Good day, everyone, and welcome to the HP Incorporated Conference Call. My name is Jason, and I'll be your conference moderator for today's call. At this time, all participants will be in listen-only mode. We'll be facilitating a question-and-answer session toward the end of the conference. Should you need assistance during the call, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Orit Keinan-Nahon, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. I'm Orit Keinan-Nahon, Head of Investor Relations for HP Inc, and I would like to welcome you to today's conference call. With me today are Enrique Lores, HP's President and Chief Executive Officer, Marie Myers, HP's Chief Financial Officer, and Alex Cho, HP's President of Personal Systems. Before handing the call over to Enrique, let me remind you that this call is being webcast. A replay of the webcast will be made available shortly after the call for approximately one year. We posted today's press release and an accompanying slide presentation on our investor relations webpage at www.hp.com. We note that elements of this presentation are forward-looking and are based on our current expectations and assumptions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, assumptions, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond our control and are difficult to predict.
Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. For more detailed information, please see the information in the slide presentation and press release relating to forward-looking statements. For a discussion of some of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, please refer to HP's SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update such forward-looking statements. Now, I will hand over the call to Enrique.
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. This morning, we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Poly. This is a compelling combination that accelerates HP's strategy to create a more growth-oriented portfolio and further strengthens our industry opportunity in hybrid work solutions. Importantly, the transaction positions HP for long-term profitable growth and value creation. The pandemic has transformed the role technology plays in people's lives. We believe the rise of the hybrid office is creating a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine the way work gets done. This is a long-term secular trend that's driving strong and sustained demand for solutions that enable seamless collaboration across home and office environments. Today's announcement demonstrates how we are capitalizing on attractive growth opportunities through strategic M&A. It also supports the plan we outlined at our last Analyst Day to expand into adjacencies and accelerate new solutions that strengthen our value proposition.
The acquisition of Poly directly advances our strategy across the board. I have asked Alex Cho, President of our Personal Systems business, and Marie Myers, our Chief Financial Officer, to join the call today to provide their perspectives on the deal. Before handing the call over to them, let me first provide some color on why this is a great strategic fit for HP. To start, Poly will help to accelerate our growth and scale in peripherals and workforce solutions, two of our five key growth areas. The peripherals segment is expected to reach $110 billion by 2024 and is growing at 9% CAGR. Poly's leadership in video conferencing, cameras, headsets, and software will significantly broaden our peripherals portfolio and position us well in the rapidly growing meeting room solution industry. We see equally attractive opportunities in workforce solutions.
The workforce solutions TAM is expected to reach $120 billion by 2024 and is growing at an 8% CAGR. This growth is being driven by companies investing in digital services that enable IT to seamlessly set up, manage, and secure a more distributed IT ecosystem. Poly's devices and software, combined with HP's strength across compute, device management, and security, create a leading end-to-end portfolio of hybrid solutions. Together, we will provide customers with a unified platform that simplifies IT administration and provides a comprehensive solution for today's hybrid workforce. By combining Poly's leadership in the AV channel, along with our complementary sales and customer services teams, we expect to drive increased penetration and refresh. Additionally, by leveraging our global scaling, manufacturing, procurement, and logistics, we expect to improve Poly's supply chain constraints and drive improved margins going forward.
This transaction is also going to drive a wide range of new innovation, which Alex is going to talk more about. The final point I will make is that this transaction is designed to drive long-term profitable growth and shareholder value creation. At close, we expect this to be immediately accretive to revenue growth, margins, and non-GAAP EPS. By utilizing our channel and scale, we expect to accelerate Poly's revenue growth and improve their operating margins. The transaction is consistent with our capital returns program's target, and we remain committed to aggressively buy back shares of at least $4 billion in FY 2022. Marie will expand on the financials shortly. Let me close by saying that we are excited to welcome the Poly team to HP. It is a great company with great people and strong values that align well with HP's.
We see this as an excellent cultural fit, and we look forward to coming together as one team following the completion of the acquisition. Together, HP and Poly have significant growth opportunities ahead. Let me stop there and ask Alex to provide you with some additional details.
Thank you, Enrique. It's an exciting day for HP. From an innovation and customer experience perspective, this is a very compelling deal for us for three key reasons. It accelerates the momentum in the growing hybrid work segment. It combines two innovative companies to create a highly differentiated portfolio of end-to-end solutions. It paves the way for us to create and deliver meaningful collaboration experiences for customers, regardless of where they are working. I want to talk a little bit about each of these, starting with the market opportunity. Hybrid represents a structural shift in how and where work gets done. Three-quarters of workers are setting up more productive home offices as they prepare to permanently work from home at least part of the time. As they do, they are prioritizing audio and video quality.
