Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu on Friday downgraded his recommendation of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) to neutral, noting that the company is worthless and its stock should be valued at negative $2, Business Insider reported. The analyst called the company’s balance sheet “a mess” and said its was “fortunate the stock’s not zero.”
Outside of HP’s problematic balance sheet, the company still faces a number of other issues that can not easily be fixed such as its lackluster mobile portfolio and dying printer business.
“We’ve given them the benefit of the doubt,” Wu said “They are blaming everything on the economy. But the problems they have are not economy-related. If that’s the case, why are Apple and IBM doing well? To us that makes no sense. So we think the problems are structural.”
