Five takeaways from HPE’s Networking Investor Day

A little over a year after closing the Juniper Networks acquisition, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. today used its Networking Investor Day to argue that networking is no longer a supporting act at HPE. It’s the growth engine. The numbers shown to investors support that. HPE says its combined networking business will grow from $9.3 billion in fiscal 2024 to about $11.3 billion in fiscal 2026, with operating profit rising from $1.6 billion to $2.5 billion over the same period. The company now expects networking revenue to grow in the high-teens to low-20% range in fiscal 2027, up from the 14% to 17% it guided on its last earnings call. It has set a long-term target of high-teens compound annual growth through fiscal 2029, with operating margins in the mid- to high 20s, according to HPE’s investor day announcement. “AI is reshaping the technology stack, making the network more strategic,” said Rami Rahim (pictured), executive vice president and general manager of HPE Networking and former Juniper chief executive. Any networking vendor could say the same this year. What differentiates HPE is its product breadth and sales reach, which enable it to act on that, assuming execution holds. Here are my five…