What HP's Leo Apotheker May Say Next Week?

Léo Apotheker, the Chief Executive Officer of PC giant Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), is expected to hold an investor briefing in San Francisco where he may unveil his much anticipated vision for HP.

We believe the summit with Léo Apotheker will be an important event as it should provide clarity on HP's strategy while also placating investor concerns that the company will spend exorbitant amounts on M&A or margin expansion will stall, Raymond James analyst Brian Alexander wrote in a note to clients.

Following are the key themes, Apotheker could focus on his investor briefing:

* Alexander expects the overarching themes will be the convergence of IT, driven by the adoption of cloud computing, consumerization of IT, and the proliferation of connected devices.

HP is uniquely positioned to benefit from IT convergence as no other technology company maintains leadership in both the enterprise and consumer markets.

We believe it will be key for Apotheker to outline how he plans to weave all of HP's assets together where the gaps are in the portfolio (and how they will be filled), the analyst said.

* Apotheker, the former Chief Executive of SAP, is expected to give some clarity on whether HP may shift its focus beyond infrastructure management towards applications/middleware as he has previously indicated HP is lacking in software.

We believe the company should expand its breadth of offerings in areas such as security and data center/device management. Both of these areas are of growing importance as companies migrate to the cloud, virtualization increase and the number of connected devices meaningfully expands, Alexander said.

* HP may reveal its strategy with respect to its stand in cloud computing. HP is without question what the leading arms dealer to cloud service providers. However, the analyst feels it is not necessary for HP to become an enterprise cloud service provider as the larger market opportunity will remain in the private cloud. If HP were to enter the cloud service provider market, its most likely offering would be infrastructure-as-aservice (IaaS) given its enterprise hardware leadership.

* Apotheker will likely tout HP's webOS operating system and discuss how it will be at the heart of the company's connected device strategy.

We believe that HP has the ability to create a seamless experience across all of its devices, which no other competitor can provide, Alexander said.

* The analyst also expects Apotheker to reiterate management's prior statement that reinvesting cash back into the business through either organic investments or M&A will come first.