Meg Whitman doesn't want to get rid of Hewlett-Packard's PC group, but that doesn't mean she's above making some cuts.
According to a pair of anonymously sourced reports, Whitman is planning to announce some big layoffs -- perhaps between 8 and 15 percent of the workforce -- when she announces the company's quarterly financial results next Wednesday.
Business Insider, which first reported the rumor, said that HP is looking to trim between 10 and 15 percent of its workforce. That would mean that there are at least 32,000 layoffs ahead, although a report by Bloomberg pegged the number at 25,000, or 8 percent.
HP spokesman Michael Thacker declined to comment on what he called "rumor and speculation."
Whitman has been hinting at layoffs for months, though, as she merges the company's PC and printer divisions and generally tries to bail out a storied -- but extremely troubled -- company. HP has been losing money and embarrassing itself with flip-flops on its business strategy and marketplace duds such as the instantly abandoned TouchPad.
In 2009, HP paid $13.9 billion for services giant EDS, and the bulk of the reported layoffs could come from that division, now known as HP's Enterprise Services Group. According to Bloomberg, 10,000 to 15,000 of the cuts will come from Enterprise Services. As with most layoff plans, employees would be encouraged to take early retirement packages.
The layoffs could save HP $2 billion annually, wrote RBC Capital Markets Amit Daryanani in a research note, published Thursday. "We believe the move is a positive and not entirely unexpected given past communications by the company."
