Over the 2016-2025 period, the group generated an average of $3bn in profit a year - adjusting that average downward to remove the distortion caused by the pandemic, which saw HP post an abnormally high profit.
In total, over a full decade, $34bn - i.e., all of its free cash flow - was returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks. As a result, the number of shares outstanding was almost halved.
The business is admittedly low-growth - $48bn in revenue in 2016 versus $55bn in 2025, with a peak of $63bn in 2022 - but it has remained profitable every year, without a stumble.
The balance sheet is also comfortable, with net debt representing less than two years of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, and a business whose recurrence is underpinned by a strong focus on the professional and corporate market, which accounts for three-quarters of consolidated revenue.
With these characteristics, does HP deserve its bargain-basement valuation of less than six times its average profit - based on a market capitalization of just $18bn - alongside a dividend yield of more than 6% and still-robust buybacks, carried out at very attractive multiples?
Probably not, even if recent news flow has indeed been weighed down by a succession of risk factors: tariffs, memory-price inflation, a change of chief executive, discretionary spending under pressure in the United States, and so on.
If there is anything to regret at HP, it would arguably be the dismal performance of its acquisitions, as the $4bn invested in external growth - or what was supposed to be external growth - does not appear to have produced any tangible impact on the group's operating profit.
Last week, HP published perfectly steady earnings guidance for fiscal year 2026 .
