Revenue decline for HP as PC, printing and enterprise services slump

HP has reported an 8% drop in revenue for Q3 as its legacy PC and printing businesses sagged and commercial business tightened.

The company saw revenue of US$25.3 billion for the quarter ending 31 July, 2015. Net earnings for the period were $854 million, down 13% on the same quarter a year ago.

HP says its personal systems revenue was down 13% year on year, with consumer revenue plummeting 22%, and commercial revenue down 9%.

Total units were down 11% with notebooks down 3% and desktop units down 20%, as the PC industry in general suffered weaker sales.

Printing revenue, meanwhile, was down 9% year on year, with commercial hardware units down 6% and consumer sales flat. Supplies revenue was down 6%.

The results come as HP nears its split into two separate listed companies, with HP Enterprise focusing on the enterprise offerings while the PC and printing business separates out to HP Inc.

HP's Enterprise Group saw revenue up 2% year on year, driven by strong growth in networking revenue – which saw revenue bound up 22% year on year – and industry standard servers, which recorded an 8% increase in revenue.

On the down side, business critical systems took the biggest hit, with revenue dropping 21%. Storage revenue was down 2%, while technology services revenue dropped 9%.

Enterprise Services revenue dropped 11% year on year, with infrastructure technology outsourcing down 13% and application and business services revenue declining 7%.

Meg Whitman, HP chairman, president and chief executive, put a positive spin on the results, saying they 'reflect very strong performance in our Enterprise Group and substantial progress in turning around Enterprise Services'.

"I am very pleased that we have continued to deliver the results we said we would, while remaining on track to execute one of the largest and most complex separations ever undertaken," Whitman says.