New York, May 31, 2026, 12:03 (EDT)
- HPQ shares ended Friday at $27.04, up $2.04 from the previous close, after a choppy week for earnings.
- NYSE stayed closed Sunday. Traders look to Monday’s reopening and HP’s investor day on June 2.
- Investors are looking at AI-PC demand while also dealing with higher memory-chip costs and the risk of tighter margins in the second half.
HP Inc. (HPQ) is coming off a big jump on Friday after investors took another look at the company’s earnings and ties to AI hardware. Shares finished the day at $27.04, up $2.04, on about 59 million shares traded. The NYSE regular session runs 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern on trading days. The stock was not trading Sunday.
Timing is key here, since HP is not trading like a pure play on legacy PCs and printers anymore. Investors are weighing if AI PCs—machines that run certain AI tasks locally—and the refresh cycle tied to Windows 11 are enough to make up for pricier components.
HP reported a 9% jump in fiscal second-quarter revenue, reaching $14.4 billion. Non-GAAP diluted EPS went up to 86 cents, compared with 71 cents last year. Interim CEO Bruce Broussard said HP was “navigating rising commodity costs.” CFO Karen Parkhill called it a “strong” quarter, mentioning gains in revenue, earnings and free cash flow, or cash after operating needs and investment spending. HP Investor Relations
HP’s split showed up in results. Personal Systems, which covers PCs, brought in $10.2 billion in revenue, a 13% rise from a year ago, while total units dropped 7%. Printing revenue was steady at around $4.2 billion. In its presentation, HP said the PC side gained from better pricing, services, and higher-value units, not just shipment volume.
But the risk is clear. Reuters said AI PCs made up 44% of HP’s shipments in the quarter, an increase from just over 35% last quarter. HP said rising memory-chip costs are squeezing margins; those chips handle data inside PCs and servers. The company is guiding for margin pressure to hit a low in the fourth quarter and get better in fiscal 2027. HP also flagged that the PC unit market could drop in the “high teens” percent in the second half. Reuters
Wall Street clocks more record closes Friday as the main indexes finish at highs. Dell Technologies soared 32.8% after the company boosted its full-year profit and revenue guidance. That gave the market another reason to pile into hardware stocks linked to AI and enterprise demand. “There’s definitely euphoric sentiment in the market around AI,” said Ohsung Kwon, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo, in comments to Reuters. Reuters
Sell-side held on to a cautious stance. UBS analyst David Vogt lifted his HP price target to $26 from $20, kept his Neutral call, and said HP is managing a “challenging” commodity environment, though he expects margins to fall in the second half. That $26 target is still under where the stock closed on Friday, signaling some of the rally’s optimism is already priced in. TipRanks
HP is set to appear at the Evercore TMT Global Conference on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific. The focus for investors will be on pricing power, the AI-PC mix, and how customers take higher PC prices—whether upgrades get pushed out or not.
HP’s guidance muddies the picture. The company is looking for third-quarter non-GAAP diluted EPS between 61 and 71 cents, and full-year non-GAAP EPS of $2.90 to $3.10. Fiscal 2026 free cash flow is pegged at $2.8 billion to $3.0 billion. That sets something for income and value names to track, but doesn’t clear up the memory-cost issue.
HPQ cleared the bar on last week’s quarter, beating expectations. Now, the question for the stock is if it can hold its recent AI-driven gains when markets open again—once investors switch back to watching margins, units and component costs.
