HP Inc. (NYSE:HPQ) Credit Suisse 26th Annual Technology Conference November 30, 2022 10:15 AM ET

Company Participants

Marie Myers - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Shannon Cross - Credit Suisse

Shannon Cross

Okay, everyone. Thank you for joining us. My name is Shannon Cross, and I'm the IT Hardware analyst, here at Credit Suisse. And I'm now joined by the CFO of HP, Marie Myers. Prior to getting started and in preparation for my future IR career, HP has asked me to read the following.

Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, which are further described in HP's SEC filings, including HP Form 10-K and 10-Q. HP assumes no obligation and does not tend to update any such forward-looking statements. For more information, please visit HP's Investor Relations Web page at investor.hp.com.

So, with that, maybe Marie, would you like to talk a little bit about yourself, introduce yourself and let us know what you've done at HP over the last several years? You became acting CFO in 2020 and actual CFO in 2021.

Marie Myers

Yes, no, thanks, and great to be here this morning, and thank you, Shannon, for the opportunity. And yes, so I've had a long history at HP. Been with the company, and actually before that, with Compaq, for about almost 25 years in a variety of finance roles. And I actually left, did a startup, and came back. And came back to do the transformation program and became the CFO as well, so, delighted to be here this morning, and really looking forward to the session.

Shannon Cross

Well, the -- your background with transformation is appropriate given what you just recently announced with the Future Ready Transformation.

Marie Myers

Yes.

Shannon Cross

I'm going to have to memorize that.

Marie Myers

Yes, get the words in there, yes.

Shannon Cross

We'll hear about that, I'm sure, a lot over the next few years.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q - Shannon Cross

What were the key drivers behind that decision, and what are your key points that you're trying to actually get to, markers that we can watch along the way?

Marie Myers

Sure, no, thanks for that. And, yes, we just call it FRT to make it easy, Shannon. So, Future Ready Transformation, I actually came back about three years ago to lead the prior transformation, it was really successful. We just closed it out last quarter actually; exceeded our goals. We had planned to deliver about $1 billion; we delivered about $1.2 billion. And given we're coming to the end of that transformation, we looked at what we'd accomplished and really saw the opportunity to continue to grow even more beyond that. So, that was really the impetus for launching what we call, Future Ready. Future Ready really has a couple of goals; it's building off the original program. So, we laid a lot of digital infrastructure the first time around. And so now, we see that opportunity truly grow and help out growth businesses, frankly, really drive that digital investment. And then the second thing is, a company as large as HP, there's just always an opportunity to take out cost, so -- and drive efficiency. So, really, the program is anchored around both those different dimensions. And I would say we kind of broke it up into three key pillars. And the first one was really around optimizing our portfolio. If you think about the last couple of years, it's interesting, we added a lot of SKUs to the portfolio because -- just because of the sort of constraints that we've had out there, we found our portfolio got a lot more complicated.

So, we see an opportunity to actually streamline a lot of SKUs. We laid the groundwork for a very large ERP implementation during the first phase of the program. We completed our S/4HANA. Now, we have the digital infrastructure in place from ERP. So, there's a lot of opportunity to continue to really enable our contractual business because it's a very different delivery model than our sort of product business. So, we're building out those capabilities. And finally, we actually, it was -- and I'm really glad we did this. We started optimizing our real estate footprint before the pandemic, and there's just more opportunity to continue to do that. So, as you can see lots of different pillars. And we are actually anticipating we'll deliver about $1.4 billion in savings. So, it's a rich program. I think it will drive the company to its next stage.

Shannon Cross

How much of the $1.4 billion will be actually see fall through to the bottom line? Because there's an argument in some of the more, we'll use the word, "Mature" tech companies, that you become serial restructurers to sort of shrinking, and shrinking, and shrinking as the business shrinks, so how can you position the company to at least stabilize, and maybe grow, and then also see some of the benefits fall through?

Marie Myers

Yes, so terms of just the benefits, so if you look at the guide for the year, we've actually got those benefits in the guide. But I think what's really the way we're thinking about it is really we'll see the flow-through in the outer years, and that'll be driven very much by the growth businesses because these growth businesses, Shannon, really need a different type of operating infrastructure. The product business has a whole different operating model, say, to services and subscription. And if you look at our growth businesses, those models are really services and subscription. So, we've got to make those investments, and really re-pivot the company towards delivering success in those areas.

