Spinoff spotlight: HPE

Article Excerpt

HEWLETT-PACKARD ENTERPRISE CO. $15 is a hold. The company (New York symbol HPE; Manufacturing sector; Shares outstanding: 1.3 billion; Market cap: $19.5 billion; Dividend yield: 3.4%; Takeover Target Rating: Medium; www.hpe.com) took its current form on November 1, 2015, when the old Hewlett-Packard Co. split into two firms—HP Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. For every share they held in the old HP, shareholders received one share in each of the new companies. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise sells computing services and products, like servers and analytics software, mainly to large corporations and governments. The company will now buy Juniper Networks Inc. (New York symbol JNPR) for $14.0 billion in cash. Juniper designs and develops products for the high-performance computer networks of corporations and cloud-computing service providers. It also owns Mist AI, which uses artificial intelligence software to optimize the network traffic of its customers. If regulators and Juniper shareholders approve, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise should close the deal in late 2024 or early 2025. Due to the loans the company will need to fund…