Credit: HPE
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) saw its consolidated net profit in Australia jump to $21.8 million for its financial year ending 31 October 2020, up from $1.5 million in 2019.
The net profit figure, outlined in the latest annual financials lodged with the Australian corporate regulator by Hewlett-Packard Australia Pty. Ltd. -- the entity behind HPE in Australia and a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard South Pacific -- included $5.9 million tax expense, up from $4.4 million in the previous year.
However, total revenue took a hit, dropping from $750 million to $665 million in the Australian market, with customer contract revenue falling from $740 million in the previous year to $659 million in 2020.
The vendor said in its financials that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted its financial performance during the year and would continue to do so, stating “the extent to which COVID-19 adversely impacts our future business operations, financial performance and results of operations is uncertain and will depend on many factors outside the company's control.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to control its spread have significantly curtailed the movement of people, goods and services worldwide, including in most or all of the regions in which we sell our products and services and conduct our business operations,” the vendor continued.
“Although the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been assessed, the long-term magnitude and duration of the disruption and resulting decline in business activity is still highly uncertain and cannot currently be predicted.”
During the financial reporting period, HPE purchased supercomputer maker Cray for US$1.3 billion, with the effective date of the acquisition and business asset transfer taking place from 1 January 2020.
The deal is meant to serve corporate customers with high-performance computing as a service to help with analytics needed for artificial intelligence and machine learning, but also products supporting high-performance storage, compute and software.
HPE also made a significant leap into the SD-WAN market with its offer to buy networking vendor Silver Peak for $925 million, which will see the latter's Unity WAN technology slide into HPE subsidiary Aruba's portfolio.
