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Independent research · Est. October 2026
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Stock X-Ray · Technology · S&P 500 Full Coverage — Phase 1

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

X-Ray dated Oct 28, 2026 · Share price as of Oct 28, 2026 intraday, when the valuation snapshot was captured · Financials from SEC filings (EDGAR) · Valuation multiples from a labelled secondary source
The verdict — valuation label: FAIRLY PRICED

Forward P/E 13.06x is 0.99x the peer median of 13.19x — priced almost exactly in line with peers, squarely in the fairly priced band. PEG 0.39 and latest-quarter revenue growth of +33.7% year over year (PRIMARY/EDGAR) look cheap, but this is the low-P/E trap to beware: forward P/E is less than half trailing P/E 30.82x because a sharp, cyclical AI-server earnings surge is expected, and a low multiple on peak-cycle earnings is not automatically undervalued, so the label is capped at FAIRLY PRICED. Delivered demand check: the cluster median grew +48.5% year over year — demand rising strongly.

13.1×
Forward P/E — price vs next year’s expected earnings (secondary source)
13.2×
Peer median forward P/E — closest comparable companies
30.8×
Trailing P/E — price vs the last twelve months of earnings
1.9×
Price / sales

What would change this label: Moves toward UNDERVALUED if HPE sustains revenue growth above +20% year over year for two more quarters while converting it to earnings at the forward rate, showing the new earnings level is durable rather than peak-cycle. Moves toward OVERVALUED if revenue growth falls below +5% year over year or forward estimates are cut enough to push the forward P/E above about 15.2x (1.15x the peer median).

In simple words

HPE sells servers and storage, and business is booming — sales grew about 34%. Its shares cost about the same, relative to expected profit, as similar hardware companies. The catch is that profits are surging with the AI spending wave, so today's low-looking price tag may flatter how cheap it really is.

Words we use, in plain English: P/E ratio — the share price divided by earnings per share; how many dollars you pay for one dollar of yearly profit. Forward P/E — the same, using next year’s expected earnings. Free cash flow — cash a company has left after running the business and buying equipment. TTM — the last twelve months. Drawdown — the worst fall from a peak to the low after it.
Figure 1 — The share price vs the market — six years
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)S&P 500 (SPY)
392364326288252021202220232024202520262020-09-012026-10-27

Both lines start at 100 on 2020-09-01. Over the full window Hewlett Packard Enterprise returned +542.45% and the S&P 500 +118.28% (price returns; dividends not reinvested). Worst peak-to-trough fall for Hewlett Packard Enterprise: -48.8% (2025-01-22 to 2025-04-08). Source: Nasdaq official daily history.

What the label rests on

Forward P/E 13.06x is 0.99x the peer median of 13.19x — priced almost exactly in line with peers, squarely in the fairly priced band. PEG 0.39 and latest-quarter revenue growth of +33.7% year over year (PRIMARY/EDGAR) look cheap, but this is the low-P/E trap to beware: forward P/E is less than half trailing P/E 30.82x because a sharp, cyclical AI-server earnings surge is expected, and a low multiple on peak-cycle earnings is not automatically undervalued, so the label is capped at FAIRLY PRICED. Delivered demand check: the cluster median grew +48.5% year over year — demand rising strongly. The company’s forward P/E is 13.1× against a peer median of 13.2×. Its own history: UNVERIFIED — no sourced range available. Sector demand read: Delivered demand check: the Technology hardware & storage group's median latest-quarter revenue growth was 48.5% year over year (SEC filings) — demand rising. Latest-quarter sales growth was +33.7% versus a year earlier (SEC filings).

Table 1
CompanyPrice (Oct 28, 2026)Forward P/ETrailing P/E
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)$60.4713.1×30.8×
P$138.1442.9×191.3×
NTAP$227.0422.8×32.0×
HPQ$32.8511.1×12.5×
SMCI$35.297.5×10.8×
WDC$380.8813.2×14.8×
Peer median13.2×

Multiples: stockanalysis.com (SECONDARY, S&P Global data), fetched Oct 28, 2026. Peer set chosen by sector; the median is the middle value of the set. The label and its numbers were recorded in the programme’s label registry on Oct 28, 2026 and will be scored at 6 and 12 months.

Sales, profit and cash

Figure 2 — Sales and profit each quarter
SalesNet income (profit)
$0B$5B$9B$14BOct 2020Oct 2021Oct 2022Oct 2023Oct 2024Oct 2025Jul 2026

This company does not report a gross-profit line in its SEC facts (normal for banks, payment networks and some health insurers), so profit is shown as net income instead — gross margin is marked UNVERIFIED-absent rather than estimated.

Figure 3 — Cash left over each quarter (free cash flow)
PositiveNegative
$-2B$0B$2BOct 2020Oct 2021Oct 2022Oct 2023Oct 2024Oct 2025Jul 2026

Free cash flow = cash from operations minus spending on plant and equipment, both from the company’s SEC cash-flow statement. Gaps are quarters where that spending line is not separately tagged in the filings — shown as gaps, never estimated.

