HP to Cut 6400 Jobs This Year

It’s been a while since we wrote about major job losses.

Hewlett Packard yesterday said that the company would cut 6,400 jobs. InformationWeek reports that HP disclosed the cuts on Tuesday after reporting a 3.2 percent drop in revenue and a 17 percent decline in profits for the fiscal quarter ended April 30. The AP cites HP's chief financial officer Cathie Lesjak as telling analysts that the new cuts will be "targeted actions to structurally change and improve the effectiveness of our product businesses," but didn't provide more details.

The cuts are reportedly not part of HP’s planned cuts of nearly 25,000, announced after the company’s acquisition of EDS was finalized in the fall of last year. In September, HP announced that the company would cut 24,600 jobs as the company attempts to integrate Electronic Data Systems into HP and streamline business. At the time the company said the cutbacks would be carried out over three years, while replacing half of the jobs with positions in new areas of its services business. In all the layoffs would save HP $1.8 billion every year, but with a $1.7 billion charge for a goodwill adjustment and other costs connected to the restructuring.

HP announced the acquisition of Electronic Data Systems in May of last year. When it was closed, HP estimated that the $13 billion deal would give the company roughly 7 percent of the technology service market as well as increase IT Services revenue by over 50 percent (to more than $38 billion), placing them second only to IBM.

The freshly announced cuts will happen over the next year.