And then, on the small side, actually the company is growing, just to kind of get it out there for everybody. We've actually grown, and if you look at pre-pandemic HP and post-pandemic, we've added $4 billion on the top line, and over $1 billion on the bottom line. So, I think our trajectory is around being a more efficient company, a more agile company, and continuing to really drive OP -- grow OP dollars in the segment over time. And so, the expectation is we'll see the flow-through in the outer years.

Shannon Cross

Maybe can you talk a bit about the growth pillars, and maybe business-by-business, starting the one that you, because it's always good, starting -- I guess peripherals would be the biggest, right?

Marie Myers

Yes.

Shannon Cross

So, from peripherals, but then of the other four, what are the key drivers, because sometimes they get subsumed within the greater business?

Marie Myers

Yes. And I think that's the lessons we've learned, is that the company, when you've got a company that's a $60 billion-plus revenue company these growth businesses can get not lost, but it's difficult to see those businesses flourish. So, one of the intentional decisions we made at our last Securities Analyst Meeting was to call out these growth businesses, and we've kind of called them, The Five Key Growth Areas, really interesting name, like you've -- difficult one to wrap your head around. But these five key growth areas really have -- they've delivered double-digit growth in terms of revenue. Just this last year, they delivered $11 billion. And we expect that collectively they'll continue to drive double-digit growth going into '23.

So, they're not just attractive on the top line, but they're incredibly attractive on the bottom line because they have much richer margin profiles than our core. And to give you just a flavor of what they look like, I think you mentioned peripherals, Shannon. And we just did an acquisition of a company called, Poly, that I know we'll talk about. And Poly clearly sits right inside the sweet spot of our growth vectors. Peripherals is just a really large TAM, it's 100-plus, and it's growing single-digit, so very attractive TAM. And it's one where we see just enormous opportunity to leverage the core with the peripherals. So, that's just one example. A couple of other ones I'll just call out, we see Instant Ink is one area in terms of consumer subscriptions.

So, we see these models not just in terms of the product, but it's in the type of business, right. So, we're getting into subscriptions. And that business now is a very substantive subscription business. We've got a platform that we can actually leverage off and drive other consumer services. For example, we launched Instant Paper. So, it makes sense if you've got nonstop ink at home, you don't want to run out of paper either. So, we see the opportunity there to really pivot and continue to add these services to the platforms. And then, obviously, one big area that we're really interested in is workplace services and workforce services. And we recently reorganized, even inside our company, to get much more vigilant around the focus around services end-to-end.

So, there are a couple of examples of the growth categories more to come. And certainly we've been giving, I think, investors and many of you more transparency. So, we've talked in our earnings calls, we typically give an indication of how those businesses are performing, and a few more deeper insights into what we expect they'll deliver in the future years.

Shannon Cross

Do you think -- do you see, from a consumer perspective, an opportunity maybe some day where I can pay $50 a month and I'll get my printer, my PC, my supplies, my paper, my warranty, all of that?

Marie Myers

Yes, absolutely, Shannon. I think in the near-future is what I would say. And we're definitely heading that way. I think what we've seen -- during the pandemic I think we saw the rise of what we call the prosumer where you're -- where we're working from home and we wanted to have everything in a box come to the house. And I think a lot of CIOs really struggled with how to get it all to an employee. And certainly I think that was one of the biggest drivers for us with the acquisition of Poly, we just saw that opportunity for really giving a CIO an end-to-end capability. Many -- and I actually ran IT at HP when I came back, that was right at the early stage of the pandemic. And I had to enable 55,000 around the world to basically work from home in less than 10 days.

And one of the biggest struggles I remember being -- working -- running the IT department was how to get people enabled. So, we had to literally deliver all the laptops, but what we did is we couldn't source peripherals. And so, peripherals became a personal decision. Today, CIOs don't want that, they want it all pulled back. So, to your point, I think being able to deliver it all in a box on a service subscription model is really a -- is where the future is going.