Table 2
QuarterSalesGross marginNet incomeEPS (GAAP, diluted)Free cash flow
Q/E Jul 2026
2026-07-31
$12.2B—$1.5B1.06$896M
Q/E Apr 2026
2026-04-30
$10.7B—$624M0.44$827M
Q/E Jan 2026
2026-01-31
$9.3B—$452M0.31$609M
Q/E Oct 2025
2025-10-31
$9.7B—$175M—$1.8B
Q/E Jul 2025
2025-07-31
$9.1B—$305M0.21$729M
Q/E Apr 2025
2025-04-30
$7.6B—$-1.1B-0.82$-1.0B
Q/E Jan 2025
2025-01-31
$7.9B—$627M0.44$-918M
Q/E Oct 2024
2024-10-31
$8.5B—$1.4B—$1.4B
Q/E Jul 2024
2024-07-31
$7.7B—$512M0.38$611M
Q/E Apr 2024
2024-04-30
$7.2B—$314M0.24$533M
Q/E Jan 2024
2024-01-31
$6.8B—$387M0.29$-592M
Q/E Oct 2023
2023-10-31
$7.4B—$642M—$2.2B

The last twelve reported quarters. Full 24-quarter history sits in the data pack behind this page. A dash means the figure is not tagged as a standalone quarter in the company’s SEC facts (the usual case is the fourth quarter, which many companies only report inside the full-year filing) — it is missing, not zero.

Earnings: getting better or worse?

Each box is one quarter’s earnings per share (EPS). Green means EPS was higher than the same quarter a year earlier; red means lower; a dash means the figure is not tagged in the filings.

Oct 2022
—
Jan 2023
0.38
Apr 2023
0.32
Jul 2023
0.35
Oct 2023
—
Jan 2024
0.29
Apr 2024
0.24
Jul 2024
0.38
Oct 2024
—
Jan 2025
0.44
Apr 2025
-0.82
Jul 2025
0.21
Oct 2025
—
Jan 2026
0.31
Apr 2026
0.44
Jul 2026
1.06

Basis: GAAP diluted EPS from SEC company facts, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

Key facts

Table 3
ItemValue
Company (legal name in filings)Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co
Chief executiveAntonio Neri (source: https://www.hpe.com/ae/en/leadership/antonio-neri.html)
SectorTechnology — Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals — sells servers, storage and networking for enterprises and AI data centres
Share price (Oct 28, 2026)$60.47
Market value (market cap)$80.8B — share price times shares outstanding of 1,327,464,779 (SEC filings; SEC EDGAR dei EntityCommonStockSharesOutstanding (latest))
Sales, last twelve months$41.9B
Net income, last twelve months$2.8B
Free cash flow, last twelve months$4.2B
Latest reported quarterQ/E Jul 2026 (of 24 quarters in the data pack)
Six-year price return vs S&P 500+542.45% vs +118.28%
Worst peak-to-trough fall-48.8% (2025-01-22 to 2025-04-08)

What we could not verify

  • Gross profit / gross margin: not tagged as a standalone line in this company's EDGAR company facts (common for banks, payment networks and some healthcare payers) — shown as UNVERIFIED-absent; the page charts revenue and net income instead.
  • TTM GAAP diluted EPS could not be summed from company facts because at least one of the last four quarters (typically Q4) has no standalone tagged EPS; trailing P/E is therefore taken from the labelled secondary source in valuation_label.md.
  • Own-history P/E range not yet compiled for this company in the Phase 1 batch run; the label rests on peer-median, growth and PEG evidence.
  • Guidance record (each quarter scored against the guidance the company gave the quarter before) is not yet compiled for this company — it is a Phase 2 layer. The earnings strip below therefore uses reported EPS versus a year earlier, which is fully sourced from filings.

The IT factor — the most exciting thing the market is overlooking — is not assessed on an X-Ray page. It belongs to the Deep Dive (Phase 2), where it gets the evidence standard it needs. Leadership-era scoring (the six years split by chief executive) is likewise a Phase 2 layer; this page names the current chief executive only, from a sourced profile.

Sources

  • SEC EDGAR submissions — Filing index; company legal name. https://data.sec.gov/submissions/CIK0001645590.json
  • SEC EDGAR company facts — Quarterly financial spine: revenue, gross profit, net income, GAAP diluted EPS, operating cash flow, PP&E capex, buybacks, dividends, diluted shares. https://data.sec.gov/api/xbrl/companyfacts/CIK0001645590.json
  • Nasdaq official daily history — Daily closes for the company; SPY (assetclass=etf) saved as raw/nasdaq_spy_raw.json over identical dates. https://api.nasdaq.com/api/quote/HPE/historical?assetclass=stocks
  • Valuation multiples and peer figures — stockanalysis.com (SECONDARY, S&P Global data), fetched Oct 28, 2026; see valuation_label.md in the data pack.

Conventions: earliest-filed value per period, as first reported; cash-flow years-to-date differenced quarter by quarter; EPS never differenced; free cash flow = operating cash flow minus plant-and-equipment spending. This page is a dated snapshot — updates are new versions, never silent edits.

Filed under: Stock X-Ray · Technology · HPE