HP to cut up to 5000 jobs in restructuring plan

HP now expects between 4500 to 5000 employees to leave the company by the end of fiscal 2019 as part of an ongoing restructuring plan, the PC maker said this week.

In October 2016, HP's board had approved a restructuring plan to be implemented through fiscal year 2019, under which it had expected about 4000 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 31 October.

When CRN asked HP Australia whether the job cuts would impact Australian employees, a local spokesperson said the company did not break this information out at a regional level.

HP, formed in 2015 when the then Hewlett-Packard Co was spilt into two, said in a regulatory filing it now expects pre-tax charges of about US$700 million related to the layoffs, compared with about US$500 million forecast earlier.

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

When Hewlett-Packard split up, HP Inc focused on the consumer-facing hardware business, including sales of PCs and printers, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise hosted the company's data 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 US$14 billion in the quarter ended 30 April.

Reporting by Sonam Rai. Editing by Maju Samuel