HP is a company in decline, yes. But: 1) The money doesn't just go away. It ends up being spent or invested somewhere else. HP's loss is someone else's gain

HP is a company in decline, yes. But: 1) The money doesn't just go away. It ends up being spent or invested somewhere else. HP's loss is someone else's gain. 2) What's the alternative? HP is struggling to adapt to a changing world. They didn't stop making mainframes because they got bored with it. The options aren't "successful HP vs failed HP", it's more like "HP definitely wasting the money vs HP giving it back so investors can find someone who might not waste the money". Consider Microsoft: They made (are still making!) an enormous amount of cash from their "legacy" desktop OS and apps business. And they have burned (and are still burning) an enormous amount of cash utterly failing to succeed at search, gaming hardware, mobile devices, cloud computing, and probably ten other industries I can't recall. At one point I believe MS was losing $2B/year just on Bing, and what do they have to show for it? Even if they eventually "win" one of these gambles and end up dominating the market for tablets (or whatever), will they come out ahead on balance?