Against All Odds

It’s getting to be a bit like a movie with multiple

climaxes. HP CEO Carly Fiorina announces the HP-Compaq merger. Analysts and

investors thumb it down. Carly and Compaq chief Michael Capellas crisscross the

US of A canvassing support. Analysts begin to say–well, maybe, the merger just

might work in the (very) long run. Then the Hewlett and Packard families step in

and say—nothing doing, bad idea.

Analysts go back to their books to calculate shareholder

patterns and do voting analyses.

But the story’s just begun. In the worst setback since the

merger announcement, HP co-founder William Hewlett’s three children–Walter,

Eleanor and Mary Hewlett–announced on November 6 that they would oppose the

merger with Compaq if the matter ever came to a shareholder vote. Walter Hewlett

gave a long list of reasons why the merger didn’t make sense, including an

increased exposure to the not-very-profitable PC and low-end server segments,

reduced revenues from HP’s profitable printing and imaging business and Compaq’s

services profile.

But the more telling indictment came the very next day from

the other co-founder David Packard’s eldest son, DW Packard. He spoke out

angrily against the merger, against the abandon with which Fiorina had been

announcing lay offs (see quote above) and against her management style in

general. "For some time, I have been skeptical about management’s

confidence that it can aggressively ‘reinvent’ the HP culture overnight.

This is a culture that developed over many years and was thoroughly tested under

all kinds of business conditions. While change is necessary and inevitable, it

does not mean that every innovation in an improvement."

This was not just about the merger. It was about Fiorina

herself. Walter Hewlett sits on the HP board and according to one estimate, the

Hewletts own about 5 per cent of company stock. Packard does not sit on the

board and owns only 1.3 per cent of stock though the Packard Foundation run by

the family controls about 11 per cent of stock.

While together that might still be a formidable opposition in

a voting scenario, the question really is not about how much stock they own. But

how many shareholders they can influence. Given HP’s tightly knit culture so

far and the influence the Hewlett and Packard families have, that can be a lot

Carly Fiorina had known it would be a tough deal to sell from the very

beginning. But she seemed like she had the board in her pocket and that if she

worked hard and long and smart — she could get the others around — including

investors and customers. But in the last two months, she’s been confronted

with one bad piece of news after another. Since the merger announcement, the WTC’s

twin towers have crumpled, the PC market has entered into an official recession

and Compaq has posted miserable Q3 results. The markets have crashed so badly

that the deal initially valued at $24 billion, is now down to a little over $16

billion.

And just when analysts were beginning to reconcile themselves

to the HP Compaq merger going through — with or without their approval, the

families stepped in. Fiorina’s worst nightmare could have just begun.

At the time of going to press, HP’s year end results were

due (on November 15) and many analysts believed that the fate of the merger and

indeed, of Fiorina herself, would rest on how the company fared. However, since

the results will be out by the time you read this, we will not conjecture on

what Carly or the HP board will say viz a viz the merger. Instead, we will look

at what the IT universe looks like two months since the merger announcement and

its implications for HP and Compaq at this point of time.

The September effect

In two words, not good. Economists have been hesitating to

use the term recession for the last one year. But post September 11, investment

bankers are bracing themselves for one. The signs are apparent in the PC market.

And most of new HPs revenues come from this sector.

When Fiorina announced the merger on September 3rd, she

couldn’t have anticipated any of this. July and August had looked good and a

spike in September sales has been more or less and article of faith in the PC

industry. More than in any other quarter, the last month of Q3 accounts for

almost 50 to 70% of quarter sales. Mostly because of back-to-back school sales

and sales in Europe.

But then September 11 happened, a full 20 days before quarter

end and all estimations went for a toss. According to the Gartner Dataquest

quarterly estimation, worldwide PC shipments in the third quarter fell 12%

compared to the third quarter of last year. Compare that with an average growth

of 15 per cent witnessed in the past few years. Within those numbers lies an

even more uncomfortable truth for Fiorina - Dell has been the only company that

has seen growth in unit shipments over the quarter even as everyone else, HP and

Compaq foremost among them, took a beating.

"As we look out," he said, "visibility is very

tough." According to Gartner, Dell shipments grew by over 10 per cent while

Compaq shipped 3.18 million units, down by over 31% and HP shipped nearly 2

million units, down by 24.6%. Certainly, put together HP and Compaq pip Dell to

the number 1 position in terms of market share. But put together, HP and Compaq

shipments have also fallen by nearly 30% in the quarter.

At Compaq’s Q3 announcements, Capellas said the downturn,

September 11, falling sales after the merger announcement and a typhoon in

Taiwan, all contributed to "the perfect storm of troubles" for Compaq.

Another problem that Capellas did not mention—almost 42% of Compaq’s third

quarter revenues of $7.5 billion, came from PCs, which, in Walter Hewlett’s

words, is "neither growing nor profitable."

The investor effect

Investors have not been unaware of this. After September 11,

stock markets have plummeted everywhere and nowhere more so than the US. And

even there, HP and Compaq have led the charge downwards. Immediately after the

merger announcement, HP shares fell 19% with worries that the merger would do

nothing to boost either company’s profitability. Investors haven’t found

anything to change their mind since. By November first week, the value of the

deal had slid by 34% from $ 24 billion two months ago to a little over $ 16

billion.

