HP Inc will cut between 7000 and 9000 workers over the next three years to save around a billion dollars (£550 million), its incoming chief executive has said.

The personal computer and printer maker says it expects to drop thousands from its global workforce of about 55,000 by 2020 via redundancies as part of a company-wide restructuring process. This represents approximately 13% to 16% of the current workforce.

HP announced the job cuts at a meeting with Wall Street analysts headlined by incoming CEO Enrique Lores. He will replace the current chief, Dion Weisler on November 1 who announced his departure due to a family health matter.

Lores said: “We are taking bold and decisive actions as we embark on our next chapter.

“We see significant opportunities to create shareholder value and we will accomplish this by advancing our leadership, disrupting industries and aggressively transforming the way we work.

“We will become an even more customer-focused and digitally enabled company, that will lead with innovation and execute with purpose.”

He had been overseeing the HP division that includes its profitable business of selling ink for the company’s printer before being named to the top job last month.

The workforce reductions come as the Palo Alto, California, company wraps up a three-year restructuring plan that included the elimination of up to 5000 jobs.

The plan will allow HP Inc to devote more output to services and customers’ habits and needs. It will reduce the cost of printers to allow the lucrative tactic of locking of consumers into buying ink from

HP.

This follows a decline in recent years of sales in the printer market due to the widespread adoption of digital devices.

HP Inc was created in 2015 when Hewlett Packard split its PC and printer operations from its businesses specialising in data-centre hardware and business software.

That part is now known as Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

HP Inc’s stock is down 10% so far this year, compared to a 16% rise for the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index.