HP Inc.

which is in line with the return of the office assumptions that we were making. So, short-term impact on the hardware, but no impact on supplies, which means in the long term, the business will come back as companies will have to build new hardware to complete or to make sure that employees are having the right experience.

Your next question comes from the line of Amit Daryani with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for the question. This is Irvin Liu calling in for Amit. It's great to see your momentum in your AIPC product category. I think the sequential 25% growth was rather notable. But can you help us understand whether AIPCs carry a higher ASP or margin profile versus non-AIPCs?

Yes, so let me confirm that we are very pleased with the growth that we are seeing in AIPCs, and not only of the category by itself, but also of how the ecosystem is being developed. Because eventually, the demand for AIPCs is going to be driven by applications. And we are seeing more and more applications taking advantage of the new capabilities that AIPCs have. In terms of pricing, we can confirm the estimations that we had before. We have seen an uplift in pricing of AIPCs compared to similar units that don't bring this capability, and we maintain the assumptions that we had shared before of the 5% to 10% price increase given by AIPCs.

Got it. And then I have one for Karen as well. As I look at your Q4 EPS guidance, I think this sequential or seasonal increase in EPS or Q4 is at, you know, 17 cents at the midpoint and it's higher than what we've historically seen. I'm just kind of curious whether this is going to be driven by any sort of margin benefit from your ReadyNEXT program.

Yeah, thanks for the question, Irvin. You know, we are seeing good momentum heading into fourth quarter. And in PS, we do expect sequential revenue growth in line with the prior year seasonality. And that's really driven by the continued momentum and the Win 11 refresh and AIPC adoption, as well as we've got the holiday uptick in consumer that we expect to happen strongly. I'd say more importantly, though, we do expect the PSOP rate to continue to improve as we continue to work to offset the headwinds of trade-related costs and commodity costs. And in print, we also expect sequential revenue growth in line with prior year seasonality and sequential OP improvement to the top of our 16% to 19% target range, and that's really driven by seasonally higher supplies volume. So we're confident in our Q4 guide.

And to complement that, we also will see a bigger impact of some of the actions we took around tariffs. Some of the new tariffs were put in place at the end of last quarter, beginning of this quarter, and these we will continue to mitigate as time goes.

Understood. Thank you for the call.

Your next question comes from the line of David Vogt with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. We go back to the PC market, because I think, Aaron, you mentioned you expect normal seasonality in the PC market. And I guess what I'm struggling with a little bit is you've had incredibly strong growth the last two quarters. And if I think about your business over the years, generally speaking, you don't have that degree of strength for, you know, call it three quarters in a row sequentially. Can you just maybe expand upon what gives you confidence in this side? And I think you also mentioned strength in uh i guess momentum at the next year and i know you mentioned aipc and obviously some other windows 11 refresh dynamics but a little bit more color there would help and i'll give you my second question at the same time um and so maybe just help us understand kind of the margin dynamics within print a little bit better i know last quarter you had the uh grant this quarter out of sigmix and some pricing dynamics probably hurt margins can you maybe walk us through kind of what's going to reverse a little bit in the october quarter to help get us back towards the upper bound of that range from a print perspective. Thanks.

Okay, so let me take the first question, and Karen will take the second question. In terms of PC demand, I think there are different things to have in mind. First of all, Q4 versus Q3, in the consumer side, there is always an increase of demand driven by completing the back-to-school cycle and also preparing for holidays. And this always drives a sequential improvement. In the commercial side, we expect to continue to see two major drivers of growth. One is the Windows 11 refresh, and second is AI PCs. In Windows 11, year and year and quarter and quarter, we see an improvement in the funnel, meaning the funnel at the beginning of Q4 is higher than it was at the beginning of Q3, and also bigger than what it was at the beginning of Q4 last year. And Windows 11 is playing a key role there. Second, what is also very important to assess long-term sales, when we look at where are we in the cycle, our estimate is that slightly more than 50% of the installed base has been converted to Windows 11, which means there is still going to be a positive impact, not only in Q4, but also in the earlier quarters of next year. And this is why we think the demand for PCs is going to continue in Q4. We projected that the growth of PCs will be mid-single digits for the second half and that there will be growth in fiscal year 26.

And on the margins, you know, we're confident in our sequential improvement in print margins. You know, our Q3 print operating margin at 17.3% was solidly within our guidance range and in line with our expectations. You know, we typically have lower supply sales in the summer months, and that can cause some seasonality in the margins. But as we look into Q4, we do expect the print margins to be at the top end of our range, and that's reflecting some higher supplies volumes, as we saw very similar to last year, along with disciplined pricing and cost management. I know you also mentioned the grant last quarter. We did see a grant last quarter from the EDB that had a bit of a catch-up from the beginning of the calendar year to be booked in the quarter, but it is a multi-year grant, and we are continuing to receive that grant, you know, this fiscal year and into future fiscal years.

Great. Thanks, Enrique. Thanks, Karen.

