Pre-tax profits at Hewlett-Packard’s Galway operations, which is home to the company’s innovation centre, almost halved in 2015 – following on from an 85 per cent decline a year earlier.

Newly filed accounts for Hewlett-Packard Galway Limited show pretax profits dropped to $869,018 in 2015 compared to $1.79 million a year earlier.

The decline comes after the group saw profits decline by 85 per cent for the year ending October 31st, 2014.

Turnover fell by 12 per cent to $362 million from $413 million last year with operating profit dropping from $2 million to $739,538.

The principal activities of the company, which opened an 87,000sq ft innovation centre in April 2015, are research and development activities, and the manufacture and sale of software and computer licences for export.

HP Ireland employs about 4,000 people in Ireland.

Headcount at the Ballybrit-based operations rose to 584 in 2015, from 486 a year earlier.

Staff costs, including wages and salaries, totalled $43.6 million versus $44.7 million in 2014.

The company paid out $1.07 million in redundancy-related payments linked to a programme announced in 2014.

Another Irish subsidiary, Hewlett-Packard International Bank, a unit that provides leases, rentals and loan facilities to HP customers to finance the acquisition of its products, recorded pre-tax profits of $140 million for the year ending October 2015, according to accounts filed earlier this year.

This marked a 3.3 per cent decline on the $145 million recorded for the same period 12 months earlier.

HP in Ireland runs nine different businesses in the areas of manufacturing, research and development, customer software support, marketing, and sales and services.

The main site for HP in Ireland is located in Leixlip, Co Kildare but the company also has additional facilities in Belfast and Dublin, as well as the Galway operation.