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HP Inc. (HPQ)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 24, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the First Quarter 2015 Hewlett-Packard Earnings Conference Call. My name is Denise, and I'll be your conference moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr. Jim Bergkamp, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Jim Bergkamp

Analyst

Good afternoon. Welcome to our fiscal 2015 first quarter earnings conference call with Meg Whitman, HP's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Cathie Lesjak, HP's Executive Vice President and Chief Executive (sic) [Financial] Officer. Before handing the call over to Meg, let me remind you that this call is being webcast. A replay of the webcast will be made available shortly after the call for approximately 1 year. Some information provided during this call may include forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If the risks or uncertainties ever materialize or the assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements other than the statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the execution of restructuring plans and any resulting cost savings or revenue or profitability improvements; any projections of revenue, margin, expenses, earnings, earnings per share, HP's effective tax rate, cash flow, share repurchases, currency exchange rates or other financial items; any statements of plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations, including the separation transaction; and any statements concerning the expected development, performance, market share or competitive performance relating to products or services. A discussion of some of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions is set forth in more detail in HP's SEC reports, including the most recent Form 10-K. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update any such forward-looking statements. The financial information discussed in connection with this call, including any tax-related items, reflect estimates based on information available at this time and could differ materially from the amounts ultimately reported in HP's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for fiscal quarter ended January 31, 2015. Revenue, operating profit, operating margin, net earnings, diluted net earnings per share, income tax rate, cash and cash equivalents, operating cash flows, total company debt, capital expenditures and similar items at the company level are sometimes expressed on a non-GAAP basis and have been adjusted to exclude certain items, including, amongst other things, amortization of intangible assets, restructuring charges, separation costs and acquisition-related charges. The comparable GAAP financial information and a reconciliation of non-GAAP amounts to GAAP are included in the tables and slide presentation accompanying today's earnings release, both of which are available on HP Investor Relations webpage at www.hp.com. I'll now turn the call over to Meg.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

Thank you, Jim, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. With the first quarter of fiscal 2015 now behind us, I would say that, overall, we're on track with our turnaround and executing well on our separation. In Q1, we delivered solid performance in our business operations. We achieved non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share of $0.92, which was at the high end of our outlook range. We continue to improve profitability, growing operating profit margins across all our major business segments. We increased investment in innovation to drive the future of both Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc., and we executed well across key areas of our portfolio, including Industry Standard Servers, Converged Storage, private and managed Cloud, Personal Systems and Graphics. While we have more work to do to improve performance in other parts of the business, we're about where we expected to be at this point in our turnaround journey. Now there a couple of factors that had an impact on our first quarter financial results and how we think about the rest of the year, and I want to address these. Let me talk for a moment about the global environment with a particular focus on unfavorable currency movements, and I also want to address cash flow. We're all aware that the global environment and currency movements have been a challenge for U.S.-based companies. For HP, the challenge is particularly acute, with 65% of our revenue coming from outside the United States and over half of that from EMEA. This all impacts HP in multiple ways. The strength of the U.S. dollar negatively impacted our reported revenue. Our revenue declined approximately 5% year-over-year as reported but only 2% in constant currency. In addition, the recent currency movements have disrupted the competitive pricing landscape and…

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

Thanks, Meg. Overall, we delivered revenue of $26.8 billion, down 5% year-over-year or down 2% in constant currency. Despite currency headwinds and even as we continued to increase our R&D investments, we improved profitability year-over-year. Gross margin was 23.4%, up 0.6 points year-over-year. And quarter-over-quarter gross margin was down 1.2 points, in line with normal seasonality. Non-GAAP operating profit was 8.8%, up 0.3 points year-over-year. We are nearing the completion of our 2012 restructuring plan. In Q1, about 2,800 people exited the company, making the total reduction to date approximately 44,000. We are on track to complete this existing program with a total of 55,000 people expected to exit by the end of fiscal '15. However, we do anticipate incremental opportunities for operational improvements identified through the separation process. Our non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share of $0.92 primarily excludes pretax charges of $222 million for amortization of intangible assets, $146 million for restructuring and $80 million associated with the separation. Including these charges, GAAP diluted net earnings per share for Q1 was $0.73, in line with our previously provided outlook of $0.72 to $0.76 per share. Turning to the business performance. In Personal Systems, revenue grew 3% in constant currency or flat as reported. We outgrew the market and gained share across all regions while increasing profitability year-over-year to 3.7%. We saw particular strength in notebooks and continued to rollout exciting products. While commercial revenue was up only 1% in constant currency following the XP migration, we saw an increase in consumer momentum with 4% revenue growth in constant currency. In Printing, revenue declined 4% year-over-year in constant currency or 5% as reported, with some challenges in both hardware and supplies and particular weakness in Russia. Profitability remains strong at 19.2%. Declines in low-end home and single-function mono laser…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Sherri Scribner of Deutsche Bank.

