HP to Lay Off 6,400 Over the Next Year

As part of the Hewlett-Packard earnings call, the hardware, software and services company announced it will be reducing its work force by 2 percent, which translates to roughly 6,400 jobs lost over the next 12 months.

From an AP article:

“HP’s chief financial officer, Cathie Lesjak, told analysts the new cuts will be ”targeted actions to structurally change and improve the effectiveness of our product businesses,” but didn’t provide more details. The new cuts will happen over the next year.HP reported Tuesday that its profit dropped 17 percent to $1.72 billion, while sales fell 3 percent to $27.4 billion, in the latest period.HP had 321,000 employees as of Oct. 31 of last year, the latest period for which headcount data is publicly available.“

These job cuts are in addtition to the 24,600 layoffs HP has made after the EDS acquisition.

eWEEK’s own Jeff Burt says EDS is the bright spot in HP earnings. Burt quotes HP CEO Mark Hurd on enterprise spending as saying that “CIOs have given marching orders [to] just keep that infrastructure running.”

None of the job cuts are announced in the full HP earnings statement, but you can watch and listen to it on the HP webcast.

You can also get a good breakdown of HP earnings from Larry Dignan over at ZDNet who says “the real story here is HP’s business units, which continue to get whacked.”