With 60% saying they feel left out when joining meetings from home while others are in the office, it's clear why they want better collaboration solutions. Companies are also making significant investments to support these new ways of working. In fact, many people are choosing employers based on the technology and flexibility they provide. Companies are reconfiguring their office spaces with hybrid collaboration in mind. Of the more than 90 million collaboration spaces that exist today, less than 10% are currently equipped with video capabilities. This means they need new technology, which is why the meeting room device industry is projected to triple by 2024. They also need new services to be able to manage and secure these new hybrid office environments. All of this creates immense opportunity.
The second compelling aspect of this deal is the advantage and differentiation we can achieve by combining our two companies. Together, we are well-positioned to benefit from the trends I just shared. Like HP, Poly has a rich history of innovation. They are a leader and one of the most respected names in meeting room solutions, and they bring great audio and visual technology, software, and services, including more than 1,100 patents. Combining Poly's audio and video capabilities with HP's leadership in compute solutions will allow us to capitalize on the foundational shift to cloud-based unified communication platforms. Platforms like Zoom and Teams are becoming the primary way people connect and collaborate, whether working from home or the office.
As people incorporate other applications into the way they work, be it sharing presentations or working together on content from multiple locations, we will be able to provide a seamless end-to-end experience. The final point I will make is that this deal is most exciting because it creates value and meaningful experiences for our customers. Whether working from home or the office, our combined innovation delivers the superior collaboration experiences end users are looking for. HP's leadership across compute, device management, and security, together with a Poly portfolio and meeting room services. It's a winning combination that will empower people to work from anywhere without compromise. As well, IT administrators are seeking new solutions to make the shift to hybrid easier. More people connecting from more locations makes it more difficult to set up, manage, and secure a broad range of devices.
Our end-to-end solutions will help customers solve this. This is especially valuable when it comes to managing meeting rooms. The modern meeting room is becoming the new center for office work. Today, most IT departments do not have visibility into meeting room solutions like they do the traditional office environment of desks and PCs. This makes it difficult for them to provide service and support. By bringing together Poly's meeting room solutions with our TechPulse device management platform, we will help IT bridge this gap. I can't wait to get started because I see so much potential ahead. Let me stop here and turn it to Marie to talk about the financials.
Thank you, Alex. Today's announcement is an important step in HP's growth journey and will bring about significant benefits from a strategic and a financial perspective. We expect the opportunities to capitalize on both secular tailwinds and synergies will be accretive to HP's long-term revenue, operating profit, and non-GAAP EPS growth. With the expanded value proposition of an end-to-end hybrid work solution, combined with HP's go-to-market capabilities, we expect to realize substantial revenue synergies in both peripherals and meeting room solutions. We will be able to cross-sell across our global commercial and consumer sales channels while driving incremental sales from combining Poly's products with HP PCs. We expect to achieve $500 million of revenue synergies by FY 2025, accelerating Poly's revenue growth to an approximately 15% CAGR over the first three years after closing.
As Enrique mentioned, by leveraging our global scale in manufacturing, procurement, and logistics, we expect to drive an improvement in Poly's supply chain constraints and drive higher margins going forward. Further cost savings from overhead efficiencies and streamlining operations will provide incremental savings opportunities. Overall, we expect to improve Poly's operating margin by approximately 6 percentage points from current levels by FY 2025. During the integration phase, we will remain focused on minimizing business disruptions while driving synergy capture. We expect this transaction to close by the end of calendar year 2022, pending regulatory review and other customary closing conditions. We expect the transaction to be accretive to non-GAAP EPS in the first year after close and to support our 2%-4% revenue growth target over the next three years.
This transaction will be funded with a combination of existing cash on the balance sheet as well as additional debt. We remain committed to our FY 2022 share repurchases of at least $4 billion as we continue to return significant amounts of capital to shareholders even as we invest for future growth. We expect to be within our target leverage range of 1.5x-2x by the time this transaction closes. We remain committed to our policy of returning at least 100% of free cash flows to shareholders unless higher return opportunities become available. In conclusion, we believe the powerful combination of the technology and portfolios, accompanied by our scale and go-to-market, and combined with our ability to address the ongoing supply chain issues through our operation capabilities, will result in an acceleration of revenue growth and a direct improvement in margins.
