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spk07: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the second quarter 2022 HP Inc. Earnings Conference Call. My name is Josh, and I'll be your conference moderator for today's call. At this time, all participants will be in listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question and answer session toward the end of the conference. Should you need assistance during the call, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Orit Kenyon-Neha, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk05: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to HP's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With me today are Enrique Loris, HP's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Marie Myers, HP's Chief Financial Officer. Before handing the call over to Enrique, let me remind you that this call is a webcast and a replay will be available on our website shortly after the call for approximately one year. We posted the earnings release and accompanying slide presentation on our investor relations webpage at investor.hp.com. As always, elements of this presentation are forward-looking and are based on our best view of the world and our businesses as we see them today. For more detailed information, please see disclaimers in the earnings materials relating to forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. For discussion of some of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, please refer to HP's SEC reports, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any such forward-looking statements. We also note that the financial information discussed on this call reflects estimates based on information available now and could differ materially from the amounts ultimately reported in HP's Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2022, and HP's other SEC filings. During this webcast, unless otherwise specifically noted, all comparisons are year-over-year comparisons with the corresponding year-ago period. For financial information that has been expressed on non-GAAP basis, We've included reconciliations to the comparable gap information. Please refer to the tables and slide presentation accompanying today's earnings release for those reconciliations. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Enrique.
spk04: Thanks, Arit, and thank you to everyone joining our call today. We are now halfway through our 2022 fiscal year. And I am proud of the results our teams have delivered as we continue building a stronger HP. But before I talk about our performance, I want to acknowledge the tragic events of the past few weeks. Last Tuesday, 19 children and two other teachers were sensibly killed at a Texas elementary school. About a week earlier, 10 people were killed in a racially motivated attack in Buffalo. These horrific events and others like them are deeply disturbing, and our hearts are with the communities who are bearing unimaginable loss right now. At the same time, we're also thinking about the people of Ukraine. More than three months into the war with Russia, The devastation and suffering across Ukraine is difficult to comprehend. So too is the situation facing the 6 million Ukrainian refugees. We continue to mobilize resources to support them. The HP Foundation has provided additional funding to support humanitarian relief across Central Europe, and we are donating a significant number of pieces to help refugees and their families. consistent with our global efforts to promote digital equity and education. Times like these are painful reminders of how much work is still needed to create a more just future. And I believe it's incumbent upon companies to lead with purpose. These values have long been core to HP Brands, and they will continue to guide us. Let me now turn to our results. When we held our Investor Day last October, I discussed our plans to continue our push to advance our leadership in our core markets, while creating our growth-oriented portfolio by expanding into adjacencies and creating new businesses. I also highlighted the long-term secular trends we see propelling us forward. especially the rise of hybrid work and the exciting opportunities it creates across our broad portfolio. Our second quarter results show some momentum in each of these areas. In the face of a volatile and dynamic microenvironment, we executed well and grew revenue and non-GAAP EPS while returning capital to our shareholders. We are delivering on our commitment. and our business is well positioned for sustainable long-term growth. For the quarter, revenue grew 4% year-over-year to $16.5 billion as we continue to see strong demand for HP technology and services. Non-GAAP EPS grew 16% year-over-year to $1.08. That's at the high end of our previously provided outlook. We generated $0.4 billion of free cash flow, and we returned $1.3 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. We remain committed to building a more growth-oriented portfolio. Our key growth businesses, which includes gaming, peripherals, instant ink, workforce solutions, and industrial graphics and 3D collectively grew double digits and delivered total revenue of $5.6 billion in the first half of fiscal 22. And we are well on track to deliver on our $10 billion full-year revenue target that we announced last October. We feel very good about these results. We mitigated the impact of higher commodity costs by implementing effective pricing strategies in both print and personal systems while maintaining strong demand. And as we navigate the macro environment, we are making consistent progress on our strategic priorities and bringing strong innovation to market. This is reflected in our business unit performance. In personal systems, Revenue grew 9% to $11.5 billion. This was our highest Q2 revenue ever, reflecting the durability of PC demand. We also delivered operating profit margin of 6.9% at the high end of our target range. PS portfolio with great discipline, focused on driving profitable revenue growth more than units. Our continued mixed shift toward commercial and premium, combined with our pricing strategy, allowed us to more than offset fewer unit shipments in the quarter. Increased spending on hybrid work solutions is driving strong commercial PC demand. Commercial revenue grew 18%, driven by double-digit growth in Windows-based notebooks, desktops, and workstations. and commercial was trending up to 65% of our peer revenue mix in the quarter. In consumer, while the market has seen some signs of softening demand, it still exceeded pre-pandemic levels. There are pockets of growth in areas like premium and gaming that we are most focused on. And we are driving continued growth in peripherals, which grew more than 40% this quarter. Our supply chain actions also continue to have a positive