Yahoo Finance

Reportedly, Meg Whitman the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hewlett-Packard Company HPQ or H-P has been elected by SurveyMonkey Inc., a producer of online survey tools, to join the company's board of directors.

Whitman, 59, was appointed to run the computer giant in Sep 2011. She will lead the new H-P Enterprise business group post the spilt in Nov 1 this year. Whitman stated that this is the right time for her to join the board of SurveyMonkey. She looks at the offer as an attractive one as it’s her first external board appointment since she joined H-P in 2011.

Also, SurveyMonkey’s announcement that its board had elected Facebook Inc.’s FB COO Sheryl Sandberg as a director encouraged Whitman.

She also showed interest in the offer as this would give her an opportunity to continue working with Bill Veghte, former H-P executive. In July, SurveyMonkey had announced that Veghte would take on the CEO’s role. Veghte took the place of David Goldberg, the previous CEO of SurveyMonkey, who died in May this year while he was on a holiday in Mexico.

Veghte was associated with H-P for five years. He served as COO, executive vice president and was selected to head the enterprise group, replacing Dave Donatelli. Before joining H-P, Veghte also served as a Microsoft MSFT executive for a period of 20 years.

The news comes on the heels of H-P’s plans to split into two companies after about a year of consideration. H-P had announced in Oct 2014 that it will split its enterprise-facing hardware and service business and its consumer-facing computer and printer segments, with both companies trading publicly. The business-oriented company will be called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise while the client side will be called HP Inc.

Our Take on H-P

The current separation of the units comes as the result of its decision to diversify its revenue base from its legacy PC and printing operations to the enterprise segment, which consists of computer servers, data storage devices, networking, software and services.

It is worth noting that the PC and printing segment contributes more than 50% of H-P’s revenues and the rest comes from Enterprise Group, Enterprise Services, Software and HP Financial Services. Nonetheless, the PC and printing businesses contribute less to profits.

Going forward, the split would enable a customized approach to two different kinds of businesses enabling more flexible operation of each, which might not have been possible as a single entity. Nonetheless, H-P’s enterprise segment will now compete directly with International Business Machines IBM, which means that a lot still depends on execution.

Hewlett-Packard carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).