HP Inc. (NYSE:HPQ) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Marie Myers: Yes. So that ties very much to the comments I made earlier around the channel but also just combined with the fact that we do expect, I think I said in my prepared remarks, to see ourselves in the lower half of the range in Q2 as we go through that channel correction. Then as we get into the back half, we’re going to see the margin rates lift back up to be fully in the range. And so it’s a combination of the channel plus we’ve got the impact of our Future Ready efforts. We’ve already seen some of that impact play out here in Q1. We expect those actions to continue to take a stronger hold throughout the year. So expect to see some of that in the rates as well. And then I would add another factor which did help and contribute actually to the margin in Q1, and that was the mix inside the PS business.

So remember, we have now a full quarter of Poly in our numbers and that overall mix shift is also a driver and contributing to the overall margin structure as well.

Enrique Lores: Yes. Maybe let me add a comment on TAM that I think will help to understand these numbers from Marie. As you were saying from a unit perspective, we expect the TAM of the year to be flattish compared to what it was in 2019, but we expect it to be higher from a revenue perspective because of the change of mix that Marie was explaining. So from a revenue perspective, this has an impact on total TAM, and it will also have an impact on our performance.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Toni Sacconaghi with Bernstein.

Toni Sacconaghi: Yes. Thank you. I have two as well. Perhaps you can just give us an update on how much progress and savings were realized in Q1 and specifically, it looks like SG&A went up considerably sequentially, even though revenues were down. And I thought you had two months of Poly last quarter, so there’s some incremental Poly, but maybe you can just reconcile what happened with SG&A on a sequential basis? And then how much of the progress towards 40% of the savings do you feel you captured in Q1? And I have a follow-up, please.

Marie Myers: Yes. Hi. Good afternoon, Toni. It’s Marie. So maybe I will just hit up quickly SG&A, what drove that increase sequentially. So primarily, Toni, that was due to the increase in incentive comp and stock comp. So you might recall that Q1 is a normal quarter for our annual equity grants for employees. So that’s what you’ve seen there relative to what drove that increase. And then with respect to the transformation savings, I would say that we’re off to a very strong start. And in fact, these savings contributed to the overall results in the quarter. And you saw that obviously in the evidence of the strength of the margins in both PS and print. And I would say, look, we are absolutely confident we’re on track for the plan for the year.

And we’re continuing to work that funnel put more into the funnel. So at this point in time, I’d say we’re absolutely committed to delivering at least that $560 million of gross structural run rate savings by the end of this fiscal year.

Enrique Lores: Toni, we have work going across all the areas that we described last quarter from portfolio simplification, removing some elements of the portfolio, simplifying them making our processes more efficient using some digital tools, looking for efficiencies across the board. So I think we have a full program across the company driving that, and we are making very good progress.