The company disclosed that it also continues to search for a permanent CEO seven months after the departure of Enrique Lores.
While prices for memory chips are on track to continue rising in coming quarters, HP Inc. expects its component costs to increase at a slower rate going forward, the company said Wednesday.
During a call with analysts for HP Inc.’s fiscal third quarter of 2026, ended July 31, executives shared updates on the memory crisis, personal systems growth and the company’s search for a permanent CEO.
HP CFO Karen Parkhill said there’s no question that memory pricing will continue to be an issue going forward, though suggested that a slower rate of increase is beginning to be seen as of the company’s current fiscal fourth quarter.
“Looking ahead to the remainder of our fiscal year, we continue to expect input costs to rise, putting near-term pressure on our operating margins, particularly in personal systems,” she said during the call Wednesday. “We continue to expect memory and storage costs to increase further as a percentage of the bill of materials.”
Going forward, “we expect input costs to continue to rise, but at a slower rate than we have experienced in fiscal ‘26,” Parkhill said.
Later during the call, Parkhill reiterated the point—stating that “on input costs, we said we still expect them to rise in FY ‘27 and in Q4, but at a slower rate than we’ve seen to date.”
Amid the global memory crunch, which stems from the race to build new data centers to enable surging AI adoption, HP has been vigorously working with solution providers to leverage the vendor’s broader portfolio as a way to offset some of the price hikes, HP Chief Commercial Officer Dave McQuarrie told CRN in April.
HP’s Personal Systems business, driven in part by AI PC growth, was a highlight of the company’s latest quarter, executives said. Personal Systems revenue climbed 18 percent year over year to reach $11.76 billion for the quarter, even as total unit shipments fell 16 percent.
In total, HP saw revenue rise 12.5 percent from the same period a year earlier to $15.67 billion. That easily surpassed Wall Street analyst expectations of $14.39 billion.
Meanwhile, HP reported non-GAAP diluted earnings of 83 cents per share, compared to the 69 cents that Wall Street had expected.
CEO Search
The search for a permanent CEO replacement continues, interim CEO Bruce Broussard said Wednesday. In early February, HP disclosed that CEO Enrique Lores had stepped down to become the CEO of PayPal, following a 36-year career with HP.
Many solution providers had been hoping to see a faster hiring of a new CEO, according to an executive at a major solution provider who spoke with CRN.
“My view is, it’s hard to run an organization of this size with an interim leader, unless [Broussard] is planning to become the permanent leader,” said the solution provider executive, who declined to be named. “Enrique left in February. That’s a long time. It may be hard. I get it. But we would like to see some urgency.”
During his comments Wednesday, Broussard disclosed no timeline for filling HP’s permanent CEO role but said the process is advancing.
“I know some of you are interested in an update on the CEO search,” he said. “I’m sure you can appreciate that I’m unable to share details or a timeline. But the search is proceeding well, and we continue to make good progress in finding the right next leader for HP.”
