STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR's business news starts with rough times at HP.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Hewlett Packard was once a giant among the tech firms of Silicon Valley and now it is struggling. The company's latest CEO says profits at HP will continue to plummet.</s>STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: NPR's Steve Henn reports that HP's stock now trading near its lowest price in a decade.</s>STEVE HENN, BYLINE: It has been a brutal two and half year stretch for Hewlett Packard. The company has had multiple rounds of layoffs. It's on its third CEO and its stock has lost two-thirds of its values since early 2010.</s>STEVE HENN, BYLINE: When Meg Whitman took the reins a year ago, she promised a turnaround. Yesterday she asked Wall Street for patience.</s>MEG WHITMAN: The problem that has happened to HP over the last three years is a new CEO would come in tumble the investments...</s>STEVE HENN, BYLINE: And derail innovation, she said.</s>MEG WHITMAN: This start/stop of the last three years, you can't run a railroad that way. You don't end up with the products that are ahead of the market, you end up either not delivering the products or someone else gets there first.</s>STEVE HENN, BYLINE: But HP's problems go beyond chaotic corporate management, according to Joshua Shapiro, managing director of Princeton Analytics - a technology consulting firm. He says HP is afraid to take real risks.</s>JOSHUA SHAPIRO: Everybody wants to be innovative - or so they claim - but in truth innovation is really scary; it's actually terrifying.</s>STEVE HENN, BYLINE: And Shapiro says, instead of building new products, HP has spent the last decade and tens of billions of dollars buying companies - many of which have failed to thrive.</s>STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.
A downbeat forecast by Hewlett-Packard is casting doubt on the company's turnaround plans. CEO Meg Whitman says the company's earnings will take a hit in the coming year before its comeback strategy can take hold.