HP stock falls on latest leak reports
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Hewlett-Packard Co.'s stock price dropped by nearly 5 percent Thursday as investors reacted to reports that Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd knew more about the computer and printer maker's elaborate spying program than previously thought.
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U.S. stocks fell on Friday, hurt by a  slew of negative reports from top drug makers and oil prices  climbing by $2 a barrel.
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US stocks declined this week as disappointing sales forecasts from technology companies such as Xilinx Inc., Altera Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - IT investors had a mixed bag of news to digest this week, in the wake of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s boardroom spy scandal, and Xerox Corp.'s annual pilgrimage to New York to woo the Wall Street crowd. It's a measure of HP Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd's success so far that the company has not been harder hit by theÂ boardroom spy scandal, in which outside investigators hired by the board used allegedly illegal means to spy on employees, board members and reporters. In order to smooth things over, Hurd will replace Dunn in January and retain his CEO title. The spying was sparked by leaks to the press, which ironically included information on discussions that led to the firing of former CEO Carly Fiorina. It's ironic because under Hurd, the company's takeover of Compaq Computer Corp. -- a controversial acquisition engineered by Fiorina -- seems to be paying off. Hurd has reorganized the company to cut costs, and HP is gaining PC market share and growing almost as fast as its archrival in that market, Dell Inc. Since HP is much larger than Dell, that growth is remarkable. Much of it is the result of reorganized company logistics, supply-chain management, inventory control, as well as a continued push on the product front. The spy scandal has not implicated Hurd, and that's a good thing. Company shares did take a hit after Tuesday's disclosure by the California state attorney general on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that he had enough evidence to charge HP officials. Still, shares (HPQ) closed Thursday at $36.25, about where they were right before the scandal broke last week. The share price is still up 3.12 percent for the month and 31.81 percent for the year. As long as Hurd is not implicated in the scandal, the company seems poised to continue its run, even if Dunn or other board members are indicted. Of the seven major brokers changing their recommendations on the company this year, all but one have been to upgrade their recommendations -- the one exception was before the scandal. Meanwhile, HP's archrival in printers, Xerox, is having a hard time gaining traction in the market. The company made its annual pitch to Wall Street last week in a series of product and services rollouts. The consensus among analysts appears to be that CEO Anne Mulcahy is making all the right moves: slimming down the company, integrating and expanding services, keeping up pressure on rivals in the small and medium-size business market, and keeping its lead on the high-end production market. But share price was not affected by her pitch to Wall Street. Shares (XRX) closed Thursday right where they were on the last day of her pitch last Friday, at $14.90. "The strategy is there, but Wall Street wants to see more growth," noted IDC analyst Keith Kmetz. Various competitors including Asian manufacturers have "nibbled away" at the low end of the market, Kmetz said, but Xerox still has a command position in the production market and is strong in the market for office color printing and multifunction devices. Only HP can claim to rival Xerox in the full scope of products and services. But growth is tepid. Xerox second quarter revenue rose to $3.98 billion from $3.92 billion last year. The message from company executives appears to that Xerox will be able to achieve growth rates experienced by HP as services grow nearer to 50 percent of company revenue. But as Mulcahy told IDG, "whether that will be in three, or five years, I can't say."
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PALO ALTO, California  - Hewlett-Packard   Co.HPQ.N Chairman Patricia Dunn resigned as a director on   Friday as the embattled computer maker unveiled new details of   the boardroom leak probe, including the role of chief executive   Mark Hurd.
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U.S. blue-chip stocks fell on Wednesday after stronger-than-expected inflation data dimmed hopes for an interest-rate cut and computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co.  failed to impress investors with its latest earnings report.
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(InfoWorld) - A shareholder lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard (HP) forÂ attempting to spy on board members and reportersÂ has been expanded to include charges of insider stock trading. An amended complaint filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of California for Santa Clara County accuses HP Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and seven other company executives of selling $41.3 million worth of HP stock at "inflated prices" shortly before the company revealed that its investigators had used questionable and possibly illegal techniques to gain access to personal records such as phone call logs. The eight executives sold 1.7 million shares of stock between Aug. 21 and Sept. 6, according to the lawsuit. In an Aug. 31 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), HP said an outside investigator used the practice of pretexting, pretending to be someone else, to gain access to personal records. Former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn and four others face criminal charges stemming from their alleged participation in the spying, which also used e-mail tracer technology, according to testimony before a U.S. congressional committee. HP also tried to prop up the value of its stock price by announcing on Aug. 21 it would repurchase $6 billion worth of its stock, the lawsuit says. "In the midst of this acrimony HP executives cashed in," says the complaint, filed by the Lerach, Coughlin, Stoia, Geller, Rudman & Robbins LLP law firm. HP issued a statement calling the lawsuit "baseless." The lawsuit "represents a transparent effort to exploit issues related to HP's recent investigation for personal gain at the expense of HP, its shareholders and its employees," the statement said. "HP will defend itself vigorously." HP acknowledged that it had obtained the phone records of 12 people by using pretexting. The stockholder lawsuit, originally filed in September, asks the court to declare that HP's executives have "committed breaches of their fiduciary duties" and to order executives to repay the amount the company has been damaged by the spying scandal. The lawsuit also asks the court to require HP to reform its corporate governance and to extract punitive damages from Dunn, Hurd and other HP executives.
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In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Hewlett-Packard has revealed a history of leaked confidential information as well as details about how a board member quit over the investigations into those leaks.
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By Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Sep. 18--Hewlett-Packard faces a deadline today to provide Congress with  documents about its boardroom-leak probe, which is under criminal  investigation by the California attorney general.
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Shares in Hewlett Packard fall  5% on Thursday as the scandal over its inquiry into boardroom leaks continues.
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Still grappling with the fallout from a boardroom spying scandal, Hewlett-Packard Co. is now facing a Senate investigation into a stock option debacle that it inherited last year with its $4.9 billion acquisition of software maker Mercury Interactive Corp.
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By Purva Patel and Anastasia Ustinova, Houston Chronicle  Sep. 19--It was all about business at Hewlett-Packard's technology forum in Houston on Monday, despite the continuing fallout over a company-ordered investigation of board members to find the source of leaks to reporters.
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HP was blasted by legislators this week, but corporate customers say the boardroom leak scandal is a minor distraction, and they still back CEO Mark Hurd.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has submitted thousands of documents to a House subcommittee looking into how the company tracked down boardroom leaks.
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HP (NYSE:HPQ) (Nasdaq:HPQ) today announced that Mark Hurd, HP chief executive officer and president, has offered to appear at the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on Thursday, Sept. 28.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd discussed the computer and printer maker's growth prospects during a tech conference Monday but didn't mention the ongoing scandal involving his company's attempts to uncover the source of boardroom leaks to the media.
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By Connie Guglielmo  Shares of Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest maker of personal computers, fell Wednesday after holiday price cuts on PCs weighed on profit margins and the company's growth forecast disappointed some investors.