supplies to the country, followed by an exodus of industry leaders.
HPE CEO Announces Russia and Belarus Exit
After Russia stormed Ukraine on the 24th of February, HPE halted shipments to the country as well as Belarus. As a matter of fact, HPE was one of the first set of tech companies that stopped shipments to the countries in the wake of the invasion. HPE said the next step is an orderly, managed exit of its remaining business in Russia and Belarus as the conflict persists. HP president and CEO Enrique Lores made the exit announcement on a Q2 earnings call with analysts.
Antonio Neri, the CEO of HPE, spoke about the company’s decision to exit Russia in a recent interview.
“We decided to wait 90 days to see if there was some sort of resolution to the conflict. We totally condemned the Russian invasion. Unfortunately, there is no resolution in sight, and it is no longer tenable for us to maintain our operations there,” said he.
HPE’s Fiscal 2022 Q2 Report
In the fiscal 2022 Q2 results, HP gained 3.9% YoY to $16.5 billion. The revenue for the quarter included a 9% addition in the Personal System Group to $11.532 billion. A 7% decline to $4.963 billion in Printing also falls under the net revenue for HP’s fiscal 2022 Q2 result.
Lores said HP’s ability to maintain impressive performance amidst market volatility is an assurance of a stronger company as the years unfold. The company also refunded $1.3 billion to shareholders in share repurchases and dividends. The CEO continued:
“We delivered a solid quarter of revenue and non-GAAP EPS growth, while returning significant capital to shareholders. Collectively, our key growth business grew double digital and drove $5.6 billion in revenue in the first half of the year.”
Since HPE stopped supplying to Russia, the company’s stock has declined almost 6% in the last three months. The technology company has also plunged over 1% in the last month and fallen 0.75% fall over the past year. On the other hand, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has a record of 0.06% gain since the year started. The company also improved by 4.57% in the last five days.