Shannon Cross

Great. Maybe we can pivot over to the printing business, [technical difficulty] printing business from the standpoint of supplies, I think there has been a lot of questions about why supplies are down 10% plus what's really going on there? Is this re-categorization that's a word, from maybe what was supplies to maybe a little bit more on the hardware because you have -- now have your all-in-one printers in that, just -- or, maybe it's because you have got Instant Ink? I am trying to understanding why there has been such a contraction and it was so abrupt. And then maybe at the end of this we set it at different level that will be more sustainable over time?

Marie Myers

Yes, so let me -- you said lot there. So, let me on pack -- first, on pack how to think about the business. I think first and foremost, we are intentionally shifting our business model, right? So, we have launched HP+. And the objective there on HP+ is obviously to get a lot more of the profit upfront, but also, it actually an enabler of pulling through Instant Ink. And today, we ship more than 50% of our units are HP+. What's been really interesting during the pandemic is just the growth of Instant Ink and the sort of takeaways that we saw. And clearly, customers really appreciate that opportunity to never run out of ink. And they like that model. And then, how does this all sort of tie together with supplies? I think the key here and the way to think about supplies is we have really been able to change and shift I think the model to that Instant Ink.

We see more of that going forward. But in terms of what we have seen in the last couple of quarters, I would say that supplies usage rights in line with what we have seen from a model perspective. But during the pandemic, we did see a shift terms of customer behavior patterns. And I think some of the economic issues that we have had in the macro most recently certainly that is what we saw in terms of the correction on supplies.

This last quarter though, we did our supplies channel inventory really fall back into really acceptable ranges. So, I think our thought process here is that we will see supplies return back to single digit in the latter half of the year while we continue to sort of see the macro work its way through the system. So, I think overall given what we have done relative to pricing, we have been very successful in pricing. We have been very successful in share. We have been very successful in managing the ream ends. So, overall, that's resulted in sort of a better ASP for us relatively speaking. But I think the key here is what does it like for the rest of the year? We do expect to return back to single digit, Shannon, in the back-half.

Shannon Cross

And I guess the interesting thing too if you look at the printing margin even though supplies have been -- it obviously historically was the margin followed supplies. But here we have had supplies under lot of pressure and you had all-time high margin. So, that would lead one to believe that a big driver of that is ASP, but is there -- of the printers itself, is there something else that's driving a better margin?

Marie Myers

We have been -- I think we have very durable pricing on the hardware. We have had supply constraints on commercial. As a result of that, we have been able to really command better pricing. So, that's played through. And then secondly, we have seen the benefits of some of the initiatives, the transformation, the OpEx cut. We have managed our OpEx I think very prudently. And that's all flown through too as well.

So, I would say that we do expect going into '23, we will see a little bit more pressure particularly on consumer. The yen is at an all time low as you well actually know. We expect that some of our Japanese competitors will continue to get more active and put more pricing pressure on consumer in '23. But overall, I expect we will stay in 16 -- in long term range of 16 to 18. The last couple of quarters we have been well above the range because of those constraints. But I think in '23 given where consumer is going, we will be back in the range.

Shannon Cross

So, is it fair to think that during the downturn -- sorry, not the downturn, the pandemic with the shift, you had higher ASPs on the printers. And you are basically saying that some of that is sustainable I guess on the commercial side. So, I guess what keeps that sustainable versus expecting to see some ASP reduction within consumer? Because it would seem to me that when there is more supply and the Japanese all have their yen to play with that they might in turn be a bit more aggressive on the corporate side?

Marie Myers

Yes, I would say we haven't seen it on the corporate side to be honest with you yet. But, we are already thinking ahead of that and really addressing the underlying cost structure of the core through the Future Ready program. And the other piece is just the growth businesses, right. So part of the reason why we called out the growth categories in both personal systems and in the print business to really give line of sight to the fact that these businesses are not only going to deliver on the top line, they have got a better margin profile, Shannon. So, over time it's just natural that they are going to contribute and support -- back to supporting their ASPs, they just have a much better flow through.

Shannon Cross

And then one other, you flexed your OpEx during -- which made sense.

Marie Myers

Pandemic, yes.

Shannon Cross

Because you had so much money coming through because everybody went out and bought a new PC during the pandemic, was a large portion of the expense actually on the printing side and not on the PC side?