When you combine this with an attractive valuation, this results in a very compelling investment for HP and a great opportunity of value creation. I'll end by saying that today's news is part of a strategy we shared with you last fall at our Analyst Day to build a stronger HP, and we look forward to getting this deal done. I know you have questions, so I'll stop here and let's open the lines.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We also ask that you please limit yourself to one question and a single follow-up. Excuse me. We'll pause momentarily while we assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Jim Suva from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Never a slow time in the life of HP, it seems like for sure. Thanks for the call. Marie, I believe it was slide 10, it looks like you talk about 6 points of operating margin improvement by fiscal 2025. Can you give us a little bit more color on that? Is that mostly through cost of goods sold or the OpEx line? Or I'm sure it's a whole handful of lots of them, but kinda where are kind of the biggest, maybe 1, 2, or 3 buckets that you see getting that 6 points of operating margin improvement? Thank you so much.
Hey, Jim. Good morning, and thank you for your question. Let me unpack how to think about the cost synergies and the operating margins. As I mentioned on the call, we expect the operating margins to expand around 600 basis points within 3 years of close. Really, Jim, it's in two areas. I'll give you some color in terms of how to think about that. From a gross margin perspective, you know, as you heard Enrique say earlier on the call, you know, we expect improvements in a combination of manufacturing, supply chain, procurement efficiencies because of our scale. You know, we see that contributing to the gross margin line.
Now, on the operation side, we will also see benefits there relative to just, you know, the opportunity from our scale and what that brings in terms of us being able to, you know, look at consolidation of sales channels, et cetera, and marketing efficiencies, et cetera. You know, in summary, you know, we expect, Jim, that those incremental savings will really come from a combination of both gross and operating expense.
Thanks so much, Jim.
Yeah, I think, Jim, what I would highlight is, as Marie was saying, savings come from both sides, OpEx and also operational improvements compared to the deals of this size. In this case, what is more relevant are the operational improvements driven by scale. Our scale matters, and we really think we can have a significant positive impact on the performance of Poly.
Thank you so much for the details, and congratulations on the news.
Thank you, Jim.
Our next question comes from Erik Woodring from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on announcing the deal this morning. I guess maybe if we just start with some of the revenue synergies that you alluded to. You know, if you just look at consensus forecast, they're forecasting Poly revenue growth of roughly 2% annually over the next three years versus your expectations for roughly 15% growth. Maybe you can just, similar to in how you just fleshed out some of the cost synergies, maybe just talk about some of the detail some of the synergies you expect on the revenue side to really accelerate revenue growth to a level that Poly, you know, hasn't seen in over a decade, at least. Thanks.
Yeah. Marie, do you want to take that one as well?
Sure, Enrique. Good morning, Eric, and thank you for your question. As we said, yes, we're very excited about this deal. Let me give you some color in terms of how to think about those revenue synergies of what we're thinking. First of all, as you've heard, the sort of strategic imperative here, the real opportunity here is going to come from the ability that we have to accelerate, you know, Poly's peripherals business. Obviously, I think it was a great comment earlier today, you know, there's like a once in a lifetime opportunity that's being driven by hybrid. Peripherals plays very well in that space. Then secondly, you know, the ability for us to be able to combine our innovation, I think as Alex referred to create this highly differentiated portfolio, right?
In terms of those end-to-end solutions, the ability to cross-sell across both portfolios and obviously areas, you know, like the meeting room solutions. I think, you know, there was a great comment here earlier today from Alex around just the fact that the whole meeting room space is very much just evolving and growing very quickly. These are the core areas. Then I just add that we also do expect to see incremental sales, you know, in even inside our own commercial PCs, because we see, you know, PCs being bundled with Poly's hybrid work solution. These are really the key areas, Eric, that we see in terms of where those revenue synergies are gonna come from.
Yeah. It's really important to highlight, Erik, that the go-to-market engines from both companies are very complementary. As you know, HP has a great go-to-market model for retail, for commercial channels, for enterprise. Poly brings great specialists for audio video solutions, and they also have a strong presence in the audio video channel where HP is not. This will give us a lot of momentum as we combine the portfolios and as we combine the go-to markets. Additionally, also, their growth has been constrained by supply chain, and this is another area where the scale of our supply chain will help to accelerate their growth.
