HP Inc. ($HPQ)

All right. Perfect. Good morning, everyone. I guess before we get started, I got to read the disclosure statements. So today's discussions include 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 intend to update any such forward-looking statements. For more information, please refer to HP's Investor Relations web page at investor.hp.com. I did a great job with that.

Thank you, Amit.

Perfect. Well, good morning, everyone. Thanks a lot for being here. We are delighted to have with us, Karen Parkhill, CFO of HP Inc. We're going to keep this fairly interactive for the next 40 minutes. If anyone has questions, raise your hand. I guess maybe just to kick this off, Karen, you folks reported numbers last week. It was a lot better than expected. I think from a -- at least from the buy side perspective or sell-side perspective. The $2.8 billion to $3 billion free cash flow is, at least to me, stand out. But maybe just spend a little bit of time on just recapping earnings and touching on what you folks are embedding and thinking about the back half of the year from a PC demand perspective? And then we'll take it for some more questions from there.

Yes. Perfect. Thanks, Amit. I'm thrilled to be here. Yes, we did have a really strong quarter. We're pleased with the performance there. We did announce earnings significantly better than expected, above our guidance range and with over 20% year-over-year growth. We also guided -- raised our guide for the year. Last quarter, at the early stages of the memory cycle, we were prudently pointing to the low end of our range. And now with a strong execution in the second quarter, we believe that we'll be solidly within our range of $2.90 to $3.10 for the full year. As we think about the inputs to our guide, particularly for the back half, NPS, we do -- we are aligned with industry experts out there expecting TAM units to be down in the high teens for the rest of the calendar year. Amidst that, we expect to still grow revenue, though at a slightly moderated pace from what you saw this past quarter. And part of that is due to the fact that we had -- we believe we had some pull-ins in the quarter. But we're focused on from a margin perspective, we believe we've got continued rising memory and storage and input costs though at a slightly lesser rate than what we had seen in the second quarter. And we're focused on our mitigation playbook against that. But we do expect margins to be below our long-term range for the back half NPS. We did have the benefit in the first half of lower cost of inventory that was working its way in through the P&L, and we'll lose that benefit. But we are gaining traction on our on our mitigation playbook and you saw that in spades in the second quarter.

Perfect. And I have a bunch of questions I want to ask you about just the back half in mortgages and everything else, but there's also a fair amount of announcement at Computex with NVIDIA with Spark, and I think HP announced a couple of laptops that are going to come out and desktop. So then maybe spend a minute or 2 on just kind of what did those announcements entail and what kind of HP product looks like from that basis.

Yes. So we think the announcement yesterday really strengthened our thesis all along that more and more AI is going to be done at the edge. It is safer, more secure. It's a lot cheaper doesn't use the tokens that you need for the cloud. It's better for the environment. And so we just think more and more is going to be done at the edge. And NVIDIA's announcement of the Windows platform for AI locally, RTX Spark is exactly just that. So along with that, we did say that we're going to be introducing laptops, desktops and workstations that can run this platform locally for customers and coming soon.

Perfect. I'll try to ask a look about pricing on that, but he sees that's a little bit more TBD. But we'll wait for that.

Pricing is TBD.

Karen, if I just go back to the earnings call for a minute, I think one of the things that surprised a lot of folks -- one of the questions I got a fair amount was just you folks had talked about, hey, PSG, the print PC, the PC side, operating margin will kind of trough out in and it should start to improve from that as you go into the next year. Maybe just dig into like what sort of visibility or what are you seeing that gives you conviction that margins will trough in Q4 and start to improve? Just talk about the puts and takes around that?

Yes. So part of it is what I already talked about with the benefit of the lower cost of inventory with that tapering off and continued rising memory costs. Of course, we're working our strong playbook to mitigate. If we can do better, we will. But we've been focused on prudently guiding and we believe at this point that our margins will be below our long-term range for the back half, reaching a trough in Q4 and improving sequentially into FY '27 from there. What gives us confidence is that our playbook is continuing to take traction. We'll have the full year run rate of the actions that we've taken this year to help us next year. And we're also continuing to see a higher mix of premium products, particularly AI PCs. We talked about the fact that AI PCs were up from 35% of our shipments the prior quarter to 44% this quarter. And we expect them to be 60% to 70% of our shipments as we look ahead into FY '27.

