Report: HP May Sell Snapfish Photo Sharing Service

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) is huddling with private equity and other companies about possibly putting its Snapfish online photo-sharing service on the sales block, according to a published report.

Snapfish, which HP bought in 2005 for some $300 million, is housed under HP’s combined Printing and Personal Systems and no longer is considered a core business for that group, Reuters reported.

For HP, sticking to its knitting may be particularly important these days as the vendor seeks to string together a second quarter of sales growth in a row after 11 consecutive revenue declining periods. HP recently halted its nearly three-year losing streak by posting a 1 percent year-over-year sales uptick to $27.6 billion for its fiscal Q3 2014. It was PCs that carried the quarter for HP, performing surprisingly well to jump some 12 percent in revenue for the period.

HP’s PCs and printers unit, which also includes mobility devices, technical workstations, graphics solutions, managed print services and internet services, generates some $60 billion in annual revenue and is headed by executive vice president Dion Weisler.

HP hasn’t confirmed whether or not it’s interested in selling the Snapfish business and, at this point, there’s no word about the price at which HP would sell off the unit, which has some 90 million members in 12 countries with about two billion unique photos stored online.

Snapfish apparently isn’t the only online photo sharing service potentially up for sale, Reuters reported. Shutterfly, which specializes in online storage of digital photos, hired Qatalyst Partners in July to assist it in a sale, a process that could yield a buyer soon. Shutterfly’s asking price, said to be about $2 billion, dwarfs what HP could command for Snapfish. Some of the same companies interested in Shutterfly also may be involved with Snapfish, Reuters reported.