NEW YORK • One of the most high-profile women in the technology industry is stepping down after six years of leading Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).
Ms Meg Whitman will remain on the board, HPE said on Tuesday in a statement. She will be succeeded on Feb 1 by president Antonio Neri.
Ms Whitman, 61, took over Hewlett-Packard after it suffered a series of missed targets amid rising competition under her predecessor, Mr Leo Apotheker.
She set about slashing jobs and dramatically resetting investors' expectations of how well the company could perform, at a time when customers were adopting cloud computing services that HP was ill equipped to provide.
After initially opposing efforts to break up the company, a Silicon Valley institution once known for its innovation, she eventually agreed to split Hewlett-Packard's PC and printing units from higher-margin businesses aimed at corporate computing.
After separating from HP Inc, the PC unit, in 2015, Ms Whitman spun off and merged HPE's enterprise services and software business, and made acquisitions including Aruba Networks, Silicon Graphics International, SimpliVity and Nimble Storage.
She oversaw almost US$18 billion (S$24.3 billion) in share repurchases and dividends, and delivered a total shareholder return of 89 per cent, HPE said. Since the two companies began trading separately on Oct 19, 2015, the HPE stock has gained 47 per cent.
"Meg has worked tirelessly to bring stability, strength and resiliency back to an iconic company," HPE chairman Patricia Russo said in the statement, adding that Mr Neri "is the right person to deliver on the vision the company has laid out".
Mr Neri's promotion was not entirely a surprise.
A long-time HP executive, the 50-year-old was promoted to the role of president in June, raising speculation about Ms Whitman's succession plan.
In his more than two decades at the company, starting as a customer-service engineer in a call centre, Mr Neri climbed to one of the top leadership positions at the Enterprise Group.
That division is HPE's largest business segment, including servers, storage products, networking and services.
In that role, Mr Neri oversaw research and development, new product introductions and marketing strategy.
The leadership shuffle came as HPE gave a forecast for earnings in the fiscal first quarter that missed analysts' estimates.
Revenue in the fourth quarter also fell short of projections.
In the current period, adjusted profit will be 20 to 24 US cents a share, compared with an average prediction of 27 US cents. In the quarter that ended Oct 31, its sales of US$7.66 billion missed the US$7.77 billion average estimate.
Ms Whitman was the second-highest-paid American female executive, after IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty, with compensation of US$52.3 million, according to the Bloomberg Pay Index.
HPE did not say what is next for Ms Whitman, who previously helmed online retailer eBay.
She ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for California governor in 2010 before taking over HP, and was an early front runner for the job of CEO at Uber Technologies, which eventually went to former Expedia executive Dara Khosrowshahi.
BLOOMBERG