Sherri Scribner

Analyst

Meg, you're now a couple of months into the separation, and I assume that you've gotten more detail on where you can find some additional savings. I was hoping you could talk through some of the additional savings you expect and also how you feel about the separation at this point, 3 months in.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

Yes, great, Sherri. So we are making real progress on the separation. Recall that we are separating into 2 Fortune 50 companies. I mean, it's sort of hard to imagine that there are 2 Fortune 50 companies embedded in HP. And that has included an entire organizational design and selection process, the IT strategy, carve-out financials and many other activities. And I think actually that we are executing on all cylinders. There has not been distraction to the core business. We've got a dedicated team focusing on the separation, and the rest of the company is focused on delivering for customers. And I feel very good about that. And also, the feedback from partners and customers has been terrific. So lots and lots of work ahead, but I feel good about where we are. It has surfaced lots of opportunities for continued cost savings and the ability to operate more efficiently. And when you tear apart a company that's been built up over many years through acquisition, through different systems being merged together, it's remarkable what you find. And whether it is single owners for end-to-end cost structure, the ability to benchmark versus our competitors on how many spans and layers we have, the ability to make small changes in the portfolio that we want to go forward with, lots and lots of opportunities that's going to make us much stronger as we go forward as 2 independent companies. So we're pretty excited about it. It is a huge amount of work, but I have to say it's exhilarating because we see the future, where these 2 companies will be far more cost competitive than even we are today as HPQ.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Maynard Um of Wells Fargo.

Maynard Um

Analyst

Can you just talk a little bit about the Deutsche Bank deal? My impression of the scope of the deal was much deeper than maybe some would think you have the capability to provide. Maybe if you can just give us more specifics around that and detail around the deal. What was the primary driver to the win? Were there particular products or solutions that were central to it? And then maybe just related to that, more generally, talk about where you are in Services bookings and where you expect that to be.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

So we're very proud of the Deutsche Bank win. And it was a full-on one HP effort, including our Enterprise Group, our Software business, our Cloud business as well as our Services business. And it was a Services-led win. And I believe the reason that we won is we have the best technical solution for what Deutsche Bank needed, which was to reduce cost, increase -- reduce cost significantly by the way, increase agility and migrate to a new world order of CICD, DevOps and a cloud-based environment. So I think we showed up with the best team, with the best technical solution and a competitive price. As you know, this is a long sales cycle business. I think we first engaged with Deutsche Bank over 18 months ago, maybe even closer to 2 years. So these are long-standing deals. But we're very excited because everyone in the industry wanted this business. It was a hallmark or a lighthouse account, and we did it on our terms. So we feel pretty good about it. I would say Helion was a big part of the differentiated solution. I think our ability to provide global support on an unprecedented scale was an important part of the win, and our ability to advise and transform. The key risk in these deals is how do you get from where you are to where you need to be, and I think we were judged to be the safest pair of hands.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein.

Toni Sacconaghi

Analyst

I was wondering if you could comment on your revenue expectation for this year. You were down about 2.5% at constant currency this quarter. I think the goal was to be about flat at constant currency for this year. Do you still believe you can achieve that? And I guess given some of the commentary around geographies, et cetera, it would seem not. And so perhaps I go back to you, Meg, and say you're on track but it actually feels like you're a little bit behind track in terms of where you thought revenues may have been for this year.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

So we still believe we can be flat in constant currency in FY '15. And as you can imagine, we've put a lot of thought into this because the macroeconomic environment, particularly in places like Russia, where we are overexposed, in China, is pretty challenging. But listen, we did well in PSG, very well in Industry Standard Servers, and this is perhaps the big turnaround over the last couple of years. This was a very troubled business 2 years ago and the team has done a remarkable job. Graphics and print is doing extremely well. And ES, and this will be the key to a flat constant currency, is we expect better revenue performance in the second half from ES. Profitability was good in Q1, but we expect to have a much slower rate of decline by the end of the year. And Deutsche, TNT, other wins are important to that. So I'm optimistic that we will be flat in constant currency. Listen, if there's another major geopolitical disruption, that could be off the table. But as we sit here today, we think flat in constant currency. Cathie, do you want to add anything to that?

