What Happened at HP Last Week?

- Hewlett Packard announced that it sold an Indigo 5500 production color system to ProGraphics Communications, a printshop in Atlanta, GA. In addition, it sold an Indigo 7000 system to L&D Mail Masters, a print shop in New Albany, IN.

- Hewlett Packard and the National Basketball Association (NBA) have partnered to provide $80,000 in technology to 90 middle schools in the U.S. This includes:
- Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, San Francisco & Washington DC
- HP tablet PC’s
- HP PhotoSmart color inkjet AIOs
- HP LaserJet printers
- Access to NBA photos, footage and other materials
- Tickets to 50 NBA games

- Hewlett Packard is apparently suffering from a backorder situation on several laser printer models, as well as laser print cartridges.

- Hewlett Packard’s Vyomesh Joshi, who is Executive VP of its printer/MFP division, was interviewed by Bloomberg:
- Printing market is “healthy”
- “2009 was a difficult year for printing hardware”
- “But supplies were fine. What that means is that printing is healthy – even with economic pressure, customers are still printing the content”
- Has posted 5 quarters of declining printer/MFP sales
- Plans to achieve the 15% to 17% profit margin he’s on the line to deliver to investors in 2010
- Printing unit is “poised for recovery and getting on the attack”
- Forecasting this quarter “double digit” growth in printer shipments
- The printing group accounted for 21% of HP’s $114.6 billion revenue last year and
3% of its $13.4 billion profit
- Company has shortages after orders picked up sooner than it expected
- To cut costs, HP is now shipping directly from Asian factories to some distributors and retailers instead of its own distribution centers (this will dramatically increase lead times for backorder fulfillment)
- “HP overall has a $60 billion supply chain. We have a fair share of that. When you have those kind of numbers, even a small percent of those numbers are a big number”
- “We don’t need to cut prices. In the market right now, our product, compared with any of our competition, is much better in terms of innovation, in terms of ease of use, in terms of quality, in terms of connectivity. That’s what the customer will be looking at”
- “What I can tell you is that the printing and imaging business is a great business with great opportunities. I want to make sure the transformational work I’ve started – I want to see that all the way to the end”

=-Good Selling=-