Saturday, April 13, 2013

Hewlett Packard - The Adventure Continues for HP and CEO Meg Whitman



For Hewlett Packard and CEO Meg Whitman, there is never a dull moment.    Board Chairman Ray Lane was essentially given a vote of no confidence by shareholders and has relinquished his chair position.  . John Hammergren, who has been on the board since 2005, and former Wachovia CEO G. Kennedy Thompson, a director since 2006, will resign, as well.  The three could perhaps offer themselves as a package deal for Dancing with the Stars.

All three have   been on the board for much of Hewlett Packard’s precipitous decline in stock price.  There for Autonomy.  There for the  tablet debacle.  You really can’t  really  blame the board for these, in some respects.  External smartest guys in the room and others in the Hewlett Packard organization did make the recommendations. 

After hitting a 52-week low of $11.25, that stock has gone up to $20.66.  This is still substantially below the just under $45 they were trading at a couple of years ago.  On a percentage basis, the Dow has increased about 20% and Dell has decreased about 10% over the same period.

So, what is HP going to do?  Meg Whitman is still saying recovery will be a four-year process.  Hewlett Packard has been investing in security as part of their strategy.  Tablets were revived from coaster status to being part of the strategic mix. Smart phones may be part of the mix in 2014.   Last week, as part of project Moonshot, Hewlett Packard introduced a line-up of super servers.  These are designed to appeal to the biggest social-media, cloud-computing, and e-commerce sites.

Autonomy is going to continue to be part of HP.  Even after the massive writedown.  "We remain committed to Autonomy; we remain committed to the brand, to Cambridge, to the U.K.," she said at a  recent news conference.   "It is an almost magical technology. ... It plays into a big shift in the market, the area of Big Data, which HP should be in."  Bets are being taken as to who will ultimately be thrown under the bus for the analysis of this deal and from which side of the pond.   http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_22999671/hewlett-packard-ceo-meg-whitman-remains-committed-autonomy
 
The laptop/PC business won’t drive a recovery.  Printer sales and ink revenue won’t increase if laptop/PC sales tank.  According to IDC, laptop/PC sales dropped over 11% in Q1 versus the same period in 2012. For HP, the drop was 24%.  Windows 8 sales have not been astronomical, as well. 

The takeoff in tablets has sucked the growth out of PC and laptop sales.  Tablets will   out-ship desktop PCs this year, according to IDC.  They are also forecasting that by the end of 2013, desktop PC shipments will dip 4.3 percent.  Tablet shipments will rise to 190 million units, an annual growth rate of 48.7 percent, according to the firm.

Whitman was named CEO in September 2011, replacing Leo Apotheker.  “The pressure is on Meg,” stated Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Bernstein Research.  A housecleaning of the board “bought her a year.” according to an April article in the New York Times.  More bold moves are needed by Hewlett Packard and Whitman.  Going private (unlike what Dell is trying to do) isn’t an option.

Whitman and Hewlett Packard need to make even more aggressive  moves.   

 

“Hewlett Packard and Meg Whitman – The First Year.  Turbulence and Turmoil in the Valley” at

AV-Comparatives File Detection Test of Malicious Software - March 2013



Test group AV-Comparatives has released their March 2013 File Detection of Malicious Software report.  Ten pages of nice reading.  The three star performers, in order, were Avira, F-Secure, BitDefender, BullGuard, and Kaspersky.  Congratulations to these five vendors for their performance!  G Data had the top detection rate, 99.9% but suffered in their overall performance due to false positives.  ESET finished 17th in detection rate, which may have precipitated  their drop in the standings.  The only free product in the test was from Panda. 

There was some movement from the av-comparatives 2012 summary report.  The companies receiving Top Rated designation were,  in alphabetical order - Avast, Avira, Bitdefender, BullGuard, ESET, F-Secure, G DATA, and Kaspersky.  

The company with products in the yellow box, otherwise known as Symantec, was included in this report.  This was the first time in a long while.  Suffice it to say, Symantec has nowhere to go but up, finishing in the “tested” (not even one star) category.  They had the lowest detection rate of all products tested.  Shout out to CEO Steve Bennett; that is okay.  Next test. Eva, get those engineers out of the cloud and working on the engine and file detection ;)

What this report is showing is that the products with the most name brand recognition are not always the top performers.  Trend Micro only received one star, and McAfee two stars.  Average these scores with Symantec and you get one star out of three.  Ouch.  For the complete report, you will have to go to the www.av-comparatives.org  web site. 

Tests such as these are much more valuable than  looking at  “likes” on a company web site. People should look at the av-test and Virus Bulletin web site.  PC Magazine does extensive testing, as well.  Put something on your device.  You don’t have to install a toolbar to get a price break.  Look, also, for installing (in addition) one of the free products that helps protect you while surfing the web.  McAfee, Zone Labs, Blue Coat, are among the vendors providing these.  You may want to install an internet security product for more comprehensive protection than that provided by an antivirus product.
  
About AV-comparatives     www.av-comparatives.org

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization.  They provide independent Antivirus software tests free to the public.  Go to their website to view all the great comparative reports and surveys they publish.  A great number of their reports are free.