HPE CEO after Q3 results: ‘we continue to be very bullish’

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co (NYSE: HPE) on Thursday raised its future guidance despite sales falling slightly short of estimates in the fiscal third quarter. Shares of the company are up 2.0% today.

CEO Neri’s remarks on CNBC’s “TechCheck”

In his interview with CNBC’s “TechCheck”, CEO Antonio Neri said he was pleased with what was an “impressive quarter” on all metrics.

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“We have very strong demand across the portfolio. Our smaller divisions grew significantly, and the core business also stabilised despite the supply constraints and noted middle single digits growth. Improved profitability also translated year-to-date in a record break in free cash flow,” he said.

From the demand perspective, the chief executive added, “we continue to be very bullish”, but from the supply perspective, it will take another two to three quarters to mitigate the challenges.

Financial performance

HP Enterprise said its adjusted earnings came in at $623 million in the third quarter that translates to 47 cents per share on $6.9 billion in sales. According to FactSet, experts had forecast a lower 42 cents of per-share earnings but a slightly higher $6.94 billion in sales.

The earnings report comes only days after HPE announced the Zerto acquisition and $2 billion NSA GreenLake contract.

Full-year earnings guidance

For the full financial year, HPE raised its adjusted EPS guidance to $1.88 to $1.96, as per its earnings press release. Previously, it had expected $1.82 to $1.94 of adjusted per-share earnings this year. At 34.7%, the American multinational’s adjusted gross margins jumped to a record high in Q3.

Revenue from individual business segments

Other notable figures included a 9.0% decline in HPE’s revenue from its core compute segment. Revenue from High-Performance Computing and Mission Critical Systems, Intelligent Edge, and Storage climbed by 11%, 27%, and 4.0%, respectively.