HP hires GSK's Emma Walmsley as CEO with PC units down 16%, and its stock jumps 8%

HP Inc. named former GSK chief executive Emma Walmsley as its next CEO on Wednesday, ending a search that began when Enrique Lores left in February to run PayPal, according to Reuters (via the New York Post) and Bloomberg. She starts Jan. 4 and replaces interim CEO Bruce Broussard, who becomes board chair in place of Chip Bergh.

At 12:51 PM ET, Nasdaq data showed HP at $30.66, up $2.39 or 8.4%, for a market value of about $27.6 billion. The 52-week range is $17.56 to $36.23.

A CEO with no hardware résumé

Reuters notes Walmsley led GSK from 2017 until December of last year, spent 17 years at L'Oréal before that, and has sat on Microsoft's board for seven years. She has not run a hardware company. Reuters quotes a Capital.com analyst arguing that her experience steering a large company through a restructuring, including the Haleon separation, is closer to what HP needs than a hardware background. That is one analyst's view, not a verdict on the choice.

The number behind the number: units down, revenue up

The job she inherits is described in HP's fiscal third-quarter release, filed Aug. 26 on SEC EDGAR:

PC units fell 16% (consumer down 19%, commercial down 14%) while PC revenue rose 18%. Our arithmetic from those two figures: revenue per PC sold rose roughly 40% (1.18 divided by 0.84). That is price increases and a richer mix of AI PCs and workstations, and it is what a memory-chip squeeze looks like from the seller's side. HP's interim CEO said the company's supply actions had led to "meaningful improvements in memory supply."

The profit line is where the squeeze shows. Printing, about a quarter of revenue, earned roughly $0.71 billion of operating profit ($3.9B at 18.1%), more than the PC business's roughly $0.54 billion ($11.8B at 4.6%), using the release's rounded figures. And $0.11 of the quarter's $0.83 non-GAAP earnings per share, about 13%, came from tariff refunds, which HP also counts in its fourth-quarter outlook ($0.08). HP raised its fiscal 2026 non-GAAP EPS range to $3.19 to $3.29.

What HP has already told investors about 2027

In a Sept. 21 8-K, HP declined to give fiscal 2027 guidance. It said its preliminary planning assumption is that industry-wide PC unit volumes fall "roughly mid-single-digits" in calendar 2027, and that this depends on the second half of calendar 2026, which "remains fluid." Walmsley therefore arrives with a shrinking unit market as the stated baseline.

Who it hits

For a business owner planning a laptop refresh, the unit and revenue figures are the practical signal: the same fleet is costing more, and HP does not expect volumes to recover next year. As an illustration only, not an HP price: if a $1,000 laptop rose by the roughly 40% revenue-per-unit gap, a ten-seat office would pay about $14,000 instead of $10,000. Prices on your own quotes will differ, but buying the machines a firm actually needs this quarter, rather than a cycle early, is the sensible read of a seller that is pushing price over volume.

What we are watching: HP's fiscal fourth-quarter report (we have not confirmed the date) and whether the new CEO changes the fiscal 2027 stance.

Sources: Reuters via the New York Post; Bloomberg; HP filings on SEC EDGAR; Nasdaq quote data. Prices as of 12:51 PM ET and may be delayed. This is market information, not investment advice.