HP’s missteps culminate in loss of 27,000 jobs

In related moves, Whitman is changing the leadership at HP’s recently acquired Autonomy division, which makes software that finds and analyzes data within companies and government agencies.

Bill Veghte, HP’s chief strategy officer, is replacing Autonomy founder Mike Lynch in an effort to boost the division’s financial performance. The shake-up is likely to amplify investor concern about whether HP blundered last year when it paid $11 billion for Autonomy. Apotheker announced the deal in August, just a month before he was fired.

Whitman told analysts she still believes the Autonomy acquisition was smart.

The company earned $1.6 billion, or 80 cents per share, in February through April. That’s 31 percent less than the $2.3 billion, or $1.05 per share, it earned a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, the company said it earned 98 cents per share. That topped the average estimate of 91 cents per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Revenue fell 3 percent to $30.7 billion, but that was about $800 million above analysts’ average projection.

To pay for severance and other restructuring costs, HP expects to take a pre-tax charge of about $1.7 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends in October. About $1 billon of those charges will come in the current quarter, which ends in July. HP expects to record $1.8 billion more in charges through fiscal 2014.

The company also expects to register a charge of $1.2 billion to account for the declining value of the Compaq computer brand. HP bought Compaq a decade ago in a deal that many shareholders, including the son of a company founder William Hewlett, tried to block.

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