impact. We reduced our backlog quarter over quarter. While the backlog remains elevated, particularly in commercial, we believe the actions we are taking will drive continued improvement. And as we prioritize operational execution, we are equally focused on strengthening our portfolio. During the quarter, we entered into an agreement to acquire Poly. Once completed, we expect this transaction will strengthen our position in hybrid work solutions and accelerate our growth in peripherals and workforce solutions. Since the announcement was made, we have received very positive feedback from reseller partners and commercial customers about the opportunity ahead. Our integration planning efforts are well underway, and we are working closely with the POLY team to prepare for a smooth transition upon deal close. We look forward to welcoming the POLY team to HP later this year. Turning to print, we continue to operate in a components and logistics constrained environment, and performance was also impacted by the macro events this quarter. As a result, print revenue declined 7% in the quarter, and our ordered backlog remained elevated in Q2. We expect supply chain dynamics to improve, but continued shortages, especially in application-specific integrated circuits, will impact print for the remainder of the year. We are actively working with our partners to mitigate the risks by executing on dual sourcing whenever possible, and redesigning circuit boards and components in our printers. We are also managing prices with great discipline, and we delivered another quarter of solid profitability. Our print operating profit margin was 19.3 percent, our second consecutive quarter above our target range. Print consumer demand remained solid, despite some softening in Europe. and we made important progress on two strategic objectives, rebalancing system profitability and growing our subscription business. We have seen strong acceleration with HP+, and increased adoption in developed markets since launching last spring. In addition, we see strong growth on our profit upfront units, including our big tank models, especially in emerging markets. BigTank revenue and units grew double digits year over year. We plan to continue expanding the BigTank portfolio with new product launches of high-end platforms in the rest of our markets. Overall, HP Plus and BigTank printers have become a larger portion of our portfolio mix, representing 48% of printer shipments in the quarter. In consumer subscriptions, Instant Ink delivered another quarter of double-digit growth in revenue and cumulative subscribers. In commercial print, the office segment continued to be impacted by supply availability as well as uncertainty around the timing of offices reopening. This was partially offset by our industrial graphics and 3D businesses growth. In industrial graphics, we delivered solid revenue growth and built a strong funnel, continuing the positive trajectory we have seen in recent quarters. We had significant new installations of our latest Indigo digital presses, and I am particularly proud of the team's work for our customer Hershey as we created customized packaging to support their International Women's Month campaign. We also deliver double-digit revenue growth in 3D printing. This quarter, we announced a partnership with Ligor Group, a leader in metal science and production for the luxury jewelry and fashion accessories market. This is an important milestone as we prepare to make MetalJet more broadly available later this year. The progress we made in our first half of 2022 gives us confidence to raise our full year non-GAAP EPS outlook. And as we enter the second half, we will remain focused on discipline execution in today's challenging and volatile macro environment. From a demand perspective, we expect to continue to see strong commercial demand with some softening of the consumer businesses. From a supply perspective, we see two causes of constraints. First is the industry-wide component shortages that we expect will continue through fiscal 22. Second are the COVID-related disruptions in China, which we expect will primarily impact fiscal Q3. We will also see an impact from the Russia-Ukraine war. Last February, we suspended shipments to Russia and Belarus across our portfolio and paused all marketing and advertising activities. Considering the current environment and long-term outlook for Russia, we have decided to stop our Russia activity and have become the process of fully winding down our operations. Business there accounted for approximately $1 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2021. Marie will talk more about the financial aspects of our Russia plans. We remain committed to taking structural costs out of the business, and we are on track to meet our transformation cost targets. These actions, combined with top-line growth and effective working capital management, give us confidence in achieving our free cash flow target. And we remain committed to our shared repurchase plan of at least $4 billion in fiscal year 2022. A final point I'd like to make is that we are delivering on our financial commitments while making progress against our sustainable impact strategy. Later this week, we will release our annual sustainable impact report outlining progress against climate action, human rights, and digital equity goals. Let me give you a few examples. From 2019 to 2021, we achieved a 9% absolute reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions across HP's value chain. I am proud that we continue to decrease absolute emissions while our net revenue increased by 8 percent during the same period. We have reduced single-use plastic packaging by 44 percent compared to 2018. And we have enabled better learning outcomes for over 74 million people globally since 2015 by providing curriculum, training, and technology. I am inspired by the progress we are making toward becoming the world's most sustainable and just technology company. Not only are these the right things to do, they are also differentiating our brand and helping to drive our business. To sum up, this quarter caps off a strong first half of 2022. We are building a more growth-oriented portfolio while also operating with great discipline and agility in the face of macro challenges. The environment will remain dynamic in the second half. We are not immune to these challenges, but our strong performance and momentum through the first two quarters gives us confidence to increase our full-year non-GAAP EPS outlook. We are equally confident in our free cash flow outlook for the year, and we remain committed to our capital allocation strategy and continuing to return capital to shareholders while investing in the business to build a stronger HP. I will stop here and let Marie provide a closer look into our financial and outlook.