Marie Myers

Yes, it was on both actually. What we did do consciously I might add was we accelerated investments. And we took opportunity that came by our way. So, we soared and we did invest. If you look at our R&D investments even on personal systems, we heavily invested during the pandemic because we knew it wouldn't last forever. So, we took advantage of that. And that, I think gave us -- it sort of accelerated a lot what we did around the growth areas because we had time to not only invest but to really strategically start to pivot the company.

And also, we invested in that digital infrastructure that was something that we sort of ran through to complete during the pandemic. I must admit very difficult to wrap up ERP during middle of COVID remotely. But, we did it.

Shannon Cross

The PC pricing maybe we can talk about that a little bit. I think during the most recent call the expectation is basically that once you clear the inventory out of the channel, PC's pricing will improve again. And I guess I struggle with how once you take prices down in the economy that we are in with sufficient supply, how you actually get it to go the other direction? Unless I mean there is currency and there is other things that could play in. But it seems like a hard one to do.

Marie Myers

I think I recognize it's definitely what we are seeing it's in the consumer space where we are seeing heavily more promotional activity. I wouldn't characterize commercial in the same regards. I think you got to differentiate between the two categories. And if you think about it once we bleed through the inventory, which we expect will take approximately six months about two quarters. There is some deflationary pressure on commodities. So, you can imagine as you bleed through that inventory, you are able to push back into the channel -- move back in the channel inventory that's got a better pricing profile because you have got the opportunity to take advantage of deflationary. That's one way to think about it. The second thing is you have seen us consciously continue to move our mix towards commercial in premium categories. These categories tend to be more pricing elastic.

So, we expect that that will provide support for ASPs. And then, third you and I were both talking about poly and peripherals, clearly that's going to have an impact as well. And that's going to be a much larger part of that portfolio going into '23. And then finally, yes, we do expect to see the benefits of our Future Ready transformation program show up probably more clearly in back-half, which is right when if you think that inventory bleeds off in the first-half, all of that will contribute to really driving a better margin profile for personal systems in the back-half.

Shannon Cross

What are you using right now? I know -- I think you said it was down 10% for PC in 2023. How do you stress test the model? Because I mean there are -- having discussions people are like well, maybe it's 240 because nobody really knows and people bought an awful lot of PCs during the pandemic. I know we recently took our numbers down to 275. But again, I think 2023 is a big question mark. If PCs go down to say $240 million units, what type of steps can you make? Or, is the Future Ready transformation enough to get you to acceptable profitability?

Marie Myers

Yes. No, I mean our guidance range honestly we had probably the largest range we had in a while. And the intention of that range was at least to calibrate the events that we knew at the time, put it that way. So, with respect to the units, I mean I can't -- I don't have a crystal ball. I can't tell you if it's 240 or whatever in '23. But I think we have built our guidance based on a 10% reduction.

So, that's the way we are thinking about the market. We believe that Future Ready will give us at least the platform to be able to pivot the business pretty quickly. And I think we have shown that here just in the last six months. If you look at what we have done on operating expenses, we have taken out almost I think more than $800 million in the last year. So, we know that we have got the levers that we can pull to help adjust the model where we need to. But certainly, I think at this point in time the guidance range we have built is really predicated around the 10% reduction in the business.

Shannon Cross

If you think about your cost base maybe net of I mean COGS you have engineering and things in there. But in general, how do you think about fixed versus variable costs within it? And I mean I would assume, during the pandemic, you flexed up your variable costs pretty significantly.

Marie Myers

Yes.

Shannon Cross

So, but, overall, where are you at, at this point, and where do you expect to be maybe when you get through the Future Ready? I'll just call it FRT?

Marie Myers

Yes, FRT is a lot easier. So, I'd say that Future Ready, the program itself is focused on both COGs and OpEx. So, we've got levers in both those places that we can absolutely pull. As I said, we've taken about $800 million out. A lot of that, to your point, was probably variable expense. So, we've seen -- we made some of those investments, as I mentioned, in R&D, we accelerated some of those spaces. We've also obviously looked at things like variable compensation, those things go up, and they sort of go up and down depending on business performance. And I would say that in a company as big as HP there's just always an opportunity to continue to take out cost.

