Shares of Hewlett-Packard are taking a beating Friday as investors express skepticism that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman can right the ship.
HP's stock price closed at 22.86 on Thursday, just before Whitman was appointed as the company's new CEO. Shares of HP were trading at 21.96 as of 11:02 a.m. ET though, a drop of more than 3.5% (the stock is slowly recovering). It's even worse if you consider that HP's stock price hit 24.90 on Wednesday, not long after the news leaked that Leo Apotheker was out as CEO.
The problem is simple: Investors are not keen on the company's decision to put a person with mostly consumer experience in charge of a business whose strength is in enterprise. Whitman, who most believe did a good job building eBay into a powerhouse business, just doesn't have experience in hardware and enterprise sales. Investors wonder whether Whitman has the knowledge needed to fix the problems at the massive HP empire (which employs 300,000 people).
Mashable's readers seem to agree with this assessment. In a recent poll where we asked readers what they think Whitman should do first, 42.5% of respondents said that she should revive the TouchPad and the webOS division. Another 25% said that she should save the PC division, while another 16% said that she should kill the $11 billion acquisition of British software maker Autonomy.