Maybe spend a bit of time on just the cost mitigation efforts, the playbook that you folks have. What are the different tools that you are focused on to exercise to offset the memory headwinds that we have right now?

Yes. So there's been 4 pillars to our mitigation efforts on the memory and storage challenges. The first is that we're focused on securing the supply that we need to ensure that we can deliver on the demand that we've got. And we feel really confident that we've got that strong supply through both our long-term relationships and the fact that we've got strong relationships with our customers. The second is working to strengthen our operations from the supply chain side, all the way to the front line, to enable us to align the supply that we've got with the demand that we have and reconfigure devices to shape what the customer really needs. And we've been improving our processes to align that better, and we've been introducing new tools to align that better. And that started to take a good traction toward the end of last quarter, and we expect that to continue. The third is to reduce costs everywhere that we can. And we've been driving our AI transformation across the company. We also announced an early retirement program that's friendly to employees last quarter. We saw some traction on that. And then the fourth is repricing. And clearly, we've been focused on increasing prices to compensate for the remainder of what we can't handle through our other actions. And that's taking good traction, too.

Got it. And just on the memory side, some companies will come and say, hey, we have LTAs in place that give us visibility on this on a fairly extended basis. How do you folks look at LTAs and how much kind of visibility do you have on components and the pricing that you have to pay for these things?

Yes. So we have these long-term agreements that give us the assurance of the supply and give us confidence that we've got the supply that we need. And that gives us the confidence that we have the supply we need for this year, and we're already working on next year. In terms of pricing with those agreements, we focus on locking in the price a quarter in advance so that we at least know how we should be pricing for our customers, but we don't want to lock it in so far in advance that we're at a disadvantage when prices stabilize and start to move down.

That will be a fascinating time and they start to move down at some point. I'd say, I think a lot of the discussions I have, the focus has always been on what's happening with memory, what are the mitigation efforts, how you folks are dealing with it. as you were talking about all these mitigation efforts, a lot of them seem to be structural versus transient if that's the way to define them. And so I'm just wondering like to the extent the scenario plays out that memory just flattens out, maybe not even go down, how should we think about the longer-term PSG margins? And if some of these initiatives are more structural then, is there a different framework to think about them as you go forward versus what you folks have talked about in the past?

Yes. So you're right that much of this mitigation is structural. And our goal and focus is to be improving our margins over time. Right now, we've given you the near-term view that we expect them to be under the long-term range in the back half and improve from there into FY '27. But we'll continue to focus on improving. We're not going to change our long-term range at this point yet. But over time, we're going to focus on continuing to improve.

Got it. And then just from a customer perspective, right? I mean price of PCs and other things have gone up pretty dramatically in the last 6 months. What are you seeing from your enterprise channel partner perspective in terms of their purchasing behavior? And I think one of the fears everyone has is things are good so far, but how much of this is really a pull-in versus it manage just better.

Yes. So we do recognize that there's some elasticity here. And that's one of the reasons why we're aligned with the industry experts that we expect unit volume to decline. That said, we're very focused on the premium side here, and there is less price sensitivity when you're talking about premium devices, particularly AI PCs, and we're increasing our shipments on that.

On the competitive side, right, how is competition kind of stacking up in the PC world right now? And I imagine the element of maybe some of the smaller companies that are subscale are not playing as much. So I'd love to just guess what the competitive environment looks like at on PCs.

Yes. Clearly, we've got some good competitors that we watch closely, and our focus is on gaining share against those competitors. We did gain share in the premium space last quarter, and we intend to regain share overall as we look ahead. And part of that was making sure we worked out the kinks that I talked about of matching our demand and supply and putting in place new processes and tools, which we have in place now. But -- it's a competitive environment, but we believe we're incredibly well positioned.

On AI PCs, I'd love to just kind of understand how you folks look at it from HP's perspective. And to the extent you see -- I think you've talked about well over to, I think, at this point of PCs that you ship are AI-enabled. Just talk about like what is driving the growth? Because I think a lot of times we will sit back and say, like, what is the application that makes you want to go and do this maybe RT Spark would be one over time. But just like when you hear customers say you want to buy AI PC, what are the reasons they want to choose it for?

Yes. I would say a couple of years ago, when we were talking to CIOs about refreshing their fleet with AI PCs, it was to stay ahead of what is to come. And the reality is what is to come is now here and just gaining momentum every day. There are more and more applications being developed to be used at the edge. We've been working with hundreds of ISVs to enable that. and you're seeing things like the NVIDIA announcement yesterday. So there will be a future where there will be significantly more AI applications done at the edge, and we intend to lead there. There will always be a need for cloud, but there's a growing need now for AI at the edge at the same time.