And so, the areas that we look at, as I mentioned, we had three pillars in Future Ready. The portfolio simplification, it's not a small one. I mean, we do have this -- if you think about the SKU complexity in itself, and where does that show up? I mean it probably shows up in a few different places, and there's a lot of pull-through cost that goes with simplifying your portfolio. And we know, as a company, that complexity is our friend sometimes. So, we've got an opportunity, I think, to drive a lot more simplification there. And then in terms of just operational efficiency, I mentioned that we invested heavily when we had the opportunity, in the pandemic, to get that digital infrastructure in place.

There's another layer of transformation around automation that we can drive, and that really will hit at efficiency. So -- and that can show up in really hitting at your fixed cost structure as well. So, that's why I'm saying, there's opportunity across the different spaces, and it will take time, Shannon. But I think we've laid a lot of the foundation to be able to pivot.

Shannon Cross

Is there an opportunity to take HP.com and drive incremental sales, almost more inside sales or direct so that you're not utilizing the channel as much, although any channel people, they still have the channel because that's -- I remember once VJ was speaking at a conference and he made some comment about the channel and it caused a big uproar, so --

Marie Myers

Yes, it erupted. Yes, because we don't need to do that here, you know.

Shannon Cross

Yes, no, exactly. But just in general, I've heard it from a number of companies actually that they're looking at how they can take their digital --

Marie Myers

Digital platforms from --

Shannon Cross

Platform, exactly.

Marie Myers

Well, look, there's no doubt the pandemic accelerated digital transformation and accelerated the way -- I'm assuming you probably buy everything online today. I buy a bit online myself, except for Black Friday, when I did go to do shopping, that --

Shannon Cross

You were brave.

Marie Myers

Yes, I was brave. I decided to try it once. But I would say back to our own business and how we're thinking about the digital platforms, clearly there's a good reason why invested so heavily in the pandemic in that digital infrastructure, we see an opportunity there. And if you think about the model shift we're doing in terms of subscription; subscription naturally plays with digital. So, you can kind of see that intersection working, and it's -- that's where we're heading, Shannon. I mean, it's a clear opportunity, but let's not forget the channel. The channel is incredibly important. And we do believe there is a way to make it all work together, that we can get the channel engaged in this model.

And we've seen it in Instant Ink, to be frank. We built a model where, I think that they are -- the channel is participating and seeing opportunity. So, that's how we're thinking about it. And clearly as we think about the growth categories, it's not just the categories themselves but how you enable that value through your digital platforms and through ecommerce.

Shannon Cross

Are there incremental -- I mean, you kind of made your bet with Poly at this point, I think --

Marie Myers

Yes.

Shannon Cross

From a late -- and we'll get to balance sheet, and from that standpoint. Are there incremental areas maybe that are smaller? I mean you did HyperX, that to really target and grow or are you pretty satisfied with the portfolio at this point and this is where we'll be for the next few years?

Marie Myers

That's an interesting question, Shannon. I -- look, I'd say we're probably never satisfied. But certainly we've got a lot to do in the next 12 months is the way I would look at it. I mean, in terms of where we're at with Poly, we've just actually closed the deal. We were early; I think we got it done relatively quickly. But we expect that we'll be heavily involved in driving the hard integration here, in '23. So, that's going to consume a lot of our time. I think it's important also to think about just where we're at relative to leverage. I think that's another driver of how we think about it. But we're always looking for accretive -- value-accretive opportunities. Clearly, peripherals is a big bet, and it's one that we're focused on, here in '23.

Shannon Cross

And I guess getting to cash flow and balance sheet, you recently slowed your share repurchase program. I think you said you'll keep it at the level at least of offsetting dilution.

Marie Myers

Correct, yes.

Shannon Cross

But that's obviously a substantial change [technical difficulty] from $1 billion a quarter. What are the -- what should we watch for to determine when you might restart the program? I mean, is this a short-term, "We don't know what the next couple of quarters are going to look like," situation? Or is this more, "We levered up to buy Poly, and given the state of everything of everything and all the restructuring charges, we're going to have to undergo," -- it's a longer-time kind of shift?

