HP misses Q2 revenue targets with $25.5B, down 7% YoY, but hits earnings targets
Josh Beckerman / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
This quarter is HP's last clean look before the November 1 split: revenue came in at $25.5B, down 7% year-over-year, but the bottom line held to targets — a mix that would repeat. When the first post-split report landed, HP missed on both lines at $25.7B, down 9% (the first report since the split sent the stock down over 7%), and by the following spring HP Inc. was still missing, with Personal Systems down another 10% (guidance cut alongside).
Read against later coverage, this quarter sits at the start of a decade-long pattern: HP beats only when demand surges — as in the 2021 quarter when revenue jumped 27% — and misses in every downturn, including the 22% collapse in early 2023.
First-order effects
- Investors get a split decision: the earnings line holds, but the 7% revenue decline signals the core PC-and-printer business was already shrinking before the corporate breakup even took effect.
Second-order effects
- The miss raises the stakes for the November split itself — the first post-split report would go on to miss earnings too, meaning the restructuring did not immediately arrest the top-line slide either business unit faced.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across the coverage — misses through 2016, a pandemic-era surge in 2021, then renewed declines in 2023 — points to a hardware vendor whose results track device demand cycles rather than any durable growth engine, keeping revenue targets structurally out of reach outside boom periods.
The trend: HP's decade of post-split reporting shows a mature hardware franchise whose revenue repeatedly undershoots targets except during rare demand spikes, making earnings discipline the only consistent story.