Hewlett-Packard Slumps as Company Shift

Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, California, based in New York Stock Exchange at $ 5.91 to $ 23.60, or 20 percent, dropped to 4 pm. 

Fall October 19, 1987 was the largest since the market crash known as Black Monday. Drop - Hewlett-Packard's market value since August 17, plans were made public the first day away from the 16.2 billion dollars. Leo Apotheker for the third time since becoming CEO in November, cuts sales forecast, citing tepid demand. 

He is spinning off the personal computer unit, a five-month-old webOS mobile software tools for the plan to put on leave and Autonomy Corp. for $ 10.3 billion purchase. 

While the aim of helping to add higher margin products, the shift can be expensive and time consuming, Brian Marshall, Gleacher & Co., said one analyst "People have just lost confidence in the company," Marshall said, which is based in San Francisco and on the stock a "buy" rating. "People are realizing more and more chaos than they previously thought in the financial model.

" Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service Hewlett-Packard said they can cut the debt on their credit rating. S & P its a rating and Moody's ranks the A2, the sixth level of the investment grade. Investors will execute this change may be related to the amount of time, Marshall said. PC unit to evaluate strategic options that can meet 12 to 18 months, the company said.

Apotheker vowed to buy more companies with software expertise, improve product quality and boost spending on research and development.

While Apotheker is following up on his software pledge, he’s backtracking on efforts to make the WebOS operating system a viable competitor to Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG)

WebOS has been suffering, Hewlett-Packard said yesterday. The business had an operating loss of $332 million in the fiscal third quarter on sales of $266 million, chief financial officer Cathie Lesjak said on a conference call. Losses would have widened if the business continued, she said.

“We have better ways to use that capital,” than trying to revive WebOS, Apotheker said in an interview yesterday. “Sales of HP TouchPads were not meeting my expectations.”

In the PC business, competitors’ tablets have cut into sales and consumers are changing how they compute, Apotheker added. “We want to sharpen the focus of HP.”