The American IT company indeed post edits highest revenue of the past decade, but, as we pointed out at the time, this performance stemmed primarily from the recently integrated - and costly - acquisition of Juniper Networks.
To truly shift the trend and initiate genuine value creation - a perennially hypothetical subject at HPE, both before and after the spin-off of its personal computing division - a new cycle had to begin. What better tailwind for this than AI?
HPE's H1 results, published yesterday, show that growth is still overwhelmingly driven by the networking segment, especially Juniper, which accounts for a quarter of consolidated revenue.
This segment saw its sales jump 150% y-o-y, albeit with some pressure on margins - although these remain very high.
The Cloud and AI segment, which accounts for three-quarters of HPE's consolidated revenue, grew only modestly by 10% year-on-year. One might have expected something more robust; however, margins in this area are showing appreciable expansion.
The overall result is a half-year revenue of $20bn, a historical record, but an increase of only 25% compared to the semi-annual average observed over the last five years.
The same applies to the operating profit of $1.2bn, which is ultimately in line with the average observed over the last five years, as is the operating cash flow.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise's valuation has doubled over the year. This trend reflects investors' highly optimistic expectations rather than fundamentals which, for the time being, do not show a clear or major inflection point.
See also on this subject Dell smashes expectations and silences skeptics, published last week in these same columns.