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

I wouldn't -- I don't think I can add anything to that. I agree. I think that we will be roughly flat in constant currency, and then the key is going to be Enterprise Services. And we announced Deutsche Bank. We've already won in Q2 a couple of big deals. The other one's not public yet, but that is going to give us some help in the second half, as is the fact that the key account runoff that we've been talking about really abates in the second half of the year as we're getting largely through it. And so that also helps from a year-on-year compare perspective.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

I think you can think about it, Toni, as the bathtub, and the water is now going to stop draining out of the bathtub as fast as it has. So the water that we pour in ought to lead to a rising level in the tub. And I would say new logos, SCS, very strong, and -- but we've got to continue to execute.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley.

Kathryn Huberty

Analyst

Cathie, in your cash flow discussion, you mentioned intra-month linearity in January as a factor impacting DSOs and therefore, free cash flow. And I wonder if you can expand on that, in part because other enterprise hardware companies have said in the month of January, they started to see delays in spending as global customers have to deal with the currency impact on their own business and therefore are delaying spending and revisiting their budget. And I just wonder whether you and Meg think that, that could be a risk that plays out this year.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

So Katy, that's really not what we're hearing in terms of when we think about the quarter, it wasn't so much that we were seeing kind of enterprise customers delaying as a result of the currency. That's really not what we're hearing. We did see some softness in January overall in the PC business, and so the quarter was a bit more front-end loaded than what would be kind of our historical norm. But when you look at overall HP in January and then you look at what we had expected, and I think this is really important because when I was talking about the cash flow implication, it was really relative to our expectations around cash flow, we had expected a January that was better balanced first half to second half. And what we saw was actually a bit more that got shifted from the first half to the second half, and that impacted, obviously, DSO.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

And I'll just chime into that, Katy. We have a great channel from our sales force to us, and I'm out in the field all the time with customers. I'm not actually hearing that. Now that doesn't mean it won't turn up, but we're not hearing that people are delaying purchases because budgets are tightening and things like that.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Rod Hall of JPMorgan.

Rod Hall

Analyst

I just wanted to drill into the Networking commentary a little bit. You guys had said that I think you were a little bit disappointed in the performance in the quarter. You made some interesting announcements last week with regards to brite box switches. But you seem to be doing a lot of things in Networking. I just wonder if, Meg, you could maybe talk a little bit about the strategy there. Do you guys intend to consolidate the strategy around brite box? Do you intend to have a broad spectrum of product offering? Just help us understand how the strategy might be evolving there.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

Sure. So Networking is a very important business to HP. You will recall from a financial architecture perspective, Networking and Storage are margin accretive. And so these are important businesses to us, and we will continue to invest in these businesses. You're right, we had 2 execution challenges, one in China and one in the U.S. And I think we touched on those. The strategy here is exactly the same strategy in many ways that we've deployed with servers, which is a market segmentation strategy, what kind of customers want to buy what kind of gear, and then we need to have that for them. So for example, in servers, we have high-performance compute, and we have terrific data center switches and wired and wireless LAN products. But we also have benefited by having a hyperscale offering through our joint venture with Foxconn in the server business, which led to the thesis we should have a white box strategy for our Networking business because there's a lot of people for whom that is the solution that they prefer. And better for us to offer it and surround with other HP product and services than walk away from that market segment entirely. We're very clear that we only play in businesses in which we can grow profitably. We have no interest in losing money in any business. And we believe in this new opportunity that we announced that we will make money there. So it is a market segmentation-based strategy where we have to have the right product with the right services attached that allows us to make money and gain share. So a rougher-than-anticipated quarter in Networking, it doesn't deter us. We just know we've got to make a couple changes to execute better.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Steve Milunovich of UBS.

Steven Milunovich

Analyst

Meg, I wondered if you could talk about your Playing to Win framework. That's not something you've spoken about much. And from what I've heard about it, it sounds like it's fairly important, particularly to the discipline and execution of HP. Is that true?