Got it. And do you find customers that are adopting it are almost more wanting to future-proof the fleet versus actually have use cases study for it?

There are use cases today. I'd say 2 years ago, it was future proofing. Today, there are use cases and they're growing. So some may view it as future-proofing because it is still growing, but there's plenty of use leases today.

Is the way to think -- in the past, you folks have talked about AI PCs have a better margin profile than traditional PCs. It's a higher ASP for sure, right? Is that still the case? Or is kind of memory inflation changed that equation a little bit? I'd love to just understand margin profile for AI PCs versus the rest of the fleet?

Yes. It is still the case. So AI PCs our premium products, they do carry higher price and they do have higher margin.

Any framework on how ASPs are in AI PCs versus traditional laptops because that's a nice level tailwind as well that you folks have.

Yes. So you've seen our ASPs increased quite a bit last quarter. We expect that to continue. And part of that is the repricing that we're doing because of the higher input costs, and part of that is the mix shift to more premium products, which includes AI PCs.

Let's shift gears a bit on the print side. Last quarter, you guys had 18.2%, 18.3% margins on print. But I think the guides are said, "Hey, this will go back towards the lower end of the 16% to 19% range that you have longer term. Just talk a bit like what's happening in the print margin driving the downtick? And how much of that is perhaps a transient thing because of oil issues or Strait of Hormuz has been closed, versus something else? Just talk about just that margin trade on future.

Sure, sure. So we talked about our print margins being towards the lower end of our long-term range in Q3, and that's really due to 3 things. First, Q3 is typically our lowest quarter, less supplies and typically the lowest quarter. And so you've got that. That's not transient. But on top of that, we are dealing with a little bit of impact from the Middle East situation and the increased oil prices that we're working to mitigate. And so that, I would say, is definitely transient. And then third, we're focused on taking advantage of opportunities to place long-term profitable units that are a bit of a drag run as you place them, but are long-term profitable for us. And we're going to be placing more units in Q3 and likely Q4, too. While we said that our margins will be toward the low end of our range in Q3, we expect them to be back solidly in the range in Q4 and solidly in the range for the full year.

Got it. Perfect. What's the way to think about the supplies trajectory as you go forward? It's always been kind of I think, down low single digits, give or take. I'm curious like what's the right way to think about that model as you go forward?

Yes. We did see supplies roughly flat in the second quarter. And that's a lot due to the fact that we had increased pricing due to tariffs last year, and we're seeing the benefit of the couple of times that we increased price last year. But for this year, we do expect supplies to be down low single digits. That hasn't changed. And as we look longer term for supplies, we do expect, in constant currency, supplies to be down low to mid-single digits. But overall in print, we're focused on working to offset that drag for us through a keen focus on increasing subscriptions, which are good recurring revenue; increasing in industrial and 3D, which you've seen strong double-digit growth over several quarters in those key growth areas; and also focused on placing some more big tank units with profit upfront.

Perfect. I want to come back to that stuff in a bit. But on the hardware side, right, I mean, we've seen hardware units in print decline, I think, for several quarters. And you folks obviously are making the statement said, "Hey, we're going to go after a bit more hardware installations as you go forward." What's driving the decision to change that in the shift of wanting to place more hardware units versus historically?

Yes. So I don't know if there's really a shift. We look at opportunities to place the long-term profitable units, and we believe we've got some opportunities in the back half to do that. So that's what we're going to be focused on doing. Yes, it's been a competitive environment in print, and we're going to focus on doing the right, placing long-term profitable units and not just placing units for share's sake.

Got it. Karen, the competition and print, with on the hardware side has been a lot of the Japanese companies that I think have used the weaker yen to some degree to go after market share. Is that something to change a little bit as well, which perhaps is giving you a bit more of an entry way to say we can place these place incremental hardware units? Or...

It's still a competitive environment out there. Our Japanese competitors do still have the benefit of the yen that. That said, we're seeing some good trends out there. For example, the office decline that we had seen is improving, still declining but declining at a less rate. We're also seeing good stable usage trends of print out there. So we do believe that over time, we'll see more and more refresh happening.

