Hewlett Packard Co said on Wednesday it would lay off roughly 27,000 employees or about 8 percent of its workforce to jumpstart growth, and its shares rose 11 percent.

The company said the layoffs would be made mainly through early retirement and would generate annual savings of $3 billion to $3.5 billion as it exits fiscal year 2014.

The world's No. 1 personal computer maker, which employs more than 300,000 people globally, also said on Wednesday that it had a 30 percent decline in second-quarter profit and a 3 percent decline in revenue in the quarter, compared with a year ago.

Layoffs "adversely impact people's lives, but in this case, they are absolutely critical to the long-term health of the company," Chief Executive Meg Whitman said on a conference call with analysts.

The company will take a pretax charge of $1.7 billion in fiscal 2012 related to the layoffs.

HP has been trying to move past the internal upheaval that marked 2011, including the departure of two chief executives.

Whitman, a veteran Silicon Valley executive who took the top job last September, has been trying to turn around the company.