The H-P (HPQ) Death Spiral Continues

In April 2010, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) was riding high.

The tech giant’s stock hit a 10-year high of roughly $54 a share, and the company was valued at $125 billion.

Today the tech stock is trading for roughly one-fifth of its April 2010 price, and the company has lost more than $100 billion in value.

Its latest drop-off came after the company announced it suffered a $7 billion loss in overpaying for U.S. software maker Autonomy. It was the second multibillion dollar charge the company has had to write down in as many quarters as a result of deals gone wrong.

H-P’s latest catastrophe pushed its shares down 12%, to $11.60, in trading today.

So, if you’re scoring at home, H-P’s stock has now fallen…

-56% in 2012

-72.5% the last two years

-And 78% from its April 2010 peak

Bad accounting hasn’t been the only factor in Hewlett-Packard’s demise. The maker of personal computers and printers, H-P has rapidly become a dinosaur in the age of smartphones, cloud computing and 3-D printing.

Churn at the top hasn’t helped either. The company has had a lot of turnover at the top of late, cycling through several CEOs and executives. Those gaps in leadership likely had something to do with its Autonomy deal gone awry.

H-P was once the largest technology maker in the world by revenue. Now the company is in complete shambles.