Hewlett Packard Enterprise is up 2% after hours better than expected top and bottom lines in its fiscal Q3 earnings and broad revenue gains that boosted profits 79%. Revenue growth in EMEA continued to be strong, up 3% in constant currency, with particular strength in the UK, France and Italy. Performance in EMEA was good across all business units, particularly in compute and data center networking, it says.
Global Net revenues rose 4% (and gained 1% after accounting for currency shifts). Net earnings of $0.44/share came in well ahead of company guidance for $0.35-$0.39 and consensus of $0.37.
“Solid execution across each of our business segments, combined with market momentum, will enable us to deliver FY18 revenue and earnings well beyond our original outlook provided at our Securities Analyst Meeting last year," says CEO Antonio Neri (pictured).
Hybrid IT revenue was $6.2 billion, up 3% year over year and flat when adjusted for currency, with a 10.6% operating margin. Compute revenue was up 5%, up 2% when adjusted for currency, Storage revenue was up 1%, down 2% when adjusted for currency, DC Networking revenue was down 6%, down 10% when adjusted for currency, and HPE Pointnext revenue was down 1%, down 2% when adjusted for currency.
Intelligent Edge revenue was $785 million, up 10% year over year and up 8% when adjusted for currency, with an 11.6% operating margin. HPE Aruba Product revenue was up 10%, up 7% when adjusted for currency, and HPE Aruba Services revenue was up 14%, up 14% when adjusted for currency.
In a call after the results announcement, Antonio Neri said: "There is a major transition happening right now, driven by the explosion of the data created at the edge. The edge is the word outside the data center. And Gartner says, 75% of the world’s data is generated at the edge. I am certain that the rise of Intelligent Edge is the next great market transition coming. And HPE is uniquely committed to and build for this transition. We already have a competitive advantage at the edge with Aruba, pioneering networking with HPE’s deep history in continued innovation, compute storage and services. That is why we recently announced that we plan to invest $4bn in this statement over the next four years. To give the examples of the innovation, we are driving Intelligent Edge on Aruba’s new software-defined brand solution and our converge OT/IT edge solutions. We see a world that is edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven. And our portfolio of Intelligent Edge solutions is resonating with customers."
Financial Services revenue was $928 million, up 3% year over year and up 3% when adjusted for currency, net portfolio assets were flat year over year, and financing volume was up 15% year over year. The business delivered an operating margin of 7.9%.
Meanwhile, the company has named former Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati its chief financial officer. Robbiati left Sprint earlier this year and will replace Tim Stonesifer, who will remain until the end of October to ensure a smooth transition.