spk06: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. It's great to connect with you again. As Enrique highlighted, we have continued to build on our progress here in Q2, executing on our strategy, delivering solid results, returning significant capital to shareholders, and investing both organically and inorganically to drive long-term value creation. Overall demand remains solid, driven by the strong secular tailwinds we see propelling our businesses forward, and we continue to execute on our objectives, despite ongoing supply chain and logistics challenges and new macro impacts from the recent round of COVID-related lockdowns in China and the Russia-Ukraine war. Overall, I am pleased with how our teams are meeting these challenges head on and remain confident in our execution as we navigate this evolving macro environment. Let's take a closer look at the details of the quarter. Net revenue was $16.5 billion in the quarter, up 4% nominally and 5% in constant currency. Regionally, in constant currency, America's increased 1%, EMA increased 7%, and APJ increased 10%. Growth margin was 20.2% in the quarter, down 1.5 points year-on-year. The decrease was primarily driven by proportionally higher personal systems mix and higher costs including commodities, partially offset by favorable pricing net of currency. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $1.9 billion, or 11.4% of revenue, down 5%. The decrease in operating expenses was primarily driven by lower R&D due to last year's ramp-up in investments and lower variable compensation, including sales commission. Non-GAAP operating profit was $1.4 billion, and non-GAAP net OINE expense was $74 million for the quarter. At the key segment level, operating profit grew 6%. Non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share increased 15 cents or 16% to $1.08 with a diluted share count of approximately 1.1 billion shares. Non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share excludes a net expense totaling $152 million primarily related to restructuring and other charges, amortization of intangibles, acquisition related charges and other tax adjustments, partially offset by non-operating retirement-related credits. As a result, Q2 GAAP diluted net earnings per share was 94 cents. Now let's turn to segment performance. In Q2, personal systems revenue was $11.5 billion, up 9% and up 11% in constant currency. Total units were down 17% driven by ongoing supply chain challenges, lower perm units, and the overall macro environment. Despite this, we grew revenue, reflecting the strength of Windows demand, our mixed shift towards higher value commercial categories like mainstream premium and mobile workstation, and favorable pricing. Furthermore, to highlight some of the secular tailwinds we have seen in personal systems versus pre-pandemic, Our commercial notebook mix, excluding Chrome, now represents over 60% of our commercial unit mix, up 15 points versus Q2 2019. And in gaming, revenue has grown by over 140% versus Q2 2019. These are significant structural changes in our business. Drilling into the details, Commercial revenue was up 18% year-on-year, and consumer revenue was down 6% year-on-year. By product category, revenue was up 3% for notebooks, 28% for desktops, and 21% for workstations. We also continued to see strong performance across our key growth areas. including peripherals, gaming, and workforce solutions, with even more opportunities to drive growth ahead of us. Personal Systems delivered almost $800 million of operating profit with operating margins of 6.9%. Our Personal Systems business has grown operating profit dollars in 17 of the last 18 quarters. This consistent performance is indicative of our strong portfolio, the strong secular tailwinds we continue to see, and our ability to deliver results in very different environments. Operating margin improved 0.2 points, primarily due to product mix, favorable pricing, and lower OPEX, including lower R&D spend due to last year's investments ramp up, partially offset by higher commodity costs and currency. Sequentially, operating margin declined 0.9 points, driven by higher OPEX due to R&D investment, more competitive pricing in several segments of consumer, partially offset by lower commodity and logistics costs. In print, our results reflected our focus on execution and the strings of our portfolio as we navigate the current environment. In Q2, total print revenue was $5 billion. down 7% and down 6% in constant currency, driven by lower print hardware units and lower supplies revenue. This was partially offset by higher hardware ASPs and growth in industrial graphics and services. Total hardware units declined 23%, largely due to continued component and logistics constraints, which we now expect to extend at least through 2022. By customer segment, commercial revenue declined 4% on a decrease of 17% in units, and consumer revenue was down 12%, with units down 24%. Home printed demand remained solid. However, revenue across both home and office was again constrained by available supply. In Q2, the commercial recovery, particularly in the office segment, continued to be impacted by the slower than expected return to the office. We did see, however, solid growth in industrial graphics and 3D, as Enrique mentioned. We continue to expect a gradual and uneven recovery in commercial over time, with the overall office market returning to approximately 80% of its pre-pandemic term, as we have discussed previously. Supplies revenue was $3.1 billion, declining 6% in constant currency year-on-year. We continue to expect for FY22 and over the long term, supplies will decline in the mid to low single-digit range, consistent with the outlook provided at our analyst day. In Q2, the decline was driven primarily by continued normalization in home printing as expected, partially offset by the gradual recovery in both office and industrial print. Supplies revenue was also impacted by the China lockdowns and the Russia-Ukraine war. Adjusting for these impacts, supplies revenue was down approximately 4% in constant currency. As part of our contractual business, our instant ink services continued its momentum, once again delivering double-digit increases in both cumulative subscriber growth and revenue, while