Marie Myers

The way I'd -- I'd say we very much haven't changed our strategy. We're still absolutely committed to return to shareholders 100% of our free cash flow. Just given where we're at relative to our current leverage, we have said, I think multiple times, we wanted to stay in the range of 1.5X to 2X as a result of that and where we're at, and given the current macro, we think it's prudent at this point in time to have just a modest program, to your point, that offsets dilution. So, that's the way we're thinking about share repurchasing at least here for the short-term. But as I've -- we remain absolutely committed to returning 100% of our free cash flow to shareholders over time.

Shannon Cross

And in terms of drivers of free cash flow, working capital is certainly -- I mean, namely inventory has been a big use of cash over the pandemic.

Marie Myers

The pandemic, yes.

Shannon Cross

How are you thinking about inventory? Because it used to be we had just-in-time, and now they're talking about just-in-case, and maybe go back to just-in-time.

Marie Myers

Yes.

Shannon Cross

I don't know. I can't follow it. I'm just wondering how things have shifted, and if we can ever get back to maybe a leaner inventory outlook?

Marie Myers

Yes, no, I think the pandemic taught us all a really valuable lesson around resilience, which I think where we went to was the just-in-case model that you described. And it was just so difficult, most commodities were very scarce. I think we're starting to come out of that, the whole pressure on commodities has eased up. I would say though we've still got some challenges in our commercial print space. But overall, you've probably seen, just in the last quarter, we took a big stair-step reduction in our owned inventory, particularly in the Personal Systems side of the house. And it is our intention to continue to drive that.

As we see the commodity pressure really ease up and we don't see the component scarcity that we've seen over the last 24 months, we expect to continue to drive substantial reductions, and to get back to what I kind of describe as pre-pandemic levels, but noting that the business is much larger. So, you probably can't do a line-by-line comparison. But we're a much bigger business today, as I mentioned $4 billion bigger on the top line. So, you've got to take that into account relative to our owned inventory. But we're absolutely focused on managing that much more efficiently going forward, and particularly in light of the environment where commodities are just more available today.

Shannon Cross

How much of the -- I think at one point you had an awful lot of PCs probably on promotions.

Marie Myers

On promotions, yes.

Shannon Cross

Yes, it's -- how is that --

Marie Myers

Well, if you think one of the drivers was that, and I'm not sure folks appreciate, was we had a -- we were able to use the train that went up through China from Chongqing, and because of the Russian situation and Ukraine, we had to pause utilization of the train which was a big deal. So, that meant we had to put a lot more inventory on the ocean, and that was one of the driver -- just one of the drivers. And I would also add that, today though, the ocean times have improved. We've started to see transit times improve, shipping rates, logistics rates have somewhat improved. So, we're seeing all of those benefits, I expect that will continue in '23. But certainly as this point in time we've definitely had to use -- we've used more ocean because it was also more economical, frankly, as well.

Shannon Cross

So, I guess, maybe to end it here, when you look forward in the next couple of years, how do you see HP -- I mean, we've talked about the FRT, but how do you see HP shifting and changing, and if you look back at yourself two years ago, or whatever, in the future, where do you think the company will be? Because it's -- it's so different than it was pre-pandemic in terms of the -- what we learned about PCs, and maybe some of the secular challenges on printing, and then you've got 3D printing, which I firmly believe will be something at some point, it's just -- it's like every time it gets to the inflection point there is a war, there is a -- I mean, it's kind of been kind of crazy on that industry. So, maybe if you can look forward, and give us in your crystal ball what we should expect?

Marie Myers

Yes, as you've said, I think the company has changed an awful lot through the pandemic. We definitely continue to believe that the hybrid trends that we've seen, those secular trends have shifted and are going to continue to be a big impact for the future, so. And if you think about our business, we're just so well-positioned with our portfolio today, particularly now with peripherals as well, we believe hybrid is the way of the future, and is going to be the way people will work. So, I think we are incredibly well-positioned as a company, not only in terms of the trend, but in terms of driving growth in these areas that are going to be just far more important, and drive the way people really work. I mean I don't think folks we are going to see the same stall of working for -- you know, what we saw pre-pandemic, today people are really comfortable working at home and working in the office. So, I think that HP is incredibly well-positioned to take advantage of hybrid.

Shannon Cross

Great. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Marie Myers

Thank you.

Shannon Cross

And thank you everyone for joining us.

Marie Myers

Thank you. Thanks, Shannon. It's great to be here.

Shannon Cross

Yes, absolutely.