Company profile
SEC EDGAR ↗- Industry
- Computer & office Equipment
- Listed
- NYSE: HPQ
- Incorporated
- DE
- Headquarters
- Palo Alto, CA
- Fiscal year end
- Oct 31
Financials
FY2025- Revenue
- $55.3B
- Net income
- $2.53B
- Total assets
- $41.8B
Latest full fiscal year from SEC filings (10-K) — SEC EDGAR ↗. Stratrix is a strategy publication, not a real-time financial data service.
The analyses
The Loss Leader · Business Model
The Printer Is the Bait: How HP Sells Hardware at a Loss to Win the Ink War
HP's CEO said the quiet part out loud: the company loses money on the printer and makes it back on the ink. That single sentence explains the cheap hardware, the firmware that bricks third-party cartridges, and the lawsuits - the whole architecture of a loss leader defended to the death.
7 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
HP's Best Expansions Followed Its Customers — the $25B Compaq Bet Chased Scale and Destroyed Value
HP built its first computer in 1966 just to run its own instruments. Its first desktop PC flopped. The lesson: HP's adjacency moves won when they followed the installed base - and its $25B Compaq bet, chasing scale instead, won a shareholder vote by 45 million shares and destroyed value doing it.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
HP Spent 76 Years Chasing the Next Business. The Split Was an Admission It Caught Too Many.
HP started with a $538 audio oscillator and ended up two companies. From test gear to PCs, PCs to services via Compaq, services to software via Autonomy — each leap destroyed value, and 2015 wasn't a masterstroke. It was a confession.
8 min
The Succession Question · Decision Forks
Three Fired CEOs, $83M in Severance, an $8.8B Write-Down: HP's Board Kept Making the Same Hire
Three CEOs forced out in under a decade, a fourth departure that the filing called voluntary, more than $83M in severance, an $8.8B write-down. The revolving door wasn't a run of bad leaders. It was the same dysfunctional board making the same hire, then firing it, then doing it again.
8 min
The Succession Question · Decision Forks
HP Kept Hiring CEOs to Fix It. The Thing They Were Fixing Was Its Soul.
After its founders, HP burned through five CEOs in sixteen years - two forced out, one in eleven months - chasing a single transformational thesis. The 2015 split wasn't a triumph. It was the board admitting no one person could carry both halves of the legacy.
8 min