Posted on Thursday, July 19 2007 @ 4:30 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
HP's CEO Mark Hurd claims world's biggest computer maker has improved during the two years that he's been CEO but that the company still has a very long way to go:
"I would give us a good grade on improvement. I think we are better incrementally. I think we are still poor absolutely," Hurd said in an onstage interview last week at Fortune magazine's annual technology conference in San Francisco.
Hurd joined Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard a little over two years ago from a smaller computer rival, NCR, and has seen a sharp revival in the company's stock price built on solid market-share gains.
"We are doing better. We are not doing great," Hurd said. "On an absolute basis, we have a ton to do.
Hurd said HP's long-term sales outlook remained one of modest growth. Recent better-than-expected revenue growth of about 13 percent, aided by 3 percentage points of favorable currency exchange rates, was not sustainable, he said.
"Think of us as a 4-to-6-percent-growth company," Hurd said. Acquisitions, when they occur, will remain "smallish (and) non-transformational"--in other words, no megadeals.
More info
at CNET.
