HP's 2014 outlook hovers around estimates; revenue projected to stabilize

Hewlett-Packard's rehabilitation into a more financially-sound corporation still has a long way to go, and CEO Meg Whitman is still the first person who will tell you that based on her comments at the company's analyst meeting on Wednesday.

The tech giant published an update on the HP's self-defined "turnaround" process along with guidance for fiscal 2014.

HP is projecting non-GAAP earnings per share to fall between $3.55 and $3.75 per share.

That proved to be good enough as Wall Street was forecasting estimates of $3.62 per share.

As the news trickled out of the analyst meeting at HP's San Jose headquarters, HP shares were up initially by approximately five percent.

Revenue has been a tricky spot for HP, to say the least, up until now.

But reiterating once again that 2013 was simply a transition year, HP leadership asserted that 2014 will be more profitable, with CFO Cathie Lesjak promising that "HP expects the year-over-year revenue decline in fiscal 2014 will moderate from fiscal 2013."

Furthermore, HP highlighted that it has reduced operating company net debt by almost $8 billion over the last year and is now approaching a goal of zero.

A big fixture of HP's revised business strategy hovers around IT, with plans to invest approximately 12 cents per share of savings from its restructuring program into this arm of the company in fiscal 2014.

Defined as the "New Style of IT," HP said this strategy will focus on the integration of a number of moving parts that are some common buzz terms all over the market right now -- namely cloud, mobile, big data, and security.

Bill Veghte, executive vice president and general manager of HP’s Enterprise Group, highlighted the Converged Cloud as a bright spot, noting that the platform has signed on more than 1,900 enterprise customers -- approximately 60 percent year-over-year customer growth.

Here's a glimpse, by department, on what HP has in store for itself in 2014:

• Enterprise Services: Revenue is expected to decline between four and six percent year-over-year in fiscal 2014. Nevertheless, HP is maintaining its long-term financial model of three to five percent in revenue growth with an operating margin rate of seven to nine percent.
• Software: HP cited that the enterprise software market is growing at a compound annual growth rate of eight percent. HP also predicted that this market will be worth roughly $69 billion by 2016.
• Printing and Personal Systems: Not much in the way of numbers were provided here, but executive vice president of the group Dion Weisler said that Personal Systems "outgrew the market in the most recent calendar quarter over the same period last year."