During its roller coaster of an earnings call on Thursday evening, Hewlett-Packard confirmed that it will take a huge charge as a result of the TouchPad’s poor sell-through rate at retailers. The company said on its earnings call that the TouchPad would result in a charge of $0.05 per share. With just over 2.07 billion public shares outstanding according to HP’s investor relations website, the total charge will come to more than $103 million. Even more costly, we’re afraid, could be the damage done to HP’s brand image in the eyes of customers who have purchased HP products in recent months. Of course this damage could be limited by the fact that HP might not be in the PC business much longer either, though it is unclear if a spun off PC division would continue to carry some kind of HP branding, or if it would instead opt for something fresh and new (like Compaq, perhaps).
Unsold TouchPad stock to cost HP more than $100 million
Updated Dec 19th, 2018 7:26PM EST
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Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.
His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.
