The hardware giant's last three earnings reports have triggered sustained double-digit-percentage price swings in H-P's stock.
In February and May, that was good news, as investors bid up the company's shares amid signs CEO Meg Whitman's turnaround plan was reviving the company's fortunes.
But H-P's August report was a disappointment: The company missed Wall Street estimates after sales fell in all but one of its six business units.
That prompted a one-day stock drop of more than 12% and triggered a two-month share price slide that wiped out one-fifth of the company's market value by early October.
Yet the shares have bounced back. After closing trading last week at just over $25, they've gained almost 70% this year and are now priced almost exactly where they were before that nasty August surprise.
For a venerable technology icon with a market cap of $49 billion, that's some crazy trading action.
The share volatility reflects uncertainty among investors over whether Whitman, who oversaw dramatic growth during her decade-long tenure as eBay CEO, can get the lumbering, 74-year-old H-P growing again.
During her two years and two months in H-P's top job, Whitman has steadied a firm that looked ready to implode after its board ousted her predecessor, Leo Apotheker, after he was widely seen to have overpaid for software maker Autonomy — $10.3 billion in 2011.
H-P is once again operating in the black, earning net income of $3.7 billion for the first nine months of this fiscal year, reversing a massive $5.8 billion loss for the same period a year earlier.
During the same time, the company's operations have generated almost $8.8 billion in cash flow, 35% more than a year ago.
That's allowed H-P to keep paying handsome stock dividends that keep income investors happy.
Whitman has done it by improving the ! company's efficiency and slashing costs, with operating expenses dropping 18% for the first nine months of the fiscal year. For the quarter ended in July, those expenses were 34% lower.
Yet Whitman has been unable to re-ignite growth, as falling sales of PCs have now spread to related H-P businesses such as printers, services and other hardware.
The Palo Alto, Calif., company has been hurt by a lack of smartphones and tablets as consumers embrace those handheld devices, and by increased competition from Cisco Systems and other hardware makers.
Even H-P's software business, which was posting double-digit annual sales growth when Whitman became CEO, has stalled, with sales rising a mere 1% for the July quarter.
The software meltdown is due in large part to the disastrous Autonomy deal. In November, H-P took an $8.8 billion write-down on the transaction, generating a massive net loss, while accusing the British-based maker of data analytics software of "serious accounting improprieties."
John Shinal, technology columnist for USA TODAY.(Photo: USA TODAY)
That accounting charge may have been necessary, but the accusation likely didn't help promote confidence among H-P's potential software customers.
Amid a drop in sales of hardware and services to corporate customers — both segments posted year-over-year revenue declines of 9% in the July quarter — Whitman has been promoting H-P's business of hosting other company's data on its servers, a service known as cloud computing.
Last week, she appeared onstage with Marc Benioff, CEO of fast-growing cloud-computing giant Salesforce.com, at the latter company's user conference to announce a new partnership involving H-P servers.
Also last ! week, a r! eport surfaced that H-P was in talks with Sharp about a partnership that could see the Asian electronics giant producing H-P-branded photocopiers.
Still, it will take time for any new partnerships to help boost H-P's flagging top line.
Analysts expect H-P's fourth-quarter sales fell almost 7% to $28 billion, while sales for the fiscal year dropped nearly 8% to $111 billion.
Wall Street is also pessimistic about Whitman's ability to generate growth in the upcoming fiscal year, with analysts expecting another 3% revenue decline.
Next-year's expectations may well be revised after analysts hear what Whitman and other H-P executives have to say on a conference call Tuesday.
If recent history is any guide, H-P shareholders may want to buckle up before Wednesday's trading begins.
John Shinal has covered tech and financial markets for 15 years at Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal Digital Network and others.
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