CARLY FIORINA
GOLDMAN SACHS TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE
PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA
FEBRUARY 4, 2002
"THE CASE FOR THE MERGER"
© Copyright 2002 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P
All rights reserved. Do not use without written permission from HP.
Thank you, and good morning everyone.
It's great to be here this morning - I haven't had the opportunity to address a room full of institutional investors since, well, Friday. I was having withdrawal.
You may already know that we will substantially exceed current consensus estimates for our first fiscal quarter, which ended January 31. I'll touch on this a little more at the end of my remarks today.
My purpose this morning is to answer a question that I've been asked many times in recent weeks, which is this: In light of all the adversity we've faced since announcing our plans to merge with Compaq last September, why do we remain so steadfast in our commitment to pursuing this merger? Why do we still think this merger is a good deal that deserves a second look?
To answer that question I want to step back in time for a moment - to show you what we saw; to take you through why we decided what we did - and to share with you our board's collective view of the industry and HP's place in it.
We all know that the technology industry is in the midst of transformation. We are entering a period of computing which defies all limits and crosses all borders, in which everything works with everything else, everywhere, all the time. It's a world where solutions matter most, where size makes a difference, and where success will depend upon our ability to align ourselves to function in a seamless way to answer our customers' every technology need.
When I came to HP two and a half years ago, the Board of Directors and the management team had concluded that in light of these technology advances, changing customer requirements and increasing competition, we had already begun to lose ground. The Agilent spin-off was the first step in a process of self-appraisal - a process that began with an evaluation of customer requirements and HP's ability to meet them.
