梅格·惠特曼掌舵惠普已經(jīng)五年了。在這五年里，她頻頻出招，一會(huì)兒是收購(gòu)，一會(huì)兒是剝離，一會(huì)兒把公司拆成兩半，一會(huì)兒又零敲碎打地分拆公司的其他資產(chǎn)。她有時(shí)看起來簡(jiǎn)直就像是混進(jìn)CEO界的一個(gè)“瘋狂科學(xué)家”。

如今離她陣仗最大的那次重組已經(jīng)過去了一年半的時(shí)間——那次她將惠普的PC和打印機(jī)業(yè)務(wù)整個(gè)拆分成了一家獨(dú)立的公司。但是她現(xiàn)在依然沒有停止對(duì)公司繼續(xù)動(dòng)刀子。就在兩個(gè)月前，梅格·惠特曼宣布，惠普將把旗下部分軟件業(yè)務(wù)進(jìn)行拆分，并與英國(guó)軟件公司Micro Focus合并，這筆交易的估值預(yù)計(jì)將達(dá)到90億美元。今年五月，惠特曼還宣布將旗下的企業(yè)服務(wù)部門與Computer Sciences公司合并，這筆交易目前尚未宣告完結(jié)。就在這期間，惠普還斥資收購(gòu)了一家名叫SGI的超級(jí)計(jì)算機(jī)制造商。

對(duì)惠特曼的這幾招散手，我們現(xiàn)在恐怕還很難提出批評(píng)。因?yàn)樽詮娜ツ?1月拆分了PC和打印機(jī)業(yè)務(wù)后，惠特曼領(lǐng)導(dǎo)下的慧與（Hewlett Packard Enterprise）的股價(jià)至今已經(jīng)猛漲了60%。

不過有些華爾街分析師還是對(duì)惠普的處境表示了擔(dān)憂，認(rèn)為惠特曼的復(fù)蘇和重組之路似乎已露出后勁不足之態(tài)。今年第三季度，也就是該公司第四財(cái)務(wù)季度的財(cái)報(bào)顯示，公司當(dāng)季的收益下跌了7%。即便是針對(duì)惠普近來的一系列拆分和強(qiáng)勢(shì)美元等因素進(jìn)行調(diào)整后，營(yíng)業(yè)收入還是下跌達(dá)到2%。125億美元的營(yíng)業(yè)也略低于分析師們此前給出的129億美元的預(yù)期。慧與股價(jià)也在盤后交易中下跌了1個(gè)百分點(diǎn)。

對(duì)此，惠特曼的解釋是，慧與的一些業(yè)績(jī)下滑的老舊業(yè)務(wù)（比如企業(yè)數(shù)據(jù)中心使用的傳統(tǒng)型服務(wù)器和一些基本的網(wǎng)絡(luò)設(shè)備）的下滑幅度超過了預(yù)期。而像基于閃存技術(shù)的網(wǎng)絡(luò)存儲(chǔ)硬件、極高性能的計(jì)算機(jī)和wifi設(shè)備等增長(zhǎng)領(lǐng)域則依然保持了強(qiáng)勢(shì)增長(zhǎng)。

不過由于公司全線業(yè)務(wù)增長(zhǎng)放緩，在最近的一次與分析師的電話會(huì)議上，很多分析師都追問她對(duì)明年的展望有何設(shè)想。惠特曼也表示，她預(yù)計(jì)明年公司服務(wù)器的銷量總體將增長(zhǎng)1%到2%。

惠特曼解釋道，2016年上半年，她的主要目標(biāo)是收入的增長(zhǎng)，下半年則主要強(qiáng)調(diào)盈利。“今年我們用了一種類似‘滴定’的辦法。”這位“瘋狂科學(xué)家”式的CEO用了一個(gè)化學(xué)術(shù)語，“滴定”指的是利用兩種溶液混合在一起以找到某種平衡。“前半年是高增長(zhǎng)低利潤(rùn)，后半年是低增長(zhǎng)高利潤(rùn)。明年我們要沿著高速公路的中間車道走了。”

如果惠特曼的“中間車道”戰(zhàn)略真的能夠成功的話，投資者顯然是樂于同時(shí)看到盈利和增長(zhǎng)的。（財(cái)富中文網(wǎng)）

譯者：樸成奎

Meg Whitman has been running one version or another of the venerable tech giant Hewlett Packard for more than five years. And with all the acquisitions and divestitures and splitting the company in half and spinning off other bits, she sometimes seems like the mad scientist CEO of the industry.

About a year after her most momentous restructuring of all—pushing HP’s personal computer and printer businesses into a wholly separate company—she’s still hard at work rejiggering the pieces left on her board. Just two months ago, she announced a new plan to spin off and merge some of HP’s software businesses with British vendor Micro Focus in a deal valued at $9 billion. A similar deal announced in May to send the enterprise services unit to Computer Sciences CSC -1.89% is still not done. She also moved to add supercomputer maker SGI in August.

But it would be hard to criticize all those moves right now. Whitman’s company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has seen its share price rise 60% since splitting from the PC and printer side last November.

Still, some Wall Street analysts are worried that the recovery and restructuring effort may be running out of juice. Third quarter results, the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, showed revenue dropping 7%. Even after adjusting for all the units Whitman cut and the strengthening U.S. dollar, revenue still declined 2%. The $12.5 billion total missed analysts estimates of almost $12.9 billion. Adjusted earnings per shares of 61 cents about met analyst expectations. HP’s share price lost 1% in after hours trading.

The problem was that sales in some of HP’s HPE -3.11% older, declining businesses—like traditional servers used in corporate data centers and basic networking gear—dropped more than expected, Whitman said. Growth areas like flash-based network storage hardware, extreme high performance computers and wi-fi gear for big installations still grew strongly, she said.

Still, with company-wide growth slowing, Whitman was peppered with questions on a call with analysts about the assumptions underlying her outlook for next year, including growth in server sales overall of 1% to 2%.

The CEO explained that she had gone for revenue growth earlier in 2016 but emphasized profitability more in the last two quarters. “We sort of titrated a bit during the year,” the mad scientist CEO said, using chemistry lingo for mixing two solutions to find a balance. “First half was faster growth, lower margins, second half of the year was lower growth, higher margin. Now we’ve got to drive down the middle of the highway for next year.”

Investors would like to see both profitability and growth, if Whitman’s middle of the highway approach is to succeed.