HPE’s Intelligent Edge and HPC & AI growth engines – as well as HPE GreenLake platform – fuel record performance in fiscal year 2023

HPE reported Q4 results to close impressive fiscal 2023 by capitalizing on strong momentum across our portfolio.

HPE has achieved demonstrable success this year in our ongoing portfolio pivot to higher-growth, higher-margin areas aligned to the key market megatrends driving customer demand. We have deliberately aligned our strategy over the last few years to significant trends in the market around edge, hybrid cloud, and AI. While headwinds remain in certain segments of the IT market, our growth engines and our HPE GreenLake platform are helping to accelerate our revenue and profit diversification. 

Our steady execution has resulted in our third straight year of revenue growth, our highest gross margins, and our highest non-GAAP operating profit since I became CEO, and record-breaking results in non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share and free cash flow.

These are few key financial metrics highlights from our full-year fiscal 2023 results:
 

• Total revenue for the full year increased 5.5%⁽¹⁾ year-over-year in constant currency to $29.1 billion 
  
  
• Non-GAAP operating margin⁽²⁾ rose to 10.8%, up 20 points year-over-year
  
  
• Profit, measured by non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share⁽²⁾⁽³⁾, was $2.15, up 6.4% year-over-year
  
  
• Free cash flow was $2.2 billion, a 25% year-over-year increase
  
  
• Annualized revenue run-rate (ARR)⁽⁴⁾ was $1.3 billion, an increase of nearly $370 million year-over-year

 
Significant acceleration in AI demand

Demand in our AI solutions is exploding. We saw a significant uptick in customer demand in recent quarters for accelerated computing infrastructure and services. Our HPC & AI segment revenue grew 25%⁽¹⁾ year-over-year in fiscal 2023. We ended this fiscal year with the largest HPC & AI order book on record, driven by $3.6 billion in accelerated processing unit (APU) orders. These APU orders include GPU-based server orders. We anticipate demand next fiscal year will remain very strong, and we expect a large order backlog until GPU supply is less constrained.

With HPE-built supercomputers consistently ranked among the top ten within the Top500 most powerful and sustainable supercomputers, our clear leadership in this space continues to position us well in the AI market. Two weeks ago, at the supercomputing conference SC23, we expanded our collaboration with NVIDIA to announce a turnkey, preconfigured supercomputing solution for generative AI, to streamline the model development process. Later this week, at HPE Discover Barcelona, we will further expand our NVIDIA partnership with new solutions created for enterprise customers.

As we prepare to capture a greater share of AI-linked inferencing opportunities, we saw overall demand in our Compute business improve moderately in the second half and are encouraged in our outlook for this segment. Orders in Q4 for servers that include APUs represented 32% of our total server orders mix, up more than 250% from the beginning of 2023. For the full fiscal 2023, APUs represented 25% of our total server orders mix. With customer interest in servers with APUs growing significantly, we are investing in specialized sales resources that can enhance future growth. 

Continued relevance of edge-to-cloud offering

Even against an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, we saw continued – though uneven – demand across our HPE portfolio. Our Intelligent Edge segment was the largest driver of our revenue and profit growth in fiscal 2023, making up 18% of our overall revenue and 39% of segment operating profit. FY 2023 revenue in the segment increased by 45%⁽¹⁾ to $5.2 billion, while operating margins expanded more than 16% year-over-year⁽¹⁾ to 29.5%, demonstrating the relevance of our offering and the payoff of our investments over time. A critical part of our edge-to-cloud portfolio, the Intelligent Edge will continue to contribute meaningfully to profitable growth for our shareholders. 

We remain focused on advancing our position in hybrid cloud, as we add new customers to our HPE GreenLake platform. We ended the year with 29,000 customers on our cloud platform. In Q4, we closed our largest HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise deal to date. In addition, we saw more customer demand our HPE GreenLake SaaS offerings across data protection, observability, and sustainability services.

In Storage, the market overall has been sluggish this year, and our uneven performance is in line with most of our peers. However, we are encouraged with three quarters of stable demand. We saw sequential improvement in Storage revenue in the fourth quarter. We are taking deliberate actions and making appropriate investments that give us confidence in our ability to capture greater market share, including deploying a larger specialized data storage and protection sales force.

Finally, our HPE Financial Services segment continues to deliver strategic, sustainable solutions for customers, accelerating our strategy and helping to expand earnings for shareholders. Financing volumes rose year-over-year, with major contributions from our efforts to boost our as-a-service volumes through HPE GreenLake. 

A portfolio and strategy that creates value for shareholders

I am very proud of all that HPE delivered in fiscal year 2023 – for our shareholders, our customers, our partners, and our team members. Our performance demonstrates the relevance of our strategy, our portfolio differentiation, and our strong execution. With the progress we have made this year, we are raising our dividend in 2024.

I am confident in our ability to continue to deliver for our shareholders in fiscal year 2024 and beyond. We have invested in and innovated our portfolio so that it stands apart from any other. Our operational improvements have enabled us to bring our strategy to life, despite cyclical dynamics. We have been bold in undertaking transformation across the company. The changes we have made to our operating model sets us up very well to add significantly to the long-term profitability and value we create for our shareholders. 

I hope you share my optimism in what HPE can achieve in the year ahead.

¹ Adjusted to eliminate the effects of currency. A description of HPE’s use of non-GAAP financial information is provided in the earnings presentation at https://Investors.hpe.com.

² Reconciliation of specific adjustments to GAAP results for the current and prior periods and description of HPE’s use of non-GAAP financial information are included in the earnings presentation at https://Investors.hpe.com. 

³ FY23 non-GAAP diluted net EPS excludes after-tax costs of approximately $0.61 per share primarily related to stock-based compensation expense, amortization of intangible assets, transformation costs, acquisition disposition and other related charges, and adjustment for taxes. 

⁴ For definition of as-a-Service orders and ARR, please refer to the earnings presentation at https://Investors.hpe.com.

This blog contains forward-looking statements subject to risks; results could differ materially. For more cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements, refer to the earnings presentation at  investors.hpe.com.