Sometimes it seems like the tail is wagging the dog rather than vice versa. Along these lines, HP Inc., which still uses the HPQ NYSE ticker symbol of the legacy firm, moved up more than 12 percent to $13.76 at around 11:30 AM ET. Monday. Shares spiked up almost 15% in minutes on the first day of trading as separate, the biggest intraday percentage gain since mid-2013. The share price gives HP, which now primarily sells printers and computers, a market cap of just over $26 billion.
The spin off Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., which sells servers, storage devices and a variety of services to businesses, was off 1.6% at $14.49, although it traded above $15 for most of the morning. That figures out to a a market cap of very close to $27 billion.
The division of the company was made official on Sunday. Meg Whitman is now the chief exec of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and chairman for HP Inc., which is run by CEO Dion Weisler.
Statement from HP CEO Meg Whitman
“I expected a lot of volatility in the next couple of weeks,” Meg Whitman noted in a media interview. “Probably by the end of November, we’ll have a pretty good read on, you know, what is the market assessing the value of each company.”
More on HP – HP Enterprise split
Analysts have been noting for a few months now that larger PC Manufacturers such as HP are regaining market share, raising hopes that the industry could be heading toward stabilization. In a letter to investors, James Kisner, an analyst at Jefferies, pointed out that HP was No. 2 in the industry in the third quarter with 18.5% of shipments, up from 17.8% a year earlier, according to Gartner
“Tactically it’s hard to imagine that this is time to be selling stocks like HPI with PC exposure,” Kisner explained. He also argued that there are opportunities to gain market share in printers as well.
Keep in mind that the share price of the legacy Hewlett-Packard were down almost exactly 33% this year through Friday. Sales were down 8.1% o $25.3 billion in the third quarter, compared to consensus estimates of $25.4 billion, based on Bloomberg data. For those keeping track, sales at HP have slipped for 15 of the past 16 quarters.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is also likely to find tough sledding amid sluggish IT spending, according to Kulbinder Garcha of Credit Suisse. In a recent report to investors, he suggested that growth in the public cloud is going to continue to put pressure on Hewlett Packard Enterprise as more and more businesses move their computing and storage services to the Internet.
