Financial Accounting Blog

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard, urged investors to re-evaluate HP's stock price especially in comparison to IBM and Dell. Her argument revolves around analysts believing HP's stock is riskier than it actually is, and that IBM and Dell are actually riskier investments in the long run.
Fiorina does have some grounds for complaining about HP's stock market performance. Over the past year, HP has managed to turn around its PC and server businesses from big losers to mild gainers, while its imaging and printing unit continued to pile up cash. In addition, HP has not lost the drastic amounts of share to rivals that some predicted following its acquisition of Compaq. But, in the past 52 weeks, investors have not rewarded HP at all, keeping its shares flat, while Dell and IBM shares are up more than 10 percent.