Hewlett Packard Enterprise Goes Public, Splitting HP In Two

New server racks in the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Executive Briefing Center feature the new branding. CREDIT: Hewlett Packard Enterprise

On Monday, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, as well as partners and customers, rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and with it the long planned separation of the HP’s consumer and enterprise businesses became official.

Going forward, HPE will focus on infrastructure, servers, networking, services, software, and financial services. HPE projects annual revenue for the new company to be $53 billion; HP Inc will sell personal computers and printers, and be run by Dion Weisler.

Wesiler was previously the Executive Vice President of Printing & Personal Systems under the combined company, and Whitman was CEO.

Originally announced in October 2014, the split is expected to cost nearly 2 billion dollars. HP has also shed nearly 50,000 jobs through the process. Since Whitman took over as CEO in 2011, HP has cut nearly 85,000 jobs from its workforce. Since the announcement, HP stock lost nearly a third of its value, but on the first day of trading HP Inc (HPQ) jumped 13 percent, while HPE dropped 1.6 percent.

In an interview with Re/code, Whitman said HPE would have around $5.5 billion in cash on hand, which she said is planned to use for strategic purchases and cited the recent $3 billion purchase of Aruba Networks as an example of the kind of acquisitions she wanted to make.