Servers and network storage giant Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE:HPE) fell into the red in its fiscal second quarter.
The company, spun out of Hewlett-Packard Inc (NYSE:HPQ), posted a net loss of US$612mln in the three months to the end of April, versus a profit the year before of US$320mln.
Loss per share was 37 cents, against the previous year’s earnings per share of 18 cents.
Top line declines by almost 13%
The top line headed south, declining by almost 13% to US$7.45bn from the year before, or 5% after stripping out exchange rate fluctuations and sold off businesses.
“Despite some current headwinds, we delivered Q2 non-GAAP EPS in line with our outlook,” said Meg Whitman, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
If the results were in line with the management’s outlook, it must have done a poor job of conveying those expectations to the market, as the shares fell 4.7% to US$17.93 on the results.
Whitman, who was in charge of eBay during the period when the company rapidly lost ground to Amazon and blew US$4.1bn on an ill-advised acquisition of instant messaging firm Skype, continued: “We saw strength in major components of our growth strategy, including high-performance compute, Aruba, all-flash storage and Technology Services.
“While we still have much more work to do, HPE’s Q2 results give me confidence that our efforts are delivering for customers and partners,” she said.