monthly churn continues to remain low at approximately 1%. Current operating profit was approximately $1 billion, up $7 billion and operating margin was strong at 19.3%. Operating margin increased 1.4 points driven by favorable mix in pricing combined with lower OPEX as a result of lower variable compensation, including sales commission, partially offset by lower volumes. Now, let's move to our transformation efforts. where we have made strong progress and are on track to deliver $1.2 billion in gross run rate structural cost reductions by year end. Our transformation continues to create new capabilities and long-term value creation. For our sales teams and partners, we have accelerated the selling cycle by transforming the way we configure, price, and quote, HP solutions for our customers worldwide. Utilizing advanced analytical pricing capabilities with a cloud-based platform, we have enabled the delivery of competitive quotes for HP solutions in a quarter of the time, delivering a faster and more efficient customer sales experience. Lastly, we continue to optimize our real estate footprint, including 15 real estate actions in the first half of 2022. We are rebuilding and modernizing our key locations, focusing on collaboration hybrid work for our employees. A great example of this is our accelerated actions in Korea to both consolidate our sites and open a new state-of-the-art office and R&D facility, bringing together most of our employees in Korea. Now let's move to cash flow and capital allocation. Q2 cash flow from operations and free cash flow was $0.5 billion and $0.4 billion, respectively. The cash conversion cycle was minus 26 days in the quarter, a sequential decline of seven days. Both free cash flow and the sequential decline in cash conversion days were driven primarily by the decrease in personal assistance volume and back-end loaded revenue linearity driven by supply chain delays. looking ahead to the second half of 2022 we expect to improve our cash conversion cycle by fiscal year end driving our outlook is our expectations for personal systems volumes to recover in q4 which i will provide more color on in a moment and other operational improvements in our cash conversion cycle including reduced inventory as a result We remain confident in our ability to deliver on our free cash flow guidance of at least $4.5 billion for 2022. Strong capital returns remain a key part of our capital allocation strategy. In Q2, we returned approximately $1.3 billion to shareholders. This included approximately $1 billion in share repurchases and $262 million in cash dividends, and we remain on track to exceed our $16 billion return of capital target by year end. Looking forward to Q3 and the rest of FY22, we continue to navigate supply availability, logistics constraints, inflation, pricing dynamics, and the evolving macro environment while continuing to deliver on our commitments. In particular, keep the following in mind related to our Q3 and overall financial outlook. We are once again raising our full-year non-GAAP outlook for FY22 as we navigate through a challenging macro environment. We expect currency to be about a 2% year-over-year headwind in both Q3 and for FY22, reflecting the recent strength of the U.S. dollar. With regard to the financial impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and the recent lockdowns in China, we are factoring in our best assumptions at this time, recognizing that conditions remain fluid and highly uncertain with impacts to our top and bottom line results. Regarding Russia, as Enrique mentioned, we have made the decision to stop our activity there and have begun the process of fully winding down our operations. At FY21, Russia accounted for approximately $1 billion in revenue. In China, we expect to see a reopening and easing of restrictions from the recent lockdowns beginning in June. For personal systems, we continue to see solid demand and pricing for our PCs and commercial, with some softening of demand and consumer driven in part by the macro factors I mentioned earlier, including currency. We expect year-over-year personal systems revenue growth through the second half of 2022, with a continued shift towards higher value categories, including commercial, premium, and peripherals. With regard to our personal systems supply chain, while we expect to see a gradual improvement to the supply environment, we did experience a supplier-specific disruption late in Q2. that we expect will resolve by the end of Q3, resulting in a sequential decline in personal systems revenue in Q3 and a rebound in Q4, more in keeping with typical seasonality. We expect PS margins to remain near the high end of our 5% to 7% long-term range, particularly in Q3. We expect solid demand in consumer, favorable pricing, disciplined cost management, and further normalization and mix as commercial gradually improves through 2022. With regard to print supply chain, we expect, similar to Q2, component shortages and logistics delays to constrain revenue. We expect these conditions to continue at least through 2022, but with some improvement into the latter part of the year. we expect print margins to be at the high end of our 16 to 18% range for FY22. For Q3 specifically, given continued hardware constraints, we expect print margin to be above our 16 to 18% range. Taking these considerations into account, we are providing the following outlook. We expect third quarter non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share to be in the range of $1.03 to $1.08. And third quarter GAAP diluted net earnings per share to be in the range of $0.91 to $0.96, which includes an incremental GAAP-only charge of approximately $0.04 related to the wind-down of operations in Russia. We expect FY22 non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share to be in the range of $4.24 to $4.38, and FY22 GAAP diluted net earnings per share to be in the range of $3.79 to $3.93. For FY22, we expect our free cash flow to be at least $4.5 billion. We have made Excellent progress against our priorities in the first half of fiscal 2022. And I am confident in our ability to continue to deliver on our second half outlook while investing for long-term sustainable growth. I'll stop here so we can take your questions.
