拆分红利已经终结，新惠普仍需继续改变

梅格·惠特曼掌舵惠普已经五年了。在这五年里，她频频出招，一会儿是收购，一会儿是剥离，一会儿把公司拆成两半，一会儿又零敲碎打地分拆公司的其他资产。她有时看起来简直就像是混进CEO界的一个“疯狂科学家”。

如今离她阵仗最大的那次重组已经过去了一年半的时间——那次她将惠普的PC和打印机业务整个拆分成了一家独立的公司。但是她现在依然没有停止对公司继续动刀子。就在两个月前，梅格·惠特曼宣布，惠普将把旗下部分软件业务进行拆分，并与英国软件公司Micro Focus合并，这笔交易的估值预计将达到90亿美元。今年五月，惠特曼还宣布将旗下的企业服务部门与Computer Sciences公司合并，这笔交易目前尚未宣告完结。就在这期间，惠普还斥资收购了一家名叫SGI的超级计算机制造商。

对惠特曼的这几招散手，我们现在恐怕还很难提出批评。因为自从去年11月拆分了PC和打印机业务后，惠特曼领导下的慧与（Hewlett Packard Enterprise）的股价至今已经猛涨了60%。

不过有些华尔街分析师还是对惠普的处境表示了担忧，认为惠特曼的复苏和重组之路似乎已露出后劲不足之态。今年第三季度，也就是该公司第四财务季度的财报显示，公司当季的收益下跌了7%。即便是针对惠普近来的一系列拆分和强势美元等因素进行调整后，营业收入还是下跌达到2%。125亿美元的营业也略低于分析师们此前给出的129亿美元的预期。慧与股价也在盘后交易中下跌了1个百分点。

对此，惠特曼的解释是，慧与的一些业绩下滑的老旧业务（比如企业数据中心使用的传统型服务器和一些基本的网络设备）的下滑幅度超过了预期。而像基于闪存技术的网络存储硬件、极高性能的计算机和wifi设备等增长领域则依然保持了强势增长。

不过由于公司全线业务增长放缓，在最近的一次与分析师的电话会议上，很多分析师都追问她对明年的展望有何设想。惠特曼也表示，她预计明年公司服务器的销量总体将增长1%到2%。

惠特曼解释道，2016年上半年，她的主要目标是收入的增长，下半年则主要强调盈利。“今年我们用了一种类似‘滴定’的办法。”这位“疯狂科学家”式的CEO用了一个化学术语，“滴定”指的是利用两种溶液混合在一起以找到某种平衡。“前半年是高增长低利润，后半年是低增长高利润。明年我们要沿着高速公路的中间车道走了。”

如果惠特曼的“中间车道”战略真的能够成功的话，投资者显然是乐于同时看到盈利和增长的。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

Meg Whitman has been running one version or another of the venerable tech giant Hewlett Packard for more than five years. And with all the acquisitions and divestitures and splitting the company in half and spinning off other bits, she sometimes seems like the mad scientist CEO of the industry.

About a year after her most momentous restructuring of all—pushing HP’s personal computer and printer businesses into a wholly separate company—she’s still hard at work rejiggering the pieces left on her board. Just two months ago, she announced a new plan to spin off and merge some of HP’s software businesses with British vendor Micro Focus in a deal valued at $9 billion. A similar deal announced in May to send the enterprise services unit to Computer Sciences CSC -1.89% is still not done. She also moved to add supercomputer maker SGI in August.

But it would be hard to criticize all those moves right now. Whitman’s company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has seen its share price rise 60% since splitting from the PC and printer side last November.

Still, some Wall Street analysts are worried that the recovery and restructuring effort may be running out of juice. Third quarter results, the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, showed revenue dropping 7%. Even after adjusting for all the units Whitman cut and the strengthening U.S. dollar, revenue still declined 2%. The $12.5 billion total missed analysts estimates of almost $12.9 billion. Adjusted earnings per shares of 61 cents about met analyst expectations. HP’s share price lost 1% in after hours trading.

The problem was that sales in some of HP’s HPE -3.11% older, declining businesses—like traditional servers used in corporate data centers and basic networking gear—dropped more than expected, Whitman said. Growth areas like flash-based network storage hardware, extreme high performance computers and wi-fi gear for big installations still grew strongly, she said.

Still, with company-wide growth slowing, Whitman was peppered with questions on a call with analysts about the assumptions underlying her outlook for next year, including growth in server sales overall of 1% to 2%.

The CEO explained that she had gone for revenue growth earlier in 2016 but emphasized profitability more in the last two quarters. “We sort of titrated a bit during the year,” the mad scientist CEO said, using chemistry lingo for mixing two solutions to find a balance. “First half was faster growth, lower margins, second half of the year was lower growth, higher margin. Now we’ve got to drive down the middle of the highway for next year.”

Investors would like to see both profitability and growth, if Whitman’s middle of the highway approach is to succeed.