It’s been a good start to 2018 for Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the company said during its first-quarter earnings call of 2018.
During the fiscal quarter ending on Jan. 31, HPE’s revenue went up 11 per cent from the prior-year period, reaching $7.7 billion.
“Our strong Q1 performance is proof that we have the right strategy and improved execution,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE, who took over as CEO Feb. 1, replacing Meg Whitman. “We had good revenue growth across every business segment, continued to execute HPE Next with no disruption to the business, and delivered strong shareholder return in the form of share repurchases and dividends.”
He also said he grateful that Whitman was staying on as a board member and was looking forward to working with her. Last year, Whitman acknowledged that HPE’s revenue was impacted by a tough enterprise technology market, particularly in core servers and storage, which contributed to significantly lower demand from one major customer.
But during the first quarter of 2018, Hybrid IT revenue was $6.3 billion, up nearly 10 per cent year-over-year. Intelligent Edge and Financial Services were up seven per cent and five per cent, respectively.
“We believe the world is becoming hybrid as each customer embraces their right mix of traditional IT, private cloud and public cloud environments,” said Ner.
The recently-updated U.S. tax laws are behind several of the benefits, Neri said, boosting net earnings per share to 89 cents, above the previously provided outlook of between one and five cents per share.
“We will significantly increase the matching contribution for our employees’ 401(k) program and create new degree assistance programs to encourage development and learning for employees around the world,” he said.
Our thanks to investment research platform Seeking Alpha for the transcriptions from HPE’s Feb. 23 Q1 earnings call.
