Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. detailed some short-term pain it foresees when two previously announced spinoffs close in the coming fiscal year, but said its remaining businesses should grow slightly regardless.

The company, created a year ago from the breakup of the former Hewlett-Packard Co., on Tuesday reaffirmed its financial expectations for the fiscal year ending this month at a meeting with analysts in San Francisco. It also presented financial projections for the coming 12-month period if its current structure were unchanged.

Those predictions, which include a slight revenue decline, are in line with Wall Street expectations. But the company's structure is changing dramatically because of moves by Chief Executive Meg Whitman to further narrow the company's focus.

In May, HP Enterprise struck a deal to spin off a computer services business that employs about 100,000 people and merge it with operations of Computer Sciences Corp. In September, the company announced another deal to spin off and merge most of its 12,000-employee software operations with Britain's Micro Focus International PLC.

Those deals are set to close in fiscal 2017. When that happens, the two former operations will stop generating revenue while incurring big one-time costs, said Tim Stonesifer, HP Enterprise's executive vice president and chief financial officer.

As a result, HP Enterprise expects to report adjusted per-share profit for fiscal 2017 of about $1.45 to $1.55. That compares with per-share figures of $2.00 to $2.10 if those operations weren't spun off, Mr. Stonesifer said.

The company's cash flow also will suffer because of a $2.5 billion payment to fund a pension plan associated with the services business. But HP Enterprise still expects to return about $3 billion to shareholders in fiscal 2017 in the form of dividends and stock repurchases, similar to the amount projected for the current year.

Ms. Whitman's strategy of spinoffs leaves the company dependent for much of its revenue on sales of server systems, networking and storage devices. She and other executives said those businesses are doing well and benefiting from greater attention from top management and the company's sales force. Revenue from remaining HP Enterprise businesses should grow slightly in fiscal 2017, the company said.

She indicated that HP Enterprise won't shrink much more, at least as far as those hardware business are concerned. "We think the portfolio we have needs to be here and needs to stay together," Ms. Whitman said in response to a question Tuesday.

In an interview last month. Ms. Whitman estimated that the company's workforce will have declined after the spinoff transactions by some 50,000 to 60,000 employees from about 210,000 a year ago, when HP Enterprise was formed.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 18, 2016 21:45 ET (01:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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