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

It is true, actually. The entire company has organized around Playing to Win, which is a book written by A.G. Lafley and a colleague of his. And listen, there's many ways to deploy strategy in companies. This is one that I have found to be particularly helpful because organizations have a lot of trouble making choices, particularly at our scale. So this notion of where to play, what countries, what market segments, what products and where not to play because we can't do it profitably has been a very good discipline. And actually Dion Weisler has led the way in Printing and Personal Systems. And then once you determine where you're going to play, how to win. And that is through a combination of where you're going to excel versus competitors. And it's actually been a really good common framework that we can apply across HP. It's easily understandable and actually forces the tough trade-offs. So listen, as I said, there's lots of ways to deploy strategy, but this has been particularly, I think, effective at HP because everyone speaks the same language now.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Jim Suva of Citigroup.

Jim Suva

Analyst

Cathie, can you just help us bridge the difference of the current free cash flow guidance of $3.5 billion to $4 billion versus the prior of $6.5 billion to $7 billion? Just help us quantify or understand the bridge and where did the $3 billion go to, because a lot of these timing things over a long term, whether it's inventory, payables or whatever, should kind of wash out. So if you can help us understand on a yearly basis where the $3 billion went.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

Sure. And Jim, you're absolutely right. The softness that we saw in free cash flow in Q1 was largely the result of timing and so we don't believe has an impact to the total year. So if we go -- if we start with the $6.5 billion to $7 billion, that was the outlook back in November. You then take into consideration the separation costs for our fiscal '15, which are $1.3 billion. You've got incremental foreign taxes net of credits in the year that are about $750 million of cash outflow. And then you've got the separation CapEx, which is about $300 million. And finally, you've got $0.30 a share for currency. And that takes you to the $3.5 billion to $4 billion of free cash flow for fiscal '15.

Jim Suva

Analyst

Got you. So the original separation costs of $1.3 billion was not in the $6.5 billion to $7 billion?

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

That's right. And if you actually go back to this, we were pretty clear on the fact that we had not quantified and -- to the point where we were comfortable giving explicit guidance about what the separation costs were going to be 3 months ago. We actually have spent a tremendous amount of time kind of identifying and quantifying what that was going to be.

Jim Suva

Analyst

Perfect clarification.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

The other thing I would -- I'm sorry, Jim, go ahead.

Jim Suva

Analyst

I said that's perfect clarification. So it was really the add-on of separation costs and currency.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

That's right. That's the only change that we've got to our outlook for free cash flow for the year. The base to start with is the $6.5 billion to $7 billion that we provided last quarter.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Ben Reitzes of Barclays.

Benjamin Reitzes

Analyst

I wanted to ask about your pricing commentary. The 19.2% margin in Printing doesn't seem indicative of a nasty pricing environment. It actually seems like the opposite. I know you got the yen flowing through there. But I wanted to understand the pricing comment better. Does that mean that Printing margins are really going to fall a lot due to pricing in upcoming quarters? And what does it really mean when you're balancing the fact that margins are at these historical highs and you're seeing this pricing pressure?

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

Yes. So we do think that the 19.2% profitability and, really, the profitability over the last quarter or 2 has been unsustainably high. And remember, the business model is we price printers at a loss in exchange for long-term annuity. But I've actually asked Dion Weisler to join us on the call today. And so Dion, you might comment a little bit about that.

Dion Weisler

Analyst

Yes, I think you're quite right, Meg. We don't believe that 19% OP is good for the business long term, and therefore, it is not sustainable. And over the last several quarters, we've made real operational improvements. We've also had some cost benefits from the weakness of the yen, which is, of course, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it helps us lower costs. On the other, our fierce Japanese competitors have leveraged the yen to be more aggressive on unit placement, which we need to respond to. So in order for us to maintain competitiveness, we need to invest some of these savings, and we'll do that really in 3 ways. Firstly, we'll be more aggressive in placing more units with a keen focus on placing high-value units that will drive future supplies growth. Secondly, we'll continue to expand our print sales specialist team to continue to drive growth in our managed print services business. And then finally, we'll invest in new technologies like PageWide array that fuels everything from the Officejet Pro X all the way through being the underpinning and underlying technology behind Multi Jet Fusion, which is, of course, the engine behind our 3D printers. So of course, we'll continue to strike the right balance between growth and profitability, but we believe 19% operating profit is not good for business long term.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