As David Katz of Matrix Asset Advisors said in his letter to

the two boards, "Investors clearly voted against the merger with their

feet. Both stocks have been in virtual free-fall since the September 3

announcement. On days where technology or the market has dropped, Compaq and HP

have led the charge. However, on days of recovery, your stocks have consistently

not participated."

Compaq shareholders are not likely to happy about this.

Despite the fact that this is slated to be the biggest technology merger of all

times, many people believed that the Compaq board accepted a relatively low

acquisition price - a 19% premium over the then market valuation. Specially when

just two months ago the valuation stood at almost double.

The HP board itself may be doing a bit of a rethink now,

especially after the explicit opposition from DW Packard and Water Hewlett (who

also sits on the board).

The FUD effect

While the economy is feeling none too good and investors none

too happy, its the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Despair) factor that is going to

determine the medium term health of the new HP. At the customer end the

trepidation is about product lines and questions about continuing support to

what is now a very large and complex family of products and technologies.

Analysts have been advising customers to insist on fine print

protection clauses in contracts with either HP or Compaq. Even so, as a Gartner

group analyst put it, "Customers just don’t know what product lines will

stay and which will go. They are being asked to make long term investment

decisions on insufficient data. And they can’t."

At a pre-announcement of lower revenue estimates in Q3,

Compaq admitted that customer FUD factor pressure had contributed to falling

sales. CFO Jeff Clarke said savings from the company’s cost cutting measures

had not been able to offset problems of the past month including slowing sales

after the merger announcement.

For the moment however, there isn’t a great deal Fiorina

can do about this. To avoid charges of collusion, she cannot announce the

rationalization of product lines till after the Justice Department’s approval.

The bigger problem however could come from FUD factor

reactions from employees. Both companies have already gone through multiple

rounds of lay-offs, not all of which were handled well. In July, Compaq had

announced 8500 lay offs while HP announced 6000 employees would have to go. On

September 3, Fiorina announced that another 15,000 employees would be laid off

from the new HP after the merger. She is, in fact, banking on a significant

portion of the expected $ 2.5 billion in savings to come from employee cuts.

That apart, both Compaq and HP have indicated that more pre-merger layoffs may

be on the way.

This is precisely what David Packard was reacting to when he

voiced his disapproval against the merger. HP has always been a very closely

knit company and the famed HP Way had a lot to do with how employees were

treated. Now many people, Packard among them, feel that Fiorina is threatening

that culture. Packard was particularly virulent about Fiorina’s "weakest

link" lay off policy — a modern day HR practice prevalent in the IT

industry where the "Bottom 5%" employees are weeded out, irrespective

of their absolute performance.

Packard said while opposing the merger, "HP never did

that. It never happened before. HP almost never laid anybody off."

Morale is low in both companies. Especially at Compaq where

employees feel a little more threatened. If and when the merger finally goes

through, competition for lower and middle management jobs will leave a lot of

bad blood behind. To go back to David Katz’s letter, "we also

believe...that synergies based on cost reductions from layoffs are not synergies

at all, but are in fact morale-destroying distractions. Our own due diligence

indicates that internal morale is poor at your companies, and that the reaction

internally to the merger is also quite negative."

One could argue that morale per se is not a big issue. Except

for the fact that it will have an immediate, telling and very negative affect on

sales and support services.

The near future

IDC has forecasted that PC sales are likely to remain under

pressure through 2002 with single digit growth expected in 2003. They are likely

to go up into double digit growth rates again in 2004 before settling down to

sub-10% figures. Corporations are not expected to go into a major upgrade cycle

anytime soon. The Windows XP launch on October 25 was supposed to push PC sales

but that, as it turns out, is not happening.

On the other hand, the recession has touched Europe and those

who were looking across the Atlantic for a spike in hardware sales will have to

do some recalculation. Even in India, the third quarter was completely flat. As

Suresh Vaswani of Wipro Infotech put it, "Typically, there is a 35% jump

from Q2 to Q3. But this year it was amazing–it was completely flat."

End of story? So what’s it going to be? Is Compaq merging

with HP or not? Is Fiorina on her way out or will she make it through this

storm?

Before the families got active, Fiorina and the HP board

seemed certain on both counts–Fiorina would stay and the merger would happen.

Even after the family statements, the HP board said, "While we regret the

family’s decision, we aren’t surprised. The HP board and both companies

remain fully committed to the merger and expect shareholder approval."

But boards are notoriously fickle things. Remember it was not

very long ago that there was talk of Fiorina losing her job for the botched up

Price Waterhouse Coopers deal? A lot more is at stake now. If the merger goes

through, HP is in for a long haul on integration issues. If the merger does not

go through, it has to pay a $ 675 million breakup fee for the merger. Either way

— expect a lot of activity at the HP end in the next few days.

As for Fiorina, the "Comeback Queen", has this

whole merger issue suddenly gone way above her or will she pull another rabbit

out of the hat and say to the board as she said to Micahel Capellas — "I’ll

make you an offer you cannot refuse." Hopefully, we’ll know the answers

soon enough.

Fiorina’s Things-To-Do List

Sarita Rani in

Bangalore