Got it. And then on supplies, you kind of talked about, hey, there are 3 different growth vectors or things you can focus on like the big tank subscription and then 3D printing and the materials there. As you think of those kind of growth or piece of the bucket, are those generally margin accretive to your print margins or not? And then off the 3, which ones maybe is a way to think about how big these opportunities are in which terms are you more focused on right now?

Yes. So subscriptions, for example, or all-in subscriptions are a better long-term profitability than traditional unit placement. And so those are strong for us. We don't disclose our margins in Industrial and 3D, but we like the growth that we've been driving there, and we do think that helps offset. And we've -- you've seen us operate at the high end of our long-term ranges in print for many, many quarters. And while we're not planning to in the back half, you've seen us do that. And part of that is us continuing to take out structural costs in print and continue to operate as effectively and efficiently as we should.

Got it. And then subscription, by the way, I mean, it grew double digits last quarter in Q1, I think. Is -- was there something unique that helped you drive that kind of growth? Or is that sort of the right way to think about the subscription piece, at least as you go forward?

Yes. I mean we've been talking about subscription. We've been placing concerted effort on it. So we're really pleased with the growth we had there. Our subscription revenue was nearly $1 billion at the end of last fiscal year. So it shows you the strength of it. And all in, in particular, we've been marketing just in the U.S., and we're focused on taking that outside the U.S. So we've got plenty of opportunity to continue to grow there.

One of the things and maybe it's -- maybe a little bit more back on the PC side has been the ability to sell incremental accessories along with the PC sales that you folks have and poly certainly is a very big asset that you folks have there. Just talk about how is that kind of attach rate working as you go forward? And I would imagine it's very reasonable to assume that those incremental accessories, the headsets and everything else is much better margin than introduction margins are.

Yes, that's true. So our attached business is higher margin. And it is something that we've been focused on driving even more of, and we've got plenty of opportunity. If you look at our attach rate right now, for many of our customers, particularly enterprise customers, it's low. And we've been focused on attacking that. In fact, we've got a program with our sales force that's called Attach Attack. And it drives greater sales incentives for that. We've also changed some of our sales incentives to have our incentives focused not just on revenue dollars, but also on gross margin. And as we focus our front line on gross margin to that incents them to not just focus on the increased price that we need to drive, but also the mix and attach as part of that mix.

And does poly fit into that as well? Or is that attached more around keyboard and displays and all the dose?

Ploy fits into it, too. It all fits into it. Yes.

Is there a space poly had this kind of narrative about trying to go after office and making more video conferencing ready and huddle room, I think it was a product that they would have. Is that still a narrative that HP can leverage and focus on? Or is pose more of a on best thing?

No, absolutely. As we drive what we're calling the future of work, where we've been creating HPIQ platforms to enable all of our devices to talk seamlessly to each other and recognize things like when you walk into a room with your PC, it automatically knows who you are, pulls up your conference call, pulls up the presentation that you need. So it makes it very seamless for the worker.

Got it. One of the things you talked about when you talked about all the mitigation efforts and you folks also have like this AI-enabled savings program that HP is trying to go after. Just talk about the cost-reduction initiatives the company has and how big can this get on a gross on a net basis? And what are the different vectors you're looking at?

Yes. So we have been focused on driving some cost savings and transformation through AI enablement across our whole company. And we've been seeing good traction on that. Some examples are that in our supply chain, we've been scaling AI agents that enable us to automate order entry and returns. We also have a digital teammate for our channel partners where they can ask questions, they can get guidance on next steps. And we've been using AI in our software development area to help boost the productivity of our developers. And those are just 3 examples. We're working on scaling it quite a lot across the company. That program is intended to drive $1 billion in gross annual run rate savings by its third year by FY '28. We're well on track there. And we're excited about what AI can do for us from a productivity perspective inside HP.

Karen, just from my side, how does the AI enable savings program differ from the future ready? Because I think there's 2 different kind of buckets you talk about. And then maybe the second part of this is, when I think about $1 billion gross savings, is there a rule of thumb to think about what could be the net on that? Or is that more dependent on what does the top line look like?

Yes. Yes. So it differs from Future Ready. Future Ready was our program prior to this. And and Future Ready was before the ability of AI to enable us. And so that was really a lot focused on driving traditional type cost savings across the company, and we successfully exceeded our expectations on Future Ready. But with the advent of AI, it enables us to do so much more, and that's why we've announced this AI-enabled transformation. Your second part of the question?