Really growth driven by innovation, as Marie was saying, complement to go-to-market, and the impact that our supply chain is gonna have in enabling them to build more product.
No, that's really helpful. Thank you. Maybe just as my follow-up, any details you can share on how maybe we should think about cash usage versus, you know, debt you might go to market to raise and just the mix of those two as you think about funding this acquisition. That's it for me. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Marie?
Thanks again, Eric. I'd just say, look, we're expecting to finance the acquisition with a combination of both debt and cash. That's how we're thinking about it right now.
Our next question comes from Samik Chatterjee from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the announcement as well. I guess if I can just start with one on the synergies, the revenue synergies. You've talked about $500 million in 3 years. If you could just maybe dig into that from the aspect of how much of that you're expecting to come from the commercial or enterprise segment versus consumer, and what sort of investments in the channel would you need to accelerate growth? Sounds like you're thinking you can accelerate growth from year one. What sort of proactive investments you would need to make before even you sort of close the deal to drive that? I have a quick follow-up. Thank you.
Sure. Let me start, and then maybe Alex, you want to add a few comments. We expect the majority of the growth to come from the commercial side, and this was one of the reasons why we thought Poly was a great asset. It will come both from selling through our current channels, their solutions, but also through leveraging their audio, video, spatial channels and go-to-market to accelerate ours. All the investments are built into our plans, and this is really what will be driving the growth that we are predicting to have. Alex?
Maybe I'll just add, it's just to quantify what this means in the commercial space. There's 90 million conferencing spaces out there, and less than 10%, as we mentioned before, have any kind of equipment and technology. That's a massive opportunity, and what's so important is that they're compute-enabled spaces. That's why the complementarity of our portfolio works very well. The other thing to note is we're going to be able to leverage both our retail as well as commercial channels, because increasingly customers are purchasing from both in order to set up their home offices.
We know that there is a significant population of employees who are now electing to work at least part-time from home. Our channel reach will allow us to be able to take advantage of the Poly portfolio together with ours across all of these channels, which will be an immediate growth and acceleration for both companies.
All right. Thank you. For my follow-up, I have a quick one for Marie. Marie, any color on what the combined cash flow for the companies could look like? What would your free cash flow look like once you achieve the synergies over the three-year period that you're assuming as part of the deal? Thank you.
You know, thanks for your question, Samik. At this point in time, no outlook on cash flow. We expect when we close the deal at the end of the year, we'll definitely incorporate that into our outlook that we provide then, Samik.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you.
I'm sorry. Next question comes from Toni Sacconaghi from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. I was wondering if you can just clarify exactly what the starting base for the expected operating margin improvement. Is that sort of 11%-12%, which is year-to-date operating margins from Poly? And how do we think about that in the context of operating margins were 19% in 2019? Are you suggesting you could get back to historical levels? Or I guess, given the synergies that you outlined, why wouldn't you be able to actually do better than getting back to historical levels? Maybe you can just clarify starting point, expected ending point, and how and why that compares with sort of pre-pandemic levels of 19%. I have a follow-up, please.
Marie?
Sure. Tony, good morning, and thanks for your question. I'd say, look, in terms of operating margin, Tony, as we pointed out earlier, we do expect, you know, that increase around about 600 basis points, and that's really within three years after closing. You know, obviously, we kind of walked you through the details, and I'd say in terms of what the starting point is, you know, the way to think about it is in terms of the current fiscal year. Now, with respect to the ending point, you know, can we do better in your comments around 19%? Obviously, Tony, if we can do better, we always will, so that's our commitment.
At this point in time, based on where we're at in the transaction, you know, we are confident within our outlook of really improving operating margins here, that 600 basis points within the three years. I would just add, you know, obviously we'll provide updates to the outlook, Toni, as the deal itself closes out here too as well.
Right. Well, thank you. Maybe you could just provide color on what's gone wrong, like why it's gone from 19%-11% in terms of the operating margin, and are you simply just undoing things that went wrong? My second question is just on what the status, Poly's talked a lot about having supply issues. How big is their backlog, and is that a meaningful contributor to expected revenue growth over the next three years? Can you give us a sense of what the size of their backlog is or how big it is relative to normal currently?
