HP saw double-digit revenue growth in managed print services during its latest quarter, partly offsetting the company’s continued decline in supplies revenue.
HP’s recently appointed CEO, Enrique Lores, said MPS partners have been critical to the growth.
“We are getting great momentum with our channel partners in the contractual space, and this momentum is now translating into sales.”
Notably, the company’s MPS contracts include HP-branded print supplies by default.
Lores also said HP is on a promising trajectory in its 3-D printing business, where the number of printed parts that were produced with HP’s Jet Fusion systems has been surging over the past year.
Lores did not address the Xerox takeover during the call with reporters and analysts.
During HP’s fiscal fourth-quarter revenue came in just above flat at $15.41 billion, compared to $15.37 billion during the same period a year earlier.
The results constituted a “strong quarter”, Lores said, with HP remaining on par with the year-ago period overall in spite of another quarterly decline in its print supplies business.
“The results show that our strategy is working and that we are driving both short- and long-term value creation”, Lores said.
HP reported that its personal systems business grew 3.6 percent to $10.43 billion for the quarter, up from $10.06 billion the year before. The results were driven by an eight percent increase in commercial net revenue for personal systems. Consumer personal systems net revenue dropped four percent, year over year.
Workstations saw the strongest growth of the company’s PC segments, with a 12 per cent increase in revenue to $649 million for the quarter. Notebooks grew two per cent to reach $6.28 billion in revenue in Q4, while desktops climbed five per cent to $3.14 billion.
HP’s challenges continued in its print business with overall revenue in the segment declining six per cent to $4.98 billion during the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, from $5.3 billion during the same period a year earlier.
HP’s commercial print hardware fell two per cent to $1.18 billion during the quarter, year over year, while consumer print hardware plunged 10 per cent to $640 million.
Print supplies revenue dropped seven percent to $3.16 billion in HP’s fiscal Q4. The company reports that it has been seeing increased competition from third-party supplies vendors, which has been partly to blame for the downturn.
That’s now leading the company to re-evaluate its strategy, executives have said–and by the end of its fiscal 2020 the company plans to stop subsidizing printer models unless they are locked to HP-branded supplies.
HP’s non-GAAP net earnings reached $899 million, or 60 cents per diluted share, during the fiscal fourth quarter. That was up from non-GAAP net earnings of $865 million, or 54 cents per diluted share, during the same quarter in 2018.
For HP’s fiscal year 2019 on the whole, net revenue rose 0.5 per cent to $58.76 billion, from $58.47 billion during the company’s fiscal 2018. Non-GAAP net earnings for the full fiscal year 2019 came in at $3.41 billion, or $2.24 a share, compared to $3.31 billion, or $2.02 a share, the year before.
