NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) April 29, 2010--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that its ratings on Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP; A/Stable/A-1) are not affected by the company's announcement that it has agreed to acquire Palm Inc. (CCC+/Watch Pos/--) for $1.2 billion in total enterprise value. (In a separate rating action, we placed our ratings on Palm on CreditWatch Positive). HP's liquidity–-about $10.6 billion as of the January quarter pro forma for the 3Comm acquisition that just closed–-remains ample given the smaller scale of the transaction. While we note that Palm is a loss-making entity with nominal presence in the smartphone market, HP intends to leverage Palm's operating system to a broader set of mobile, Internet-enabled consumer
