Margaret Whitman
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thanks, Cathie. As we laid out at our Security Analyst Meeting in September, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has 5 key priorities for FY '16. We plan to grow top line revenue in constant currency, drive a year-over-year increase in operating profit, grow free cash flow, continue to execute our innovation road map and stabilize revenue and expand margins in Enterprise Services. And I'm pleased to say that overall, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is off to a very strong start. First and foremost, the segments that comprise HPE have now had 2 consecutive quarters of constant-currency revenue growth, and we believe we're in a strong position to deliver on our plans to grow overall in FY '16 in constant currency. Also, while there is more work to do, particularly in ES, our cost structure is much closer to where it needs to be, thanks to aggressive supply chain management, SKU rationalization and workforce rebalancing. With respect to cash, we are starting the year with a net cash position at the operating company level and as separation costs wind down, we are well positioned to increase cash flow at FY '16. The innovation we've been investing in over the past 4 years is paying off. We've introduced breakthrough new solutions and services that have driven a mix shift in our portfolio towards higher-growth products and services. By leaning into new technology, we are ideally positioned to take advantage of market trends that will allow us to continue to take share from our competitors and to drive long-term growth. Finally, while each business segment faces different challenges and opportunities, the company as a whole is aligning tightly around the 4 customer transformation areas we discussed at our Security Analyst Meeting. Customers tell us our focus is spot-on. I'm confident that our clear strategy will accelerate the significant progress we've already made in our financial performance. Now, before Tim gets into the financial details, let me provide some highlights from the quarter across each segment. In Enterprise Group, we performed exceptionally well, with strong revenue growth up 2% as reported or 9% in constant currency and improved profitability on a sequential basis. Our Industry Standard Server business was strong, with constant-currency revenue growth across all regions, driven by solid core growth and increasing demand from Tier 1 service providers. Looking forward, we are well positioned to benefit from the server market upswing, driven by the growth in cloud and big data. The Networking business also performed, well with the Aruba acquisition driving strong cross-selling opportunities across wireless and data center switching. Storage significantly outpaced the market, and we expect that we gained close to a point of share in the third calendar quarter. Our 3PAR All-Flash portfolio is outperforming the competition. 3PAR All-Flash is now a $500 million annualized run rate business and grew triple digits in the fourth quarter. That's larger and growing faster than Pure in their most recently reported quarter. In fact, just last week, Gartner rated 3PAR as the best storage product on the market across every use case category. This is a powerful recommendation to our customers and partners and will help us continue to drive share gains against our competitors. Finally, in Technology Services. We continue to see a growing proportion of the business come from high-value services like Proactive Care and Datacenter Care, while operating margins remained steady. Turning to Enterprise Services. We had the best performance in Q4 that we've had in years due to a more diversified customer base, stabilized constant-currency revenue growth and a significantly reduced cost structure. Revenue declined 2% in constant currency, although we grew new logos and saw double-digit growth in Strategic Enterprise Services, driven by strength in Helion cloud and security services. Operating profit was 8% in the quarter, the best performance since 2011. For the full year, both revenue and operating margins were in the range of our outlook. Looking ahead, we have a clear plan in place to get to a longer-term sustainable target operating margin of 7% to 9%. In Software, we delivered strong margins while continuing to take steps to align the portfolio and the go-to-market approach with the 4 transformation areas. Revenue declined 2% year-over-year in constant currency or flat, if you normalize for recent M&A transactions on a pro forma basis. During the quarter, we announced several transactions, including the sale of TippingPoint and LiveVault, which will allow us to focus our resources and investments in higher-growth strategic businesses. Finally, our Financial Services business continues to be a differentiator for the company. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Financial Services helps customers by creating consumption-based models to buy new technology or financing programs to transition out of legacy systems. Total FY '15 financing volume increased 9% year-over-year in constant currency. As I have said before, HPE's innovation engine is humming, and Q4 was no exception. During the quarter, we introduced important new solutions and continued to see strong customer traction across the portfolio. For example, in September, we announced several new security solutions to help customers quickly detect high-risk threats, reduced data breach impact and enhance overall security. We also won several significant new security deals in the quarter, including new wins for our Voltage and Fortify solutions with a major financial services company. In Enterprise Services, we announced a significant new partnership with Microsoft and HP Inc. to enable Windows 10 adoption and drive employee mobility for the enterprise. As part of the agreement, we will build and sell industry-specific business applications for Windows 10 across key industries such as retail, energy and transportation. This agreement is a great example of how Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. will work together going forward. In Servers, we saw continued strong customer momentum with our leading portfolio of Apollo high-performance compute solutions. We are the clear market leader in high-performance computing. And today, more than 1/3 of the market is leveraging HPE compute platforms to process, analyze and manage data securely. Cloud is another important growth driver for us, and we saw strong momentum in the quarter. We are the leading cloud infrastructure provider, and we see a significant opportunity as enterprises move to a hybrid cloud environment. In late October, we announced HP Helion OpenStack 2.0, our latest enterprise-grade cloud platform with new life cycle management and security enhancements. We believe strongly in open standards, and our OpenStack-based cloud offerings provide the open, agile and secure hybrid cloud environment our customers are asking for. We also refined our cloud strategy during the quarter. Our goal is to help customers source, manage and consume services across traditional, private, public and managed cloud environments. To that end, we announced in October that we will double down on our private and managed cloud capabilities and sunset our public cloud offering. This is the right move. It plays to our strengths in private and managed cloud. We will continue to extend our cloud infrastructure leadership and integrate the public cloud element for our customers through a strategic partner-based model. In line with that approach, we've reached an agreement with Microsoft that you'll hear more about during Discover next week. Microsoft shares our view of a hybrid-IT approach for enterprises, and we both see opportunity to simplify hybrid infrastructure for our customers. Going forward, Microsoft and Azure will become a preferred public cloud partner. HPE will serve as a preferred provider of Microsoft's infrastructure and services for its hybrid cloud offerings. Overall, the move to a hybrid cloud environment presents a significant growth opportunity for us, and you can expect to hear more about our approach in coming months. And on that note, I'll hand the call over to Tim Stonesifer.