spk07: Thank you. And we'll now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. We also ask that you please limit yourself to one question and a single follow-up. And our first question today will be from Krish Sankar with Cowen & Company. Your line is open.
spk03: Hi, thanks for taking my question and congrats on the strong results in execution in a tough environment. My first question is for Enrique and then I'll follow up for Marie. Enrique, on the PC business, it makes sense commercial is strong, But it looks like desktop did much better than notebooks, both in terms of revenue and units. Can you just help us understand what's happening in commercial between desktop and notebook and any view on PC TAM, unit TAM for this year? Your competitors spoke about 330 million units. Kind of curious what your view is. And I had a quick follow-up from Marie on inventory. Thank you.
spk04: Sure. Thank you. Let me start with desktops, and actually the same happens with workstations. The growth this quarter really helped from an easy compare last year. If you remember last year, not many companies were investing in equipment for the office. This drove the sales of desktops and workstations down, and now we are seeing the opposite effect as some of this investment is coming back. I think on the overall PC market, the important thing to have in mind is the strength of the demand on the commercial side. We are seeing this across the board, across all geographies. And this is especially true on high configurations, given the new use models that PCs are going to have. And this is why, even if for the year, going out to the second part of your question, we expect the overall PC market in terms of units to decline slightly. this is very similar to what other analysts and other companies have have shared from a revenue perspective we see growth really driven by mix as commercial will become bigger as premium categories within commercial will be bigger and also as premium consumer and gaming will become a more relevant part of the market got it when ricky follow up for marie on inventory
spk03: um you know last one you said you're not planning to decrease inventory and it's kind of elevated in terms of inventory days can you give us some color on how much of it is finished goods or raw materials and components how much of it is actually build up of materials versus cost inflation any kind of color on inventory will be very helpful thank you very much
spk06: Sure, and good afternoon, Christian, and thanks for your question. So from a sequential perspective, inventory actually declined, and that was due to in-transit offset by higher commodity costs due to supply constraints. Now, in terms of both print and PS, a couple of different dynamics. So let me give you some color. So on the print side, it's really driven by the assurance of supply, given the ongoing supply constraints that we're seeing on the print side, and also just the longer lead and transit times and then in PS what's going on there is really the shift in motor transport so as you might recall I think we made this comment in our last call that you know we stopped using the train that we have used extensively from China to Europe and we shifted a lot more of PS onto the ocean so you know we've seen that shift from air to ocean so so that's what you're seeing, and then obviously sea shipments are really for economic value and really drive much better pass-through, a lot better cost for us. So that's hopefully the perspective on inventory for you.
spk04: As we have said in the past, our medium-term plan is to continue to reduce on inventory. We think we have an opportunity there, and with the component situation getting better, we really think that this is going to be our plan for during the next quarter.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Aaron Rickers with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
spk09: Yeah, thank you very much for taking the questions and congrats on the good execution in the quarter. Two questions, one and one follow-up. First, I'm just curious, Enrique or Marie, if you could kind of dive a little bit deeper into the commercial backlog in the PC segment. You know, what's your expectations of working that backlog down? Is your guidance assuming that you continue to have an elevated backlog. Any kind of commentary on how we should think about the trajectory of that backlog through the back half of this fiscal year?
spk04: Yes. So, thank you. So, as we said in the prepared remarks, commercial backlog, PC backlog and especially commercial continues to be elevated. Our plan is to reduce that in the coming quarters as we will continue to improve the situation from a supply chain perspective. By the end of the year or early next year, we should be done with that.
spk09: Okay. That's helpful. The follow-up question is just looking at the pricing trends you're seeing within PSG, could you help us appreciate how much of it is being mix-driven versus your ability to pass through increased pricing from components and logistics? I'm just curious if you can help us understand the effects of pricing.
spk06: yeah no i'd say first of all you know we've definitely benefited from favorable pricing and i think we've made those comments over the last couple of quarters and really it's due to that supply and demand you know imbalance that we've been experiencing and i'd say particularly on the ps side you know we've been able to actually pass through a lot of that inflationary pricing uh straight through into our products now i would just add you know if the supply and demand starts to come back into closer alignment, we'll start to see some of that pricing normalize. But right now, in terms of just the current outlook, we really expect pricing to remain strong in the second half of the year.