And I'd like to also add -- sorry, Ben, I'd like to also add that when you look at the benefit that we're getting explicitly from the weakness of the yen, in the back half of the year, that on a year-over-year basis is significantly reduced even at the current levels of exchange rates there. So we do expect that some of that benefit kind of moves away from us. The other thing, this is the only segment in Q1 where, overall, on a direct basis, they had a positive impact from currency. So again, IPG is a little different than other businesses. It's got the same top line and bottom line pressures from the strength of the dollar. It does have a benefit from the weakness of the yen, and then it does have to deal with Russia. But in Q1, the net currency impact was actually positive. We don't expect that, that continues in the rest of the year as the yen benefit basically moves away from us. And over time, we also hedge longer term, especially in the supplies area in IPG, and those hedges start to roll off as well.

Benjamin Reitzes

Analyst

Yes, and the pricing hits are on the comp [ph], it sounds like, okay.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

Yes.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

Yes.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Wamsi Mohan of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Wamsi Mohan

Analyst

Could you help us think through the dynamics of PC unit growth this year? For the quarter, obviously, the metrics look pretty strong, but I know you commented about January starting off weak. How are you expecting this to progress through the quarter and the year? And any geographic color there will be helpful.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

I'm sorry, I couldn't exactly hear you. The dynamics of the...

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

Are you looking for the PC -- what happened to PCs in January?

Dion Weisler

Analyst

The long-term view, I think, was the question.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

Okay, why don't you take that then.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

Was it -- okay, yes, Dion, you can talk about the long-term view that you have.

Dion Weisler

Analyst

Yes. So look, I think in general, we're pretty aligned with the industry projections of the Personal Systems market, which suggests sort of low single-digit growth. We believe that PC units will be in small decline, but there are pockets of growth across the segments -- in some segments, including mobility, accessories and services. We've seen and expected the slowdown in the commercial segment following the XP refresh that fueled high-growth last year. However, we've seen, to counterbalance that, momentum in the consumer side of the business as consumers refresh their older PCs. So looking forward, the market remains competitive. We believe we can continue to gain share in the areas where we choose to play as the market consolidates. Specifically, we're sort of focused on profitable growth in 3 areas. Firstly, we're investing in key growth areas of convertibles, commercial mobility, accessories and services, where the heat is in the market. Secondly, we remain focused on extending our leadership in the commercial enterprise and SMB segments, including education. And then finally, we just continue to do the hard work of detailed customer segmentation and ensuring that we have the right price, value and cost equation set for each market.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

And I would say that while we are maniacally focused on the commercial space in Q1, and what we're seeing is a little bit of a refresh in the consumer space.

Dion Weisler

Analyst

Right.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

And this is where being focused on profitable growth is really important. There's a lot of bad growth in consumer, but there's also good growth. And one of the things that I just want to make sure that people are clear on is that we don't get hung up on the margin rate. If we can go after good units in the consumer space across HP Stream, Bing, Chromebook, and we can deliver incremental margin dollars, then we'll go after that. And we definitely saw some real opportunities in Q1. It helped us gain pretty significant share on the consumer side while also driving some incremental profit dollars, obviously, at a much lower rate.

Operator

Operator

The next question will come from Aaron Rakers of Stifel, Nicolaus.

Aaron Rakers

Analyst

I wanted to ask you about the Industry Standard Servers segment and where we stand on the Grantley or the Gen9 server cycle. So what have you seen so far? Where are you at in that cycle? And what's your expectations for that product cycle relative to not just the Grantley cycle, but also the Windows Server expiration through the course of this year?

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

So specifically with respect to the Gen9, the ramp in Gen9 is off to a terrific start. It is actually one of the fastest ramps that we've seen. It's certainly ramping faster and better than Gen8. What we see in the product lineup in Gen9, which is different than Gen8, is that we've got basically -- we've got a great entry product all the way up to the high end. So we're very pleased with the progress. You saw that help drive a lot of growth in Industry Standard Servers, 9% year-over-year in constant currency. And we expect that, that will continue to ramp basically through the year. In terms of the kind of Windows 2003 refresh, it's starting, but it is not a material impact at this point. It's really just beginning. We do expect that, that will ramp as we go through fiscal '15, but it was not a major factor at all in the performance that we delivered in Industry Standard Servers this quarter. The combination of Gen9 and the refresh cycle makes us fairly bullish on Industry Standard Servers kind of throughout the rest of '15.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

And you might talk a little bit about the margin work we've done in that business.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

