Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (HPE) chief executive officer Meg Whitman, who has been racking up acquisitions to stay competitive in the age of cloud computing, said the company’s shopping spree might not be over.
“I think you will see acquisitions become a bigger part of our strategy,” Whitman said in an interview on Tuesday in Las Vegas at the company’s Discover conference.
The company, based in Palo Alto, California, has already unveiled purchases so far this year worth more than US$1.5 billion.
Whitman is hunting for tools that would help boost demand for the company’s main server and storage products, seeking to push back against direct competitors such as Dell Technologies, as well as cloud-computing providers such as Amazon.com Inc.
She has spent the past few years slimming down HPE, including splitting off the personal-computer and printer business and shedding some services and software units in multibillion-dollar deals.
Now it is more clear where the company’s resources should be spent, she said.
“Back when we were an enormous company with six or seven operating divisions, there were a lot of mouths to feed,” Whitman said. “Printing wanted to make acquisitions. PCs wanted to make acquisitions. Software wanted to make acquisitions. Now, we have a much more focused strategy.”
Still, acquisitions are not the only way to bolster the company’s prospects.
Whitman said it is just one of the three main ways to drive success.
Another is innovation in HPE’s main product lines, such as improvement in servers, expanded storage offerings and advances in networking.
The third area is HPE’s Pathfinder program, which invests in younger companies.
Whitman said it is a great way to get innovation without taking a financial hit.
“There are a number of companies that I think would be quite interesting to buy,” she said. “The problem is they have [US]$20 million of revenue and they lose [US]$150 million.”
Whitman is holding the annual Discover event this week after the company gave a disappointing update on its financial picture last month.
Profit excluding some costs will be US$0.24 to US$0.28 per share in the current quarter, the company said, while analysts had projected US$0.32.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last