Whitman says Brexit temporarily halted UK public sector sales

HPE CEO claims orders are coming in again now, but says firm is monitoring channel pricing multiple times a week

HPE's chief executive Meg Whitman has said orders from UK public sector customers are beginning to trickle in again, after Brexit caused UK and European government organisations to pause purchasing.

On HPE's Q3 earnings call, its CFO Tim Stonesifer said that HPE saw "weakness" in Europe during the quarter, particularly in Enterprise Services, because of a "slowing in the UK public sector business".

When questioned, Whitman (pictured) later elaborated.

"We were not able to hedge in the quarter for the pound degradation, but what we saw was actually a pause in purchasing in the UK," she said. "Certainly the UK public sector, but also the UK and then more broadly Europe which was unexpected; a big change. [Customers thought] let's take a pause and decide what we want to do here. What I will say is in the last couple of weeks we're actually seeing orders pick up again.

"It was almost like they took a pause and had to take stock of what was happening and then the orders have started to flow again."

In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, when the pound slumped to historic lows against the US dollar, a number of US vendors such as HP, Dell and ASUS hiked their prices as a result.

Whitman said that HPE keeps an extremely close eye on pricing, particularly in the channel.

"We continue to also monitor the pricing [and the] competitive pricing environment that we see, and we adjust as necessary, particularly in the channel. So the channel is where we serve SMB and that's where our ability is to move the pricing in response to competition. We look at that every single week, sometimes multiple times a week."

In the three months to 31 July, net revenue came in at $12.2bn (£9.13bn), down six per cent annually, but down one per cent when adjusted for divestitures and currency.

GAAP net profit at the firm rose 914 per cent over the same period to $2.3bn, but on a non-GAAP basis, net profit fell four per cent to $800m. In Q3 last year, HP still reported as one company, prior to the split which occurred on 1 November 2015.