HPE moves headquarters to Houston from California

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the latest tech company to move away from Silicon Valley, announcing on Tuesday that it will be moving its headquarters from San Jose, Calif., To Houston, Texas.

“HPE’s largest employment center in the United States, Houston is an attractive market for recruiting and retaining diverse future talent, and it is where the company is currently building a new, state-of-the-art campus,” the company said in its fourth quarter earnings release. It’s unclear how many employees the move will affect, although the company has said there will be no layoffs with the move.

HPE will keep the San Jose campus and consolidate some of its Bay Area sites there, he said.

For its fourth quarter, the company said:

• Returned: $ 7.21 billion vs. $ 6.88 billion expected, according to a consensus estimate from Refinitiv.
• Earnings: $ 0.37 per share (adjusted), up from $ 0.34 expected, according to Refinitiv.

The company also raised its guidance for fiscal 2021. Shares changed little after hours of trading.

The coronavirus pandemic has given a number of tech companies and prominent Silicon Valley figures an excuse to leave California. Without many needing to go to an office every day, many question the high cost of living and heavy state taxes in a larger context of the shift to remote working.

Data analytics software company Palantir Technologies moved its headquarters from Denver, Colo. To Palo Alto, Calif. Earlier this year. Company co-founder Joe Lonsdale followed suit and announced last month that he was moving the headquarters of 8VC, his venture capital firm, from San Francisco to Austin, Texas.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston has also reportedly decided to move to Austin. Dropbox said in October it would stop asking employees to come to its offices and instead make remote working a standard practice. For employees who need to meet or work together in person, the company sets up “Dropbox Studios” in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin and Dublin where it is safe to do so.

Some companies also offer employees greater flexibility in their workplace, while still maintaining office space.

Twitter and Square allow employees to work from home “forever,” while Microsoft said employees would benefit from more flexibility to work from home. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted in May that 50% of employees would work remotely over the next decade.

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