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

And then as we’re thinking — specifically about the first quarter that’s coming up, we would say it’s going to be — we’re going to guide here to a lower number because we expect typically from a seasonality perspective, that’s when we pay out the bonus that we accrue in the prior year. And also, we expect specifically in Q1 just due to the fact we’ve got this combination of both the unfavorable business mix from the top line pressure of Personal Systems, you combine that with the bonus payout and restructuring and with the increase in AR from contract manufacturers, which is partially offset by continued reductions we’re taking at inventory level, we expect that our cash flow in Q1 is probably likely to be negative towards breakeven. So I know I’ve said a lot there is definitely a lot of factors going into driving the linearity in our cash flow.

But once again, still very confident in the guide that we’ve given for the year of $3 billion to $3.5 billion. And then I’ll just turn it to Enrique if he wants to comment at all with respect to our repo strategy.

Enrique Lores : Sure. We can talk about that. We also shared in the prepaid remarks that we are not changing our capital allocation plan. But as we have said before, we are going to be returning to shareholders 100% of free cash flow unless better opportunities arise and always within the our — where we will stay within our leverage rate. In Q4, we completed the acquisition of Poly. We did it one quarter before we were planning, and therefore, during the beginning of the year, we are going to slow down or moderate our share buyback to — in alignment with our plan. But our plan is to go back to the original plan in the second half as we will have more stronger situation for a free cash flow perspective. And that’s our plan.

Marie Myers : Yes. I’ll just add, it is important that we’re going to ensure that we at least offset dilution from employee benefit plans as well.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Toni Sacconaghi with Bernstein.

Toni Sacconaghi: Yes. I’m wondering if you could specify how significant the backlog drawdown was in the quarter, just so we can get a sense of what kind of baseline normalized order of revenue growth was. And then you provided some context on your expectation for Q1 revenues for PCs to be down mid-single digits sequentially. I’m wondering if you can comment on your revenue expectations for Q1 overall and for fiscal ’23. For the next four quarters, Dell is calling for revenues to be down in the teens. I’m wondering if you see a more optimistic outlook than that? And I have a follow-up, please.

Enrique Lores : Sure. I’ll take the question on market and then Marie will talk about Q1. So from an order and projection perspective, Toni, the way we are modeling the PC market for next year is to — we are expecting that it will be declining by 10%. And from a backlog perspective, we basically cleaned the majority of our backlog during Q4. And we are back to where we were before the pandemic, which is one of the reasons why we expect the market to be in the minus 10% range in — during 2023. Marie, do you want to talk about Q1?