spk04: And in terms of your comment about mix, mix has also a significant impact on pricing. And really, when you need to think about mix, you need to think about the new use models for PCs. PCs are more and more used as communication tools. which means customers need more memory, better cameras, better audio, and this is really driving demand towards the richer categories and the more premium products, and it's really having a significant impact on the overall pricing.
spk06: Yeah, and I should add, just on the mixed comment, actually, this quarter, around 65% of our PS portfolio is commercial, which obviously, as you know, has higher ASPs, so it's a combination of both the mix and the rate which is really driving that favorability in pricing.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Amit Daryani with Evercore. Your line is open.
spk01: Thanks for taking my question and congrats on a good quarter for mine as well. I have two as well. The first one is just in the print side and I think your operating margin performance there was really impressive in the April quarter. Maybe you could just talk about what is enabling this really strong 19% plus operating margin performance in April despite the supplies headwind that you had. And then as you think about the back half, it doesn't seem like mix is getting any different versus what you have in April. So what would margins dip down based on what you said on the print side?
spk04: So performance of the print business this quarter was really driven by supply performance. we continue to see demand significantly above supply. And in supply, we are impacted mostly by component availability. And therefore, our focus was on really profit optimization through pricing, through allocation of units. And this is why profitability this quarter was so strong. As we shared before, we expect the supply situation to improve through the end of the year. And as this will happen, we also expect that prices pricing will be normalized, but Marie just explained.
spk06: Yeah, and maybe I'll just add some comments then on Q3, on the print rate and what we expect to happen. As we've said, we expect for the full year that would be at the high end of that range, and in fact, actually what we're expecting in Q3, it will actually be slightly above that, and really what that's driven by is a combination of the supply constraints that Enrique spoke about, some of the mix that we're starting to see as the office reopens, and then Given that backdrop, you know, we're still seeing the impact of that favorable pricing I just spoke about a moment ago, so we'll expect some of that to come through. And obviously we're doing all of that while we're offsetting currency headwinds as well. So, you know, overall, you know, we would expect the rates for print to certainly in the year be at the high end of that long-term range.
spk01: Understood. And then if I could just ask you on the... the non-GAAP adjustments that are being made for the fiscal 22 guidance, and you're raising the non-GAAP numbers, but the GAAP numbers, I think, are coming down. So I think the adjustments are 45 cents this time. 90 days ago, that was 31 cents. Maybe I don't understand this enough, but could you just talk about what is resulting or what are the incremental adjustments that are being made? Is it restructuring? Is it Russia? And if you could just break that down, that would be helpful.
spk06: Sure, happy to do so. So we actually revised our FY22 GAAP guidance And we actually have 11 cents just to clarify at the midpoint. So let me walk you through this really four key items that are driving it, which you captured a couple in your comments. So first of all, you know, with the acquisition-related charges related to Polly, as you know, we announced that just a little while ago. So that wasn't included in our prior GAAP guidance. Secondly, there are charges with Russia, which we actually, I spoke about, I think, in my prepared remarks. And then we also have the timing acceleration. of some real estate actions related to our transformation. And then finally, we've got some one-time related tax adjustments as well. So that's basically the construct for the revised gap guide.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Tony Saganagi with Bernstein. Your line is open.
spk02: Yes, thank you for taking the question. I have two as well. I just want to understand the backlog. dynamics that happened in the quarter and what you're expecting going forward. So I think you said you drew down backlog in PCs. Was book-to-bill and revenues positive in the quarter? Can you give us some sense of how much backlog drawdown there was in PCs? And was there any backlog drawdown in printing? And when we think about the remainder of the year, if there's a supplier disruption in PCs, Why would you expect to be able to continue to draw down backlog in Q3? And I have a follow-up, please.
spk04: Sure. So, as I commented before, Tony, we saw a reduction of backlog Q1 to Q2. This is really driven by the ability to ship some of the units and increase some of the volumes in some specific areas. As we look at through the end of the year, we expect the supply situation to improve, and therefore we expect to continue to reduce backlog in the rest of the year. In the case of print, we continue to operate also with a high level of backlog. The reduction there was smaller, and we expect that we will be able to start reducing that more significantly in the Q4 timeframe, which is where we have visibility of some of the actions we are taking in supply chain. to take more impact.
spk02: Okay, thank you. But I'm still not quite clear why, if you have a supplier constraint and you're expecting lower revenues in Q3 from PCs, why you think you'll draw down backlog. And can I also just get you to clarify Typically, seasonally, printing is down Q2 to Q3. I think you're saying PCs will be down Q2 to Q3. Is that what we should expect? And again, if you're drawing down backlog, that feels a lot lower. Typically, you're up 4% sequentially from Q2 to Q3. So again, I'm just trying to square the circle with your anticipated backlog drawdowns and the dynamics of having weaker than seasonal PC revenues in Q3. Thank you.
