Finding a New CEO Won't Help Unless H-P Finds New Products
For all the ink spilled and airtime devoted to the ouster of Carly Fiorina , the cause remains a mystery.
Ms. Fiorina herself certainly seems to have been in the dark as recently as the celebrity-studded Davos World Economic Forum, where she assured everyone that her relationship with the board was fine.
The answer doesn't appear to lie in any immediate crisis at Hewlett-Packard Co. The company reported results last week that were slightly better than expected, with revenue of more than $21 billion.
Nor am I convinced that the explanation lies in the 2002 acquisition of Compaq. H-P did manage to wring considerable economies of scale out of the combination, and after initially plunging on the news, H-P's stock managed to recover and then some (at which point I recommended that H-P investors blindsided by the deal bail out). The stock is basically where it was at the beginning of 2002, recently trading at $21 a share.
Ms. Fiorina's regal airs were out of place in today's world of rising shareholder activism, and so at odds with the inherent modesty of the company's founders and descendants. Indeed, one lesson of the H-P saga is surely the folly of a CEO who alienates and then goes to war with the descendants of the much-revered founders of a company, as Ms. Fiorina did with Hewlett family members. Still, it's hard to believe that style, or bad diplomacy, alone accounted for her downfall.
It would be a service to investors for H-P's directors to be more forthcoming about the circumstances of the ouster. For in the absence of any clarification, I worry that H-P's troubles run much deeper than the CEO. I suspect my concern is widespread, since the stock hasn't soared on the news, as would be expected if Ms. Fiorina herself were the primary problem.
Unfortunately for H-P and its prospects, the company seems mired in a group of businesses that are rapidly evolving into low-margin commodity products, all of them threatened by Dell Inc. and its more efficient business model.
Ms. Fiorina must have been aware of this when she proposed the Compaq acquisition, since the only way to boost profits in a mature, even declining commodity business like personal computers is through scale. Ditto servers, which are less advanced in their decline than PCs, but are well on their way. The computer-services division held out the prospect of noncommodity profits, relying as it does on intellectual capital and personalized attention, but that, too, has become fiercely competitive as every other big computer concern has recognized the same thing and thrown resources at this area.
H-P's crown jewel, of course, has long been the printer business, with its dominant market share and fat profit margins. That it has held up as long as it has is a tribute to H-P's innovation and execution. But this business is already in its ninth life. How long can it withstand the assaults from rivals like Lexmark International Inc. and Dell? There's nothing about printers that would prevent this line, too, from becoming a low-margin commodity business. Ominously, H-P warned recently about shrinking margins and the need for more cost-cutting.
The company under Ms. Fiorina chose as one of its central advertising campaigns the theme of "HP Invents," with nostalgic photos of the Palo Alto garage where Bill Hewlett and David Packard conceived their inventions and launched the company. But most of the inventions unveiled during Ms. Fiorina's tenure struck me as little more than countertop knickknacks aimed at fickle consumers, hardly enough to reignite the company's growth.
Innovation may indeed be the key to the company's future, but before I'd consider returning to the stock, I'd like to hear more about what's in the pipeline -- and how someone other than Ms. Fiorina might be able to capitalize on it.
惠普新CEO难为无米之炊
卡丽?费奥瑞娜(Carly Fiorina)遭解职一事已经尘埃落定，但原因仍是未解之谜。
费奥瑞娜本人肯定同参加达沃斯世界经济论坛(Davos World Economic Forum)时一样对此一无所知，当时她向所有人表示，她同董事会的关系良好。
答案可能不是因为惠普公司(Hewlett-Packard Co.)出现了迫在眉睫的危机。该公司上周公布的业绩略好于预期，收入更是超过了210亿美元。
笔者认为原因也不在于2002年收购康柏电脑(Compaq)。惠普的确从合并中获得了巨大的规模经济效应，在最初因合并消息而下跌后，惠普的股价已有所回升。目前该股股价同2002年初时基本持平，为每股21美元。
费奥瑞娜的霸气在股东影响力日益壮大的今天显得不合时宜，并与惠普创始人及其后代内在的谦逊格格不入。的确，我们从惠普这一幕中得到的一个教训就是，CEO会与公司创始人的后代产生分歧，并进而演变为冲突，就像费奥瑞娜与惠列特(Hewlett)家族成员那样。但要说是这种为人处事的风格是她失败的全部原因却令人难以置信。
投资者都希望惠普的董事能够坦率地透露一些关于费奥瑞娜离职的详细情况。由于没有澄清原因，笔者担心惠普的麻烦要比CEO本身大得多。我猜测可能很多人都有著与我同样的担心，因为惠普股票并未因这一消息而上涨，而此前曾有人预言如果费奥瑞娜是公司的主要问题，那么她离职后，惠普股票会出现上涨。
不幸的是，对惠普及其前景而言，该公司的众多业务都在迅速演变为低利润率商品，并受到了戴尔公司(Dell Inc.)及其更高效商业模式的威胁。
费奥瑞娜在提出收购康柏电脑时肯定已意识到了这点，因为在个人电脑这样已经成熟、甚至开始走下坡路的商品市场上，要提高利润的唯一方法就是形成规模。伺服器业务也是如此，虽然下滑速度低于个人电脑，但也不容乐观。电脑服务部门在非商品利润方面的前景没有明显变化，但由于几乎所有电脑业巨头都开始认识到这一点，并向此领域投入资源，市场竞争也日趋激烈。
当然，惠普皇冠上的明珠长期以来一直是市场占有率居前、利润丰厚的打印机业务。此项业务的长盛不衰应归功于惠普的创新和执行力。但打印机业务已经度过了最好的时光。它还能抵御多久来自利盟国际(Lexmark International Inc.)和戴尔公司等竞争对手的进攻？而且，没有什么能阻止打印机也沦为低利润率的商品业务。令人不安的是，惠普最近警告说，打印机业务的利润率出现滑坡，需要进一步削减成本。
费奥瑞娜领导下的公司将“惠普的精神就是创新”这一主题作为其核心广告活动之一，配上了当年惠列特和帕卡德(Packard)在帕洛阿尔托的车库内构想创新和建立公司的怀旧照片。但在费奥瑞娜任期内推出的大部分产品就像针对善变的消费者推出的小商品一样难以令我心动，也很难推动公司的增长。
创新可能成为惠普未来的关键因素，但在我们购买其股票之前，我更希望能听听该公司有什么后续产品，接替费奥瑞娜的人又将如何加以利用？
