On Wednesday, Hewlett Packard announced its worst loss in 73 years of business. The huge tech giant has been struggling for the last couple of years and its latest quarterly loss was compounded because of a $9.2 billion write off. The Palo Alto, California based company recorded a loss of $8.9 billion for the quarter that ended July 31, which is the company’s fiscal third quarter. It was the fourth straight quarter the company saw sales fall.
HP’s loss was mainly due to the previously announced write down for an acquisition that took place in 2008 of Electronic Data Systems, in addition to other restricting charges that were not involved in any way with the 2008 EDS acquisition. Nonetheless, Hewlett Packard has struggled regardless of the numerous one-time write offs. HP financial officials also announced a downbeat forecast for the current quarter.
The Chief Executive of HP, Meg Whitman, said the company had a ways to go as it was just in the early stages of its self-imposed turnaround. She stressed that it could take up to five years to fully correct itself. The HP results were announced only a day after one of its biggest rivals, Dell Inc. posted its quarterly earnings that did not meet estimates with profits falling by over 18% and revenue dropping by 8%.
HP has seen it demand for PC’s fall tremendously since the onset of the tablet computer. However, Whitman expressed that new products were on the way that would help in the company’s turnaround efforts.