spk04: Yeah, so the comment about doing backlog is more of a second half comment. Specifically in Q3, we have identified a very specific problem with one of our PC component suppliers that is having some special issues on yield in one of the factories. This is going to be impacting our shipments in Q3 for PCs. We have line of sight for this to be recovered in Q4, and this is why, from a seasonality perspective, revenue in personal systems in PC in Q3 will be below Q2. And again, the backlog comment is a second-half comment, not a quarter, over-quarter comment. Thank you.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Eric Woodring with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
spk12: Awesome. Thank you for the quarter. Excuse me, thank you for the question. Congrats on the quarter. You know, if we take a step back, you know, it's been a pretty unique time in the market, kind of the best PC growth in a decade, plus short supply, which has allowed you to hold pricing. You know, and then at the same time, you've been able to work through a multi-year cost-cutting kind of transformation program, and it's clearly showing up in your margin profile, right? pre pre kind of the COVID period operating margins were around seven to seven and a half percent. Right now they're running around nine percent consistently. So just just curious, you know, is there a way that you can break down the margin uplift between kind of mix and kind of the permanency of the changes that you've made versus temporary factors like pricing that you expect to potentially normalize in the back half of the year and into next year? And then I have a follow up. Thanks.
spk04: Sure. Probably the best way to answer, Eric, is to go back to the guidance we provided in our investor day in October, where we share what is our perspective for both businesses. In the case of personal systems, we expect margins to be between 5% and 7% going forward. We raised that in October from what we had before to reflect especially the impact of the cost activities that we have put in place. and also the focus that we had in higher margin categories. And I like to remind you that several of our growth areas, like gaming, peripherals, and services, in the case of PC, will help us to sustain these higher margins. In the case of print, our margins, our projection is that margins will stay in the 16% to 18% range. And again, our long-term strategy is really focused on those categories where we think we can drive both growth and sustainable margins, while at the same time we expect that some of the pricing benefits we have experienced during the last two years will fade over time.
spk12: Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you, Enrique. And then maybe a question on print. You know, go back to SAM 2019. You laid out this business model pivot for the printing business. to collect more profits up front from the sale of printing hardware while at the same time introducing programs like HP Plus to make supplies stickier in certain situations. So we're now more than two years away from that announcement. Can you just kind of give us an update on where we are on this pivot, how much is left to do, kind of what inning we're in, and then really how a normalization and kind of supply and demand and pricing dynamics could change or alter your ability to kind of capture some of these higher hardware prices that you've been able to do over the last, call it, two years and change? Thanks.
spk04: Sure. Thank you. We are very pleased with the program that we are doing in the pivot of the business model. We heard today that today in Q2, around 48% of the units are either what we call profit upfront, so customers get a printer and the ink or toner when they get the unit, or HP-plus units. So this gives you an idea of the progress that we have made in the last two years, and we expect this percentage to continue to increase as the adoption for HP-plus will continue to grow. Another important element of our strategy is the growth of our subscription models, and also we shared today that In Q2, that business both from subscribers and from a revenue perspective, we grew double-digit. So this also shows the momentum that we have in that part of the company.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line, Jim Suva with Citigroup. Your line is open.
spk11: Thank you. I have some pretty easy specific questions, one for Enrique and one for Maria. Enrique, I believe it was a year ago You highlighted the strength in Chromebooks from HP. Can you help us quantify how much exposure you have to PC? Because now the world, of course, is opposite of the view of strength for Chromebooks. Just want to see the risk there. And then for Marie, is the reason why we're not increasing free cash flow, is that as a function of those four items that you mentioned, all the adjustments of the Russia the closing costs, non-GAAP tax adjustments and things like that. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you, Jim. So the exposure, the size of the overall Chromebook business is relatively small in our personal systems business. It lends us 10% from a revenue perspective and much smaller from an operating profit or margin perspective. So the exposure that we have is relatively small. Achievements of Chromebooks this quarter were also small. So this shows that we can really perform in a very strong way of personal systems, even with a very small Chromebook market. What we have seen during this year, and we started to see it a few quarters ago, and we have talked about this before, is a significant slowdown of the Chromebook business in the US in the education segment. We are starting to see some signs of recovery, but the market has continued to be significantly below what it was a year ago.
spk06: Hey, Jim, and good afternoon. Just on your comments on free cash flow, just to clarify, so as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we do expect to generate at least $4.5 billion in free cash flow this year, so we're very much on track. And with respect to the items that I explained on the GAAP guide in terms of their impact on cash flow, the impacts that we had in the quarter, were really much more related to PS volumes and the back-end loaded revenue than you heard Enrique say earlier, we expect that to course correct in Q4. So, at this point, we expect our cash flow to remain on track for our guide.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of Ananda Barua with Loop Capital. Your line is open.
