HP Sees Up to 5,000 Job Cuts as Part of Restructuring Plan

HP now expects 4,500 to 5,000 employees to leave the company by the end of fiscal 2019 as part of an ongoing restructuring plan, the PC maker said on Tuesday.

In October 2016, HP's board had approved a restructuring plan to be implemented through fiscal year 2019, under which it had expected around 4,000 job cuts. In May, the company said it expected that number to increase by 1 to 2 percent.

The company employed 49,000 people as of Oct. 31.

HP, formed in 2015 when the then Hewlett-Packard Co was spilt into two, said in a regulatory filing it now expects pretax charges of about $700 million (roughly Rs. 4,700 crores) related to the layoffs, compared with about $500 million forecast earlier.

HP estimates that about half of the expected pretax costs will relate to severance and the remaining costs due to infrastructure, non-labour actions and other charges.

When Hewlett-Packard Co split up, HP Inc focused on the consumer facing hardware business, including sales of PCs and printers, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co hosted the company's dead-centre, software and services units.

HP, which has the top position in worldwide PC shipments in the first calendar quarter of 2018 with a 22.6 percent market share, reported better-than-expected quarterly sales of $14 billion (roughly Rs. 94,000 crores) in the quarter ended April 30.

© Thomson Reuters 2018