Team HPQ sued its rival, team Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) recently when the latter hired briefly-disgraced HPQ CEO Mark Hurd. The grounds: misappropriation of trade secrets. ORCL is now enraged. This is why. Not only did HPQ just name Ray Lane, former Oracle president and COO, as nonexecutive chairman of HP's board, it turns out that Mr. Apotheker had been in charge of SAP (NYSE:SAP) at a time when it was stealing Oracle’s software. The case of ORCL v SAP is scheduled for trial soon.
On the basis of reputation and financial metrics, Oracle is winning this spat. A side by side comparison of metrics from the Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index, with a customized peer group comprising relevant hardware and software companies totalling 132 in all, shows that HPQ’s reputation ranking (on the left) has slid over the trailing twelve months 27 points from the 97th percentile to the 70th percentile, while ORCL’s (on the right) has slid only 18 points from the 84th to the 66th.
While the former’s slide has been chronic and steady -- the most recent six months shown in the second set of graphs -- the bulk of ORCL’s reputation change has occurred only amidst the sturm und drang of the past few weeks. Hence HPQ is underperforming this peer group by a respectable 18% (yellow line, top graph, left)while the now volatile ORCL is currently outperforming this peer group by 21% (yellow line, top graph, right).
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