Yeah. Let me take that one. I think, Toni, the answer to both questions is related. The major impact that the business has had has been because of the low availability of components and the impact this has had on the sales in the short term. This has driven a very elevated backlog that it was quantified by Dave and the team in the last call. Yes, as we address that and as we bring the capacity and the scale of our supply chain, backlog will help to accelerate the growth, especially in the short term. Now, what is really important to realize is that this, the hybrid work model, is a growing market. Growing market both to enable people to work from home, but also, as Alex explained, to equip offices for the new hybrid model.
Only 10% of the offices have been equipped with video conferencing solutions. We expect that more and more will be as people, as companies will start reopening and allow people to work from home, as HP will be doing. This will be a significant tailwind because both markets will drive growth for the company.
Just to add to Enrique's comments on backlog, Tony. Over the last couple of quarters, their backlogs actually increased. I think that's a really good indication of the strength and demand that's in this space as well.
Our next question comes from Ananda Baruah from Loop Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Yeah, congrats on the deal. Yeah, just two quick ones if I could. Now that you guys are leaning into this a little bit more, should we expect M&A to be kind of a way that you guys get to scale, you know, in peripherals and related initiatives that you've been talking about.
Well, let me go back to what we shared during our analyst day, Ananda, which was that we identified five growth areas, and we said that we would be using M&A to accelerate our growth in those spaces. Both peripherals and workplace solutions were two of the five areas, and this acquisition is gonna be helping us on both. This will really help us to continue to expand our growth portfolio, which was one of our key plans or key strategies during the last investor day. At this point, in peripherals, we have built a strong portfolio, both in the hybrid space with Poly and with, on gaming with HyperX. Now it's really about materializing the opportunities in both cases and accelerating our growth in these two categories.
Okay, great. Then just real quickly, Enrique, there is a. This may have been Alex who made this remark, but, there was a remark in the prepared remarks about increased refresh, and I missed the context on that and just would love to get that context. Is that the
Yeah. I think it comes from some of the opportunities that we have described during the call. If you think about video conferences, video conference rooms, they are not designed for a hybrid way of working where some people is in the room, some people are working from home. Most companies, including HP, are redesigning our setups to make sure that we provide an inclusive system for people that will be connecting from home. This will be driving the refresh. As employees continue to set up home office environments, they will also invest in driving and improving their connections. What we have shared in the past is that peripherals have a refresh rate that is faster than PCs. Also part of the opportunity is driven by that.
Our next question comes from Aaron Rakers from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the question and also congratulations on the deal. I wanna go back to kind of the go-to-market synergies. You know, as you think about bringing Poly into the portfolio, the umbrella of HP, is there anything you can share with us of how much Poly's business is driven by similar go-to-market channels as HP today? Or maybe taken another way, how much incremental revenue growth do you just see from, you know, this transaction being able to be driven across the go-to-market of HP? I have a quick follow-up.
Sure. Alex, do you want to take that one?
Yeah. Yeah, Aaron. Firstly, Poly's channels are very much related to audio and video sales, as well as more traditional peripherals. One of the things that we bring and the reason why we think it's so complementary is that we know that these peripherals are also heavily bought by commercial customers in retail channels, in the much larger commercial channels. We'll be able to add that, as well as the fact that so much of meeting rooms now is becoming more IT centric. Just the breadth of our commercial IT centric channels adds that breadth to their great portfolio. Again, very complementary across audio, video, commercial, retail, and online spaces that we can take the combined portfolio and accelerate.
Yep. As a quick follow-up, you know, just going back to that refresh rate, I think in the slide deck you talk about 30 million end devices. I mean, is there anything you can help us, you know, understand, you know, the age of that installed base? How maybe that factors into the expectations as we think about the accelerated revenue growth post this acquisition?
Alex?
Yeah. Yeah, let me just jump to that. I think there's a lot of opportunity because as Enrique said, when you look at peripherals, they refresh faster, and our reference point given our business is a PC. You have peripherals that are refreshing at a faster rate than PCs. As well, all of these rooms are either absent of technology or have technology that is more legacy based. We know that the significant underlying shift is to more cloud-enabled collaboration solutions, Zoom, RingCentral, Teams, as an example. You have a refresh opportunity as well as just a growing install base opportunity, which makes this a really attractive space for us.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Sidney Ho from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thanks, and congrats on the deal. My question is on the revenue side. Assuming the $500 million revenue synergy is a three-year cumulative number, how are you thinking about the linearity of those synergies? Would that be front-end loaded because of the improvement in supply chain or more back-end loaded because it takes time for some of these things to cross-sell? Maybe on the other side, if I think about revenue dis-synergies, is there much overlap between the two companies in terms of product portfolio that we should consider? I assume there's not, but just want to confirm.
