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[isthisthingon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68410720100906?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology

I didn't realize this part:

A separate source had previously told Reuters that Hurd had received job overtures from private equity firms and public companies immediately after his shocking departure from HP, the world's largest technology company by revenue.

Hmmmm.  It seems we're always hearing about Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Google in terms of market share, cap, trends, revenue, growth, etc.  But HP actually is the world's largest, at least in terms of revenue.  News to me.

[perkiset]

The sexy answer is market cap (which is where Apple has done so well), and real due diligence includes P&L & gross margin.

I din't know they had the largest gross revenue, that's impressive. Unless their P&L sucks, in which case people won't really care.

[isthisthingon]

It's funny how people zero-in on revenue ignoring the obvious aspect of loss, much like current market value - as if the market won't decide to take a big poop all of a sudden and vaporize your paper wealth.  But I think loss is seen as a far more manageable factor than revenue.  It's easier to trim the fat if it exists to be trimmed than increasing revenue.  But with HP it's quite possible that they're already riding the margins as competitively as possible and therefore probably lose a good chunk of that revenue to the mandatory expenses required to achieve it in the first place.

But still, that's a hell of a lot of money coming in.

[perkiset]

Market cap is really a complete facade - the genesis of bubble.

People like Apple today. Why? Bear Stearns told then that AAPL ALWAYS goes up after one of their "events." This is very handy information to know. Because I had a limit order in for a lowball which hit, then several days later at the event it screamed up 3 pts, then 7 then more. Gotta love Apple's PR machine. Making me money

No matter what the margin is, when you're the largest revenue producer in the US you're going to have friends. And reasonable PR. And if you can whack at costs then there is real profit to be had for the company ergo, dividends. Not a good company to ignore.

[isthisthingon]

>Not a good company to ignore.

Yeah seriously.  And it's not like they've been parading around chanting "we're #1" or anything.  HP has just been a consistent, self-rebranding giant (Agilent Technologies) that's quietly sitting in the revenue winners circle.  They did 115 billion in 2009 with 40B coming from services.

They own Compaq, EDS, 3Com, Palm and 3PAR - outbidding Dell for the buyout.  It was 2006 when HP inched past IBM, only to widen the gap to 21 Billion in 2009.  HP is the first IT company in history to report revenues exceeding 100 billion 

HP is the hardware leader and recently became #2 globally in IT services.  Well especially these days, there's always new ways to trim costs from services.  Hey how about Service as a Service? 

[nop_90]

A good post.
HP is probably like the Dow chemical of technology.
They make their money not by inventing new things, but by finding ways to make all of their stuff cheaper.
As a result no one can compete with them in basic chemicals etc.

A good indicator of how well a company is run is "velocity", with X amount of capital, how fast is their production turned over.

Market Cap is a favorite statistic because it is easy to calculate.
But something like "velocity" is very hard to calculate accurately.

I can not remember the name of the book. But it was how a major league baseball manager got his team from one of the worst teams to one of the best in 2 years with no budget. The book goes into great detail of how baseball players are evaluated mainly by statistics. (I do not really like baseball, just the maths part interested me).

Anyway he goes into great detail how a player A which has a batting average of 0.250 vs Player B who has a batting average of 0.325. How Player A in term of performance is more valuable then Player B. But Player B will be more expensive. Batting average is a very poor statistic to measure a players worth.

Anyway kinda the same thing with Market Cap

[isthisthingon]

>A good indicator of how well a company is run is "velocity", with X amount of capital, how fast is their production turned over.

Increasingly so, yes.  I believe Dell is either the recognized leader in this category or at least a chief innovator in JIT business.

[vsloathe]

HP has had real tangible capital for some time, and like Dell they hold a number of lucrative enterprise contracts for hardware. Licensure is a much bigger cash cow, hence Oracle's success, but you can't overlook the value of fat cat hardware accounts.