Hewlett-Packard to axe 34,000 staff by end of 2014

Hewlett-Packard plans to cut 34,000 employees from its global workforce by the end of this year, which equates to 5,000 more job losses than expected.

On Tuesday, the PC giant said in a regulatory filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that a tough business environment makes the additional cuts necessary if the firm is going to remain competitive in the future. As a result, HP will eliminate 34,000 positions by the end of the firm's fiscal year, which is up from an earlier prediction of 29,000.

Locations which could be affected by the cuts were not disclosed.

The Palo Alto-headquartered firm said:

"Due to continued market and business pressures, as of October 31, 2013, HP expects to eliminate an additional 15 percent of those 29,000 positions or a total of approximately 34,000 positions."

In addition, HP stated that the program will cost the company roughly $4.1 billion in aggregate charges, going beyond earlier predictions of $3.6 billion. These charges will be due to reduction of the workforce and both data center and real estate consolidation.

The CEO of HP, Meg Whitman, is attempting to restructure the company to be able to compete in a world where mobile devices -- rather than personal computers -- have become king. The company shake-up includes cutting costs and focusing on technology sectors that may provide better long-term assurance of profit -- especially as HP missed the mobile bandwagon -- including enterprise services, cloud computing and security.

Hewlett-Packard posted a fourth quarter profit of $1.4 billion on revenue of $29.1 billion, down three percent from Q4 2012. Despite revenue declines, the company's finances outperformed expectations, showing that restructuring efforts are having an impact.

HP has already eliminated over 22,000 positions as part of its restructuring plans.