HP stock plunges on Meg Whitman’s first day as CEO
Hewlett-Packard Co. investors greeted the company’s new chief executive with the Wall Street equivalent of a stocking full of coal. On Meg Whitman’s first full day as CEO, the company’s stock hit a six-year low.
The drop, which sent the stock to its lowest price since May 2005, reflected investors’ continued doubts about Whitman’s fitness to run the global computing giant. The stock later rebounded somewhat to close down 2.1%, or 48 cents, at $22.32.
In a conference call Thursday with Whitman and HP Chairman Raymond J. Lane, investors repeatedly asked whether HP’s board had hired Whitman too hastily.
Lane insisted that HP had considered all of its options and that Whitman was the best.
Those concerns came up again in a TV interview Friday, in which a CNBC anchor asked Lane whether Whitman’s experience as the CEO of EBay Inc., a Web company, qualified her to head a company that makes computers.
“Ronald Reagan was an actor,” Lane replied. “He was a pretty good president. OK?”
Whitman replaced former HP chief Leo Apotheker, whose 11-month tenure culminated in the announcement of major changes to HP — including the potential spinoff of its huge PC business and the $10-billion purchase of Autonomy Corp., a British maker of business software.
But those decisions turned out to be the board’s strategy, not Apotheker’s. So investors have wondered: Will Whitman continue on the same path, or will she try to move the company toward her own vision?
“From what I know now, from where I sit, these seem like smart decisions,” Whitman said in the TV interview. “I’m not just taking the playbook and, you know, turning to Chapter 1, line 7. But I feel comfortable with the strategic direction of the company.”
