HP Inc. (NYSE:HPQ) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Shannon Cross: My first question is looking at your growth areas. I think we understand where there’s pressure on your model. But maybe if you could talk a bit more about the $11 billion in revenue that you’ve generated, and I’m not sure if that’s like pro forma for Poly or it doesn’t include Poly. I think it is excluding. I’m sure it’s very small print. But if we can think about each one and their potential growth contributions, and maybe how to think about the margin potential for each one of those? And then I have a follow-up question.

Enrique Lores : Sure. So yes, you are right, Shannon. The $11 billion does not include Poly so this will be on top of $11 billion that we explained. And the goal that we had at the beginning of the year was for them to be about $10 billion. So this is almost $1 billion more than what the plan was. I think what we can say at this point is all of them grew double digit during 2022, and we expect collectively to grow again double digit in 2023. And as we share, if we look at the year, the gross margin was above the gross margin of the company. In some of them, we are still in investment mode, and we know we need to continue to invest to continue to accelerate the growth. And this is one of the reasons why we have been working on the transformation for a few months now because we know that we need to both compensate for some of the challenges that we see on the market side given the slowdown in some of the markets, but we also need to continue to invest on the growth initiatives because they will carry the growth of the company and the value of the company in the future.

Shannon Cross : Okay. And then Marie, if you can talk a bit about on the cash flow side of things. I mean, you’re guiding $3 billion, $3.5 billion. I assume that includes restructuring. Maybe it doesn’t. But just in general, how do we think about sort of normalized cash flow for this model after you go through or as you go through the restructuring plan and areas where maybe you can draw down in terms of working capital? And just again, I think people are trying to understand maybe when you would get back to where you can buy back stock, just your comfort level and what you’re seeing in terms of cash flow?

Marie Myers : Absolutely. And good afternoon, Shannon. So as you said, the cash flow guide is $3 billion to $3.5 billion. And just a clarification, that actually does include the $400 million of restructuring cash flow. So just take that into account in your model. Now in terms of how to think about free cash flow, as you know, it tracks with net earnings. But in any quarter, as you’ve seen just in our results, in the last couple of quarters, it’s driven very much by the mix of business that we see in the quarter and changes in working capital. And those items include everything from the restructuring, the bonus, et cetera, and also just adjustments that we make to our inventory level. So you’re going to expect that there’s going to be a level of seasonality around it as well.