Looking to bolster its hybrid office business, HP Inc. has recently announced a major deal to acquire Poly, a global provider of videoconferencing hardware, conference phones, and headsets, for $3.3 billion, or $40 per share, which will include Poly debt.
HP is awaiting approval from Poly shareholders and federal regulators, but it expects to close the acquisition by the end of this year.
HP would like to boost its peripherals offerings, given that the last two years have been spent in a worldwide pandemic that has led to a huge increase in the need for work-from-home and hybrid office solutions.
“The rise of the hybrid office creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine the way work gets done,” said Enrique Lores, HP’s President and Chief Executive Officer, in a statement. “Combining HP and Poly creates a leading portfolio of hybrid work solutions across large and growing markets.”
Last year, HP made its first foray into the peripherals realm when it purchased gaming peripherals business HyperX, a company that specializes in gaming headsets for both PCs and console systems, for $425 million.
“I really think this is going to be a real win-win,” said Alex Cho, HP’s President of Personal Systems, to CRN. “Think about it from a channel perspective – they’re going to get a portfolio that is so meaningful for the future. This is about hybrid work . . . [channel partners] will be able to cross-sell and upsell all these new innovative solutions that we have planned together.”
Recently, Poly has faced flat revenue performance and supply chain issues. The company projected it will earn $1.7 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2022, down slightly from its $1.74 billion fiscal year 2021 revenue.
In its most recent quarter, however, HP posted record revenues. HP has said that by 2025 it expects $500 million of revenue synergies to result from the acquisition, and it also hopes to accelerate Poly’s growth rate to 15 percent annually within the first three years following the purchase.
“The future of work is hybrid,” said Poly CEO Dave Shull on the company’s most recent investor call, “which is to say for any given workforce, some percentage of folks will be remote, some percentage of the time, while the balance will be in the office.” HP and Poly are betting their deal will help them capitalize on this radical shift in where work gets done.