spk08: Yeah, hey, good afternoon, guys. Congrats on the results in strong execution in an increasingly challenging environment. Two, if I could, have you guys seen any impact to any of your commercial business from macro? And are you getting any feedback yet? If you've not seen any impact yet, are you getting any feedback yet from customers about what they're thinking? And then I have a follow-up as well. Thanks.
spk04: Thank you, Aranda. So the answer is not yet. We continue to see strong demand on the commercial side. We have a strong funnel. So we don't see any signals of weakening of the demand on the commercial side. And this is one of the key drivers of the guide that we have provided for the rest of the year.
spk08: Enrique, that's really helpful. And then, Enrique, just moving over to the PC business quickly, how much i believe that 90 days ago uh sort of 90 days ago 180 days ago you guys were thinking that uh the market pc market would be up kind of flat slightly up for the year so now sounds like slightly down for the year um is that accurate by recollection and if it is is the change how much is supply chain related you know coming out of china with uh with the lockdown and how much of it is demand related and then The second part to that is, you gave us your view on the market. How are you expecting HP to perform unit-wise this year as well? Thanks, and that's it for me.
spk04: Yeah, so two things. One is, from a unit perspective, we expect this year to see a small decline from where the market was in 2021, but to stay at a very elevated level compared to 2019. In terms of units, we expect the market to be in the 320, 330 million units, in line with what many of the analysts and other companies have published. From a revenue perspective, though, we expect to see growth. We expect the market to grow in the 3 to 4 percent, really driven by many of the things we have been discussing today, mix between consumer and commercial, and a mixed shift towards more premium units in both segments. And that's really what is driving the the growth that we expect to see in personal systems through the rest of the year.
spk07: Your next question comes from the line of David Vogt with UBS. Your line is open.
spk10: Great, thank you. I have two quick questions, one for Enrique and then a quick follow-up for Marie. So, Enrique, both you and your competitors have noted that you're focused on higher-end PCs, including commercial, gaming, and high-end consumer. as a reason for sustainable growth and better ASPs and mix going forward. But I guess the question I have is if supply chains, you know, have distorted the typical buying patterns and the pricing backdrop, how do we know that there's not risk to incremental buyers of PCs coming online when supply normalizes targeting more lower end devices, lower spec PCs, given that there might have been some people lining up earlier in the queue for more, you know, richer configurations? And then I have a follow up from Marie on margins.
spk04: Well, I think that the demand of both is fairly independent. Because of, as I mentioned before, because of the use models in commercial, customers need higher and better configurations. Because of the growth in gaming, we see growth in that category, which in general has also higher average selling prices, and this is driving the demand of this category. We continue to have a very strong low-end portfolio, and if We see more demand on that side. We will be happy to serve it. But at this point, we really see demand on the more premium categories, both on commercial and in consumer.
spk10: Great. And then a quick follow-up from Marie. Marie, thanks for all the color on the margin. But just to follow up on print margins, so you're well above your 16% to 18% range, not only this quarter, but in the prior quarter. And in the guide for the third quarter, But if I just sort of analyze the full year guidance, are you intimating that by Q4 of this fiscal year, print margins return back towards the lower end of your long-term range, if I'm doing the math correctly? And if so, is that sort of the right way to think about the profitability of that segment going forward, that this is sort of a one-time above the range period, and that 16 to 18 is more likely the stable environment that we're going to be operating in for the foreseeable future?
spk06: Yeah, no, David, good afternoon. So I think the way to think about it for the full year is really that we expect to be at the high end. As I mentioned a bit earlier, we expect it to be above for Q3 due to the supply chain constraints. But overall, just to kind of give you a little extra context here, you know, we've seen that favorable pricing impact, and we believe, you know, the durability around that is there. Plus, you know, you've seen us very successfully managed through the headwinds in the business, whether that was currency, was commodities, et cetera. And then Enrique's talked today about the growth businesses and how we're driving that in terms of just the flow-through factor from a longer-term perspective. So that's the right way to think about our margin construct going forward. It's a combination of all of those factors coming together. But for the year, I really want you to leave with the thought that we're going to be at the high end of 16 to 18.
spk04: Thank you, Maria, and thank you everybody for your questions today and for joining the call. I think the first six months of fiscal year 22 show that our business continues to perform well and that we are entering the second half from a position of strength. I want to especially highlight the performance that we have had in our growth businesses. As I said at the beginning of the call, they represented $5.6 billion of business, well on track to deliver on the $10 billion goal that we share with all of you in October. At the same time, we really show this gives us strong confidence as we enter on the second half. This is why we decided to raise our EPS guide for the year to reflect that confidence, and we are really well positioned to deliver sustained revenue, operating profit, EPS, and free cash flow. So really, thank you for joining today and looking forward to continue to speak to all of you soon. Thank you.
spk07: This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
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