Just the $1 billion of gross savings, is there a rule of thumb to think about what does that net look like? Or is that more continuing on what top line ends up being?

Yes. So for these -- all of these savings programs that we've done, they enable us to ensure that we're able to invest for the longer term while still driving a good bottom line. And so rule of thumb, I think a lot depends on the kind of headwinds that we're facing that we need to offset and the investment needs that we see ahead.

Got it. Just on free cash flow, right? If I think about the guide for this year of $2.8 billion to $3 billion, it sort of implies that we'll do about $1 billion a quarter in Q3, Q4, that would be the math, right? Seems to be a nice step-up in fairness to what you've done in the first half. Now some of that is normal. You always have a better back half. It sounded like what is enabling this kind of step up in free cash flow in the back half and then maybe if I just extend that a bit like how do you think about longer-term free cash flow generation for the company?

Yes. Thanks for the question. So we're really pleased to have delivered about $1 billion in free cash flow just in our first half. And seasonally, you're right, our first half is much lower than our back half typically. A lot of that has been driven by the strength of our PS business, which we expect to continue. That has a negative cash conversion cycle and clearly helps. We've also driven some improvement in our working capital position. in the first half. And yes, we're confident about what we intend to deliver in the back half and that put our guidance. We increased our guidance along with increasing it on EPS and free cash flow to put us solidly in that $2.8 billion to $3 billion range for the year.

And just kind of beyond this year, right? I mean what's the way to think about free cash flow generation for the company? Is there you target 90%, 100% of net income. Just talk about just longer term, how do you think about free cash flow generation? And maybe especially in the context of memory is ticking up more working capital as you go forward, I feel.

Yes. Yes. But that said, we are focused on driving continued free cash flow growth. We know it's important for our shareholders. We know earnings are important. We know free cash flow is important. And so we're going to be focused on. [Audio Gap]

You perhaps have to allocate dollars not just for memory, but me processors and amplifiers and all terms of different things.

Yes. So we have seen input costs rise in general. Initially, we had higher rise on memory. Right now, we're seeing a higher rise on storage. And we had talked about both memory and storage being 35% of our BOM for the year. That was the average for the year. So it will be higher in the back half. That didn't include CPUs, but CPUs were obviously included in our outlook, too. But in general, we're going to be focused on where we have rising costs, making sure that we offset it. Again, through our 4-pillar mitigation playbook, the last of which is increasing price.

Tariffs maybe on other side seem to become less of a headwind and that's potentially and get rebates potentially on the road. Maybe any perspectives on where tariffs are a headwind and then how you look at the framework of potentially getting some of these credits back?

Yes. So we dealt a decent amount with tariffs last fiscal year. You saw us work to offset that and should more come our way, we'll be doing the same. Right now, the tariffs have been impacting our print business and they've been roughly about 10%. The administration may announce something in July around tariffs, but whatever that is, we'll be focused on mitigating. In terms of refunds, we're a complex multinational company and the government isn't yet ready to process refunds for complex companies like us. But as soon as they're ready, we'll be applying.

Got it. Any update, any you want to share on just on the CEO search, the time frame, time line on that?

Yes. So our Board has been actively working on the CEO search. We're not going to give a time frame. These things always could take longer than you expect anyway. But I'd say the Board remains focused on finding the right next leader for HP with a proven track record of leading complex global companies like ourselves. But in the meantime, I would say we are not skipping a beat with Bruce at the helm. He has done a fabulous job as Interim CEO. He's just a really terrific seasoned leader. And we are continuing all momentum under his leadership.

Up on my questions, but maybe I'll turn this back to you. Any closing comments, anything we did not touch on you want to flag our way. You've been at HP a couple of years now.

Yes. Just under 2 years.

Two years. Just love any thoughts from your side on the whole thing.

Yes. So HP, obviously, is the founder of Silicon Valley. And we've had our ups and downs over the years. But one of the key reasons why I was so excited to join this company is because we're an iconic company in the midst of a significant technology transformation with AI. And I think from an investor standpoint, you're just seeing the beginning of this. with our stock price movement just over the last week. But I would say we are going to be very focused on leading and driving this AI transformation at the edge, leading and driving the future of work, our future of work strategy. We are investing behind it, and we are focused on ensuring that we take HP into its next best era.

Perfect. We'll wrap it up with that. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Amit.