Hewlett-Packard's results for the second quarter, released before market close yesterday, revealed that the company would be cutting 10,000 to 16,000 jobs more than it previously planned.
Including these numbers, the total number of jobs cut since Meg Whitman became the company's CEO in September 2011 would rise to about a total of 50,000.
The company reported a $1.3 billion net income for earnings of 66 cents per share, and non-GAAP earnings of 88 cents per share on a $27.3 billion revenue. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 88 cents per share, but on a slightly higher revenue of $27.41 billion.
"With the first half of our fiscal year completed, I'm pleased to report that HP's turnaround remains on track. With each passing quarter, HP is improving its systems, structures and core go-to-market capabilities. We're gradually shaping HP into a more nimble, lower-cost, more customer- and partner-centric company that can successfully compete across a rapidly changing IT landscape," said Whitman in a statement.
Cathie Lesjack, the CFO of HP, said that the company had already reached the midpoint of the aforementioned turnaround. However, 50,000 employees will not see the turnaround come to fruition.
Whitman's turnaround plan is aiming for the company to rely less on sales of low-end PCs and focus on selling more high-end servers and cloud-related services.
The original restructuring plan by HP was to cut 27,000 employees in May 2012, before increasing the estimate to 29,000 employees by September of the same year. In 2013, the number again increased to 34,000 employees, which was the previously expected number as Whitman said that there will be no more additional layoffs.
"The job cuts are brutal, but a requirement," said Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights & Strategy, via email.
"Most of the [affected] employees are in services, an area they've had challenges in. There were two bright spots, one in servers as IBM's business is declining precipitously and, surprisingly, in PCs. For HP to get back to big growth, they'll need to win in the hybrid cloud, plain and simple."
HP accidentally published its second quarter results early, releasing the results half an hour before the expected time of 4 p.m. Eastern standard time, to coincide with the market close. Share prices for HP closed at $31.78 per share, down 2.3 percent. After-hours trading further pulled down HP's share prices by 1 percent to $31.32.
Whitman apologized in a conference call with analysts, promising that the company will not make the same mistake again.
