In the middle of HP's latest 10-K filing with the SEC, the company offered up a chart on the five-year performance of its shares at the end of each fiscal year.
It does this every year. But this year, it's especially painful.
It shows that $100 invested in HP in 2007 would be worth $24.81 as of October of this year—a 75 percent drop at a time when the broad S&P index and the S&P tech sector were both up.
So what happened? HP happened to make big management changes near the end of its fiscal year for two years running.
In 2008 and 2009, under then-CEO Mark Hurd, HP outperformed the market and its peers. He resigned in 2010 after a scandal over his relationship with an HP marketing contractor. HP announced it hired Léo Apotheker as his replacement on September 30, 2010. He began his job on November 1, 2010 and was let go in September 2011, when he was replaced by the current CEO, Meg Whitman.
Here's how HP explained the chart:
The graph below shows the cumulative total stockholder return assuming the investment of $100 on the date specified (and the reinvestment of dividends thereafter) in each of HP common stock, the S&P 500 Index, and the S&P Information Technology Index.
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