True. Good point. We have done -- the margins have improved very significantly, the gross margins in Industry Standard Servers this quarter. We've done a great job of driving product cost down, taking advantage of some favorable commodity pricing as well. But it's really been hard work at driving the right cost structure combined with the opportunity to drive attach. So in ASPs, we've got double-digit increases in ASPs in Industry Standard Server. And that's because the Gen9 ProLiant server basically drives a lot of memory and storage attach, which is obviously great for margins.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

The last thing I'd say is I think we're really well positioned to take advantage of the Windows 2003 refresh just as we were from the XP migration in the PC business. I mean, we actually modeled the program after the XP program, and that has been helped by adjustments to our coverage models in the United States and APJ and Europe. So I'm with Cathie. I think we feel really pretty good about that business for the remainder of the year, and I think we're very well positioned, and the Gen9 server was dead on from a market perspective.

Operator

Operator

And the final question will be from Shannon Cross of Cross Research.

Shannon Cross

Analyst

Cathie, can you talk a bit about how we should think about free cash flow for '16? And what I was trying to figure out is you said $750 million for foreign tax. I think the total was $900 million. So would sort of the offset of the credits and the costs in '16 kind of balance themselves out? And then theoretically, restructuring somewhat through, so maybe we get back sort of more to that normal cadence of -- and I'm sure you probably don't want to put a number on it, but just to the extent that you can, give us some idea of puts and takes we should think about as we look to '16 since obviously were going to have to cut our '15 cash flow estimate pretty significantly.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

Sure. So the biggest headwind to free cash flow this year over last year is the cash conversion cycle, basically going to back to 10 to 12 days. And I think it's important to understand that the reason why it goes back to 10 to 12 days is because we are taking what is now our strong balance sheet and leveraging that balance sheet to drive shareholder value by making trade-offs across the P&L and the balance sheet. That's what is driving the 10 to 12 days. But once we get to that 10 to 12 days, they year on year compare for '16 and that headwind is significantly reduced. So that's one of the big kind of tailwinds to cash flow. You're absolutely right, the separation costs are going to come down. So -- and the separation cost is anticipated to be $1.3 billion in fiscal '15 and about $500 million in fiscal '16. We don't think there's separation CapEx. The foreign taxes will turn to credits. I don't know how much were going to get in credits in fiscal '16, but certainly, you don't have the headwind of basically $750 million. So I think those are -- and then currency, we'll have to see what happens from a currency perspective, exactly what will happen. But obviously, you wouldn't have another step down unless the currency moves against us again.

Shannon Cross

Analyst

And is there any change -- sorry, go ahead.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

No, I was just going to say, Shannon, and obviously, towards the end of the year, as we get close to actually the legal separation of these 2 companies, we'll be very explicit about the balance sheet that each company has and the earnings, revenue growth, free cash flow of each company. So as we head into '16, we'll be able to give you the kind of guidance that we gave when we were one company. We'll just do it for 2.

Shannon Cross

Analyst

Any change to your cash usage this year, given the lower cash generation?

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

Are you specifically asking about capital allocation? Because I'd love to address that.

Shannon Cross

Analyst

Yes, that was actually what I was asking.

Catherine Lesjak

Analyst

So our commitment to basically provide at least 50% of our free cash flow this year back to shareholders in the form of share repurchase and dividends is still intact. And in fact, if you do the math on Q1. In Q1, we repurchased shares to the tune of about $1.6 billion. About $750 million of that is basically making up for the shortfall that we had in '14 from our commitment. So we've got about $850 million done in share repurchase for fiscal '15. If you actually then look out over the course of the year and forecast what you think the dividends are going to be, you'll come pretty rapidly to the conclusion that we are at or darn close to hitting 50% of free cash flow already in terms of returns to shareholder. And what is important is that our guidance is -- and our commitment is at least 50% of free cash flow will be returned to shareholders.

Margaret Whitman

Analyst

Great. Well, thank you very much. I think we're out of time. Thank you very much for joining us. I think we feel very strongly that the turnaround is on track. There's progress. You can see it in terms of margin expansion across all the major lines of business. You can see it in growth in areas of the company that I think people were not sure we would turn around like Industry Standard Servers and PCs. So lots of progress, lots more work to do. And obviously, the macroeconomic environment, largely currency, is a headwind that disproportionately affects HP. But overall, we feel really good about the operational execution of the company. So thank you for joining us.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. We thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.