Your next question comes from the line of Wamsi Mohan with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you so much. I guess, Enrique, you know, or Karen, I know you spoke up quite a bit all around print margins just now, but I normally don't think of print margins to be that volatile, but you just dropped 200 plus basis points on print margins sequentially, and it's going to bounce back next quarter. And Enrique, you made some comments on sort of where you're emphasizing and deemphasizing certain parts of the portfolio as well. So if you were to pull those together and we fast forward beyond sort of fiscal 4Q, are you thinking that the range for these print margins is sort of going to be in this long-term range that you've given because you seem to be tracking at the higher end, even about the higher end, in quite a few quarters. And given some of the cost actions that you're taking, should we just be calibrating towards a higher range for print margins?

Let me, a couple of comments. First, in terms of the changes quarter over quarter, what we have seen this year is very similar to what we saw last year. As Kerry mentioned before, the biggest impact in Q3 was driven by the mix of supplies. that was lower compared to Q2 and is lower compared to what we expect to see in Q4. And this really has a big impact. And again, we saw very similar performance a year ago. So we don't think it's out of what we have seen in previous cases. In terms of the projections long term, we are not changing our projections from what we have been seeing before. We continue to maintain the ranges that we have seen. As we have said before, having these ranges gives us the opportunity in a given quarter to be more aggressive placing units. If this is what we decide to do because we see that they will be profitable units, we have done this in the past and we want to have the ability to do that without getting out of the ranges that we have. In terms of the actions that we are taking for the print business going forward, they are very consistent with conversations we have had in the past once each. We are going to continue to drive in the consumer space a shift to more profitable units, especially big tanks. We are going to continue to drive improvements to capture more lifetime customer profitability by shifting the business to subscriptions and services. We see opportunities to grow shares in profitable office categories, and we see an opportunity to drive growth in the industrial side that that we have given in the past and we will continue to do. And of course, we are going to be very disciplined in managing our cost structure and looking for any opportunity we have to improve productivity and increase efficiency. So it's very consistent with the plan that you have seen us executing before, and we will continue to do that going forward.

Okay, thanks, Enrique. And if I have a follow-up just on PCs, if you look at industry expectations, there is below normal seasonality based on whether it be ODM builds or other things that the industry third parties that we can look at, below normal seasonal trends in the back half of this year, and then even projections for a decline, you're kind of saying something very different, which is sequentially consistent with prior years and then growth next year. Is the implication here that HP is taking share? And if you are, where is that coming from, any particular regions, any particular players? And where is that success maybe coming from?

There are two comments. One is our projections are consistent to what we are seeing in the market. And we have seen strong commercial demand in Q3. We have seen strong consumer demand. And as I mentioned before, we don't think this is a pull-in of demand. We think this is real demand, because it's not only happening in the US. We are seeing this across multiple countries and across multiple geographies. In terms of our projections going forward, they rely on the fact that we continue to see strong demand for AIPCs, strong demand for Windows 11. And something I didn't mention before is also the fact that we expect ASPs to continue to grow. because of demands, stronger demand and stronger growth in premium categories, which has been our strategy in the previous quarters and will continue to be going forward. So answering your question on share, you know that our goal and our objective is not to grow share for the sake of gaining share, is to drive profitable growth. What we have been doing in the last quarters is growing share in the more premium segments of commercial consumer AIPCs, and this is going to continue to be our strategy going forward.

Okay. Thanks, Enrique.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. I just have two as well, one for Enrique on print and one for Karen just on capital allocation. Enrique, on print, you guys have talked a little bit about the more aggressive pricing environment, the demand in office softer than expected in North America and Europe. As you look out to the rest of this year and into next, I was wondering if you could just talk about your expectation on those two things, pricing and the office environment. and whether you see that becoming better or worse in the next couple of months, in the next year or so. And then, Karen, I just wanted to ask for a clarification. Are we at the point, from the gross leverage standpoint, I think you guys are below two now, where you guys will return 100% of free cash flow to shareholders as soon as next quarter ends? And I just wanted to ask if you could clarify, when you guys talked about the revenue guidance for the segments, was that consistent with prior years or typical years? I feel like you may have said both, so I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.

Let me start on the question on pre-demand. So at this point, what we are expecting or what we're building in the plans is similar market behavior to what we have seen in Q3. If many of our competitors announced price increases as a consequence of the trade-related cost, what we have seen in the market is that these price increases didn't materialize in the competitive space. So we are expecting that this aggressive price competition is going to continue going forward. We think it's connected to the fact that the market was smaller, and therefore there was in the market more pressure on the price side. But as I said before, we think this is going to be temporary. We have not seen a change in the fundamental variable, which is the number of pages printed, which gives us confidence on the future. And in terms of 2026, it's early to give you a lot of detail. We will in the coming quarters, in the coming months, as we do more work to estimate what will be the demand for next year.

And, Michael, on your second question on capital allocation, our leverage did improve from Q2, where it was slightly over 2.2 times, and improved in Q3 to just be slightly over 2 times, the 2.04 in Q3. And that was driven by improved EBITDA and the repayment of a debt maturity that we had in June. You know, while it could remain slightly elevated in Q4, we do expect it to continue to improve in FY26. So we do anticipate more repurchase activity soon. And I would say, you know, should we continue to operate at higher leverage levels, we would use cash to reduce debt as bonds mature, and that would also enable us to repurchase stock as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Woodring with Morgan Stanley.

Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon. This is Maya on for Eric. Enrique, maybe if we start with you, could you maybe elaborate a little bit on your AIPC comments? When we speak to CIOs or channel partners, we don't hear as much enthusiasm for AIPCs, but clearly your comments prove otherwise. Can you just please unpack, you know, maybe the industries you see adopting AIPCs or regions that are particularly strong? And then what are the key use cases you're hearing that are driving this AIPC adoption? And then I have a follow-up.

Thank you. Yeah. And I think it's really my comments are driven by what we see in actuals. As I said in the prepared remarks, our mix of AIPCs today is more than 25%. And this is the goal that we had for Q4, for the end of the year. So we are one quarter ahead of our original target, which shows the demand that we see. I think the key thing behind these AIPCs is the fact that over the next quarters, more and more software applications are going to take advantage of the capabilities that AIPCs have. And we have started to see it now, and we expect that it will continue. For example, we have now Adobe and Zoom that are taking advantage of the capabilities of running some of their application software in their PCs, which means it will be faster, and also it will reduce some of the cloud costs that they will be having. We have seen security companies like CrowdStrike taking advantage of the ability to use in the MPUs to scan the memory faster, which means for many of their applications, this brings a significant advantage. Also, Microsoft is doing a remarkable job continuing to improve the libraries that they offer to other companies so they can do a lot of activities in the PCs that before they had to do in the cloud. And finally, of our own AI applications, during the last month we launched AI Companion, Omen AI. We launched a specific AI application in China. we continue to see month over month and quarter over quarter improvements in utilization. So we see clearly a gradual improvement. And as we said to many of our customers, if you are driving a refresh of your install base, and IPC you expect to live two, three, four years, and you expect your employees to use it for this time, if you don't want to be left out of the productivity improvements that over time are going to come, you should be considering buying an AIPC now, and this is what we see happening.

Great. Thank you. And then, you know, I know you mentioned that we're a little over 50% of the way through Windows 11 refresh. You know, if we think about the SMB category, do you see them adopting more of that 12-month extended support that could come back and refresh in 2026? Or kind of how do the trends differ by underlying...

Yeah, I think it's a great question. So first of all, when we look at the total conversion, we are behind what we have been other years, you know, sorry, in previous refreshes, which is why we think this process is going to be extended. When we look at the penetration in enterprise as an SMB, and this is very consistent to what we have seen before, the changes are in enterprise and over time it takes in SMB. This is what is happening this year, which is very consistent with previous refreshes. So we see a bigger opportunity in SMB going forward, which, again, is very consistent with previous refreshes that happened before.

Great. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alec Valero with Loop Capital. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. This is Alec on Fernanda. Thank you for taking my questions. Just very quickly on the poly business, is there anything that you could update us on? Are you seeing any noticeable pickup or increased certainty in enterprise and corporate spending?

Thank you. We mentioned in the prepared remarks that this was not a strong quarter for what we call hybrid systems. We have seen companies, especially in Europe, especially in the headset space, deprioritizing some of these projects. versus PCs or versus AI. So we have seen an impact in the short term. We continue to think that this is going to be or this is a very important business for us going forward, and we continue to invest not only in the headset space, also in the video side. We announced a very innovative solution on 3D video collaboration that we did with Google, and we are going to continue to invest in this category. On the other side, on the gaming side, in similar categories, we have seen very strong growth this quarter. This is driven by HyperX. So on that side of the peripheral space, we had a strong quarter.

Very helpful. And just a quick follow-up. As part of your refresh initiative, is there any specific product lines that you are eyeing to refresh?

Is the question on PCs or just really across the full portfolio?

Yeah, just across the full portfolio.

I mean, the answer is yes, across the board. We continue to invest very significantly in R&D. Innovation is a key part of how we win and how do we compete. And next year, there will be refreshes across the PC portfolio, both in the consumer side, in the commercial side, in the workstation space. and many of the key areas of printing. So lots of innovation that is coming. We mentioned a bit of that, of what we did in Q3. But the next quarters are going to be very exciting from an innovation perspective.

Super helpful. Thank you, guys.

I think this was the last question. So in closing, let me reiterate a few of the key points that we have been making. First of all, we are executing with discipline in an environment that continues to be dynamic. Second, we expect to continue to see momentum in the refresh catalyst driving growth in the PC market. As I just mentioned, we are innovating to be a leader in the future of work, and we remain very energized by the opportunities that we see ahead. And before we wrap the call, I want to share that Orit will be moving to a new role as my new Chief of Staff. And I want to use this opportunity to thank her for her leadership as Global Head of IR. Her financial insight, sound judgment, and guidance have been invaluable to HP, to me, and to Karen, and we look forward to her continued strong contribution in her next role. And I am also pleased to welcome and love you, Yao, our new Global Head of IR. With more than a decade at HP, including his recent role as CFO of our personal systems business, Alok brings deep expertise and a clear understanding of our operations. And he is very well positioned to support our investor relationships and contribute to HP's long-term goals. So thank you to both, and thank you to all of you for attending today's call. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen this does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.