Let me restart. There is no overlap between the two portfolios, so we don't see any revenue dis-synergies happening because of the combination. At this point, the revenue plan is linear, so 15% CAGR, very similar year-over-year. As we always say, if we can do better, we will do better. The model and the way we have built the plan is linear.
Okay, that's helpful. Maybe my follow-up question's on the balance sheet side or capital return side. I understand you confirmed the buyback at least $4 billion of stock this year, but does that change your ability for capital returns beyond this year? In other words, should we expect a period that you prioritize debt repayment over capital returns? Thanks.
No. As Marie confirmed during the prepared remarks, that we maintain our previous commitment of returning at least 100% of free cash flow unless opportunities with a better return show up. No changes in our approach and our strategy to return capital to shareholders.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. If you look at the last few years of Poly results, it seems very surprising that they really did not see a growth benefit from the hybrid work that obviously everyone has experienced. Can you give us some context of why their revenue has been relatively flat over the last few years? I understand supply constraints are likely part of it, and you know, it sounded from Marie's comments that the backlog was especially elevated in the past couple of quarters. In 2020, 2021, as you guys have experienced and several other companies that are exposed to this space, there was significant growth. I mean, 60%, 70%, 80% growth for some companies that could be considered peers.
Just wondering why is it, beyond supply chain, that maybe they have not experienced. Any color there would be helpful.
Sure. I think at the beginning of the video, they were still impacted by the merger between Plantronics and Polycom, and this created some short-term impacts on the revenue. Then as they were starting to grow, they were impacted by supply chain challenges. The combination of both has driven the impact that you were sharing. I think what is important for us going forward is, first, as we have shared, this is a growing market. We really see the value in the combination both of the portfolio and the leverage that we can drive from a go-to-market perspective, and how with our scale we can help on the supply chain constraints.
This is why, going forward, we see this 15% CAGR in revenue growth that we really think will help us to continue to grow in these categories.
Okay, that's helpful, Enrique. Thanks for the color there. If I could follow up, I think you said that there was basically no overlap in the portfolios, but you guys have assets like Halo video conferencing. Are there plans to sort of, you know, not really invest in those assets on a go-forward basis? Or is it just that you think that it's a different subset of customers where those applications are applicable to versus the Poly assets? Thank you.
Yeah. We don't have anymore the Halo video business. It was discontinued about 10 years ago. We launched a few months ago HP Presence, which is a set of technologies that we are using both across all our portfolio. In fact, we will now integrate those technologies across the full portfolio, including Poly. So really no revenue dyssynergies in the business. Jason?
The next question comes from Kyle McNealy from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks very much for the question. I guess, congrats on the deal as well. I'm wondering if you can give us a sense for the current hardware versus software mix in Poly's business, and whether you expect that to materially change under HP ownership. Secondly, how do you view the strength of Poly's position relative to the larger trends in the conferencing technology market with cloud conferencing platforms and the TDM to Voice over IP transition that we may be on the back end of now? Thanks very much.
Sure. Alex, do you want to take that one?
Yeah. Let me first start with the second part is, what we really like and very excited about, with Poly is they've got such strong assets in audio and video. As well, if you look at conferencing rooms, cloud-based systems, which is a big trend, they've made nice progress in innovation and growing their footprint, around the world. We're very excited about that. We think that is the mega one-time trend that is happening. Shift to hybrid, cloud-based solutions, compute-enabled meeting spaces, that's where coming together we think will be very strong. To answer your first one, you know that Poly does have a part of their business that's related to services.
In fact, this is why we think this is such a great enabler of our peripherals ambition, which is growing, as well as our workforce solutions, because as a solution, selling into the commercial environment, this gives us great opportunity to expand that.
Really, thank you everybody for joining the call today. I think I'd like to close with the three key messages that we see supporting this acquisition. First of all is that we see hybrid work as a tremendous opportunity, and this deal is gonna help us to accelerate our leadership in this space. Secondly is the combination of the assets that HP brings and Poly brings is really gonna help us to accelerate our growth in two of our key growth areas. Finally, from a financial perspective, this is a very attractive opportunity with very significant returns to our shareholders. Again, thank you for joining the call with such a short notice, and I wish a great week to everybody. Thank you.
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