The launch of the TouchPad was met with extremely poor sales; on August 18, 2011, HP announced that it would immediately end the production and support of all Palm and WebOS devices, and would be "exploring options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward", including a potential sale of the division to another company. HP also cancelled the U.S. release for the Pre 3 and Veer, and infamously, held a fire sale on remaining TouchPad stock, lowering prices for the tablet to as low as US$99 (which, however, led to a major spike in demand for the device). The decision, made by HP's CEO at the time Léo Apotheker, along with its $11.7 billion acquisition of Autonomy, and threats to spin-off HP's consumer business, led to a major decline in HP's market performance, with its shares falling in value by 45.4%.