News Articles

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

HP announces annual results and launches investigation into Autonomy acquisition

HP has announced financial results for its financial year, which ended on 31st October 2012. Net revenue was down 5% year-on-year to $120.4 billion (£75.6 billion), with the company making a $12.7 billion loss. Last year, HP made $7.1bn profit.

Meg Whitman, HP’s president and chief executive officer, said “As we discussed during our Securities Analyst Meeting last month, fiscal 2012 was the first year in a multiyear journey to turn HP around. We’re starting to see progress in key areas, such as new product releases and customer wins. We’re particularly pleased that in Q4, we were able to improve our balance sheet, generating $4.1 billion in operating cash flow, and we returned $384 million to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends.”

The company noted that it had recorded a one-off charge of approximately $8.8 billion related to Autonomy in the fourth quarter; $5 billion of this was “linked to serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures discovered by an internal investigation by HP and forensic review into Autonomy’s accounting practices prior to its acquisition by HP”.

It’s issued a statement that reads: “HP is extremely disappointed to find that some former members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company, prior to Autonomy’s acquisition by HP. These efforts appear to have been a willful effort to mislead investors and potential buyers, and severely impacted HP management’s ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal. We remain 100 percent committed to Autonomy and its industry-leading technology.”

HP says it’s referred the matter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Enforcement Division and to the Serious Fraud Office in the UK. It’s also preparing court action “ against various parties”.

Print
Author: The Fonecast
0 Comments
Rate this article:
No rating

Categories: Handsets and manufacturers, Operating systems, NewsNumber of views: 8987

Tags: legal hp autonomy

Leave a comment

This form collects your name, email, IP address and content so that we can keep track of the comments placed on the website. For more info check our Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use where you will get more info on where, how and why we store your data.
Add comment

Follow thefonecast.com

Twitter @TheFonecast RSS podcast feed
Find us on Facebook Subscribe free via iTunes

Archive Calendar

«November 2024»
MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
28293031123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
2526272829301
2345678

Archive

Terms Of Use | Privacy Statement