Dell's earnings report is a mix of good and bad news, revealing multiple large orders for AI servers, rising 4% after hours before turning to a decline | Earnings Report Insights

On Thursday after the U.S. stock market closed, Dell Technologies, headquartered in Texas, announced its financial report, which showed that the company's full-year profit outlook exceeded market expectations and disclosed that it had secured multiple large orders for AI servers, raising market expectations for Dell's long-term growth amid the AI wave. However, there were also some disappointing aspects in this financial report. Dell's stock price fluctuated after hours.

In the fourth fiscal quarter ending January 31, Dell's revenue fell short of expectations, while profits exceeded expectations:

Revenue for the quarter increased by 7.2% year-on-year to $23.9 billion, below the consensus estimate of $24.6 billion from analysts.

Excluding certain items, the adjusted earnings per share were $2.68, compared to the market expectation of $2.53.

Net profit rose from $1.21 billion in the same period last year to $1.53 billion, and earnings per share increased from $1.66 last year to $2.15.

Looking at the segmented business units:

Revenue from the infrastructure segment was $11.4 billion, below the analyst expectation of $11.8 billion, with AI servers contributing $2.1 billion, falling short of Wall Street's expectation of $2.77 billion. Sales of AI servers for fiscal year 2025 are expected to be around $10 billion.

Revenue from the personal computer (PC) business declined by 1% year-on-year to $11.9 billion, with consumer PC sales down 12%, while enterprise PC sales grew by 5% to $10 billion.

Dell's outlook for the current quarter and fiscal year 2026 ending January 2026 is as follows:

The company expects revenue for the first fiscal quarter to be between $22.5 billion and $23.5 billion, while analysts expect $23.55 billion.

The company expects adjusted earnings per share for the first fiscal quarter to be $1.65, below the analyst estimate of $1.76.

The company expects adjusted earnings per share for fiscal year 2026 to be around $9.30, with the average analyst expectation at $9.24.

The company expects revenue for fiscal year 2026 to be between $101 billion and $105 billion. In comparison, the average analyst expectation is for revenue of $103 billion.

The company expects revenue from AI server business in fiscal year 2026 to reach $15 billion, a significant increase of about 50% compared to $9.8 billion for fiscal year 2025 ending January 2025.

Dell raised its dividend by 18% and announced a $10 billion stock buyback authorization.

Dell's Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke stated in a statement:

As of the end of the fourth quarter, Dell's backlog of AI server orders has surged to $9 billion, including orders from Elon Musk's xAI and other clients. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Dell had finalized a $5 billion mega order with xAI.

We are well-prepared for growth across all business segments. Our opportunities in AI are very strong, and we are expanding AI from large cloud service providers to enterprise applications, and further extending it to the edge through PCs.

Dell also disclosed on Thursday that it found that some credit limits provided by suppliers were not recorded or were recorded incorrectly. The impact of this issue is "not significant." The company has restated its financial statements for 2024 and 2025Dell stated in a press release:

The investigation conducted by the company revealed that these credit limits involved some employees responsible for supporting a few suppliers, affecting the customer solutions group business segment, and leading to an inflated sales cost of approximately $200 million for the fiscal year 2024, and an inflated sales cost of about $148 million for the first nine months of fiscal year 2025 (as of November 1, 2024).

After the earnings report was released, Dell's stock price rose more than 4% in after-hours trading but then fell back into decline. As of Thursday's close, Dell's stock price has dropped 6.4% year-to-date. Dell reached a historical high of nearly $180 last May, and based on Thursday's closing price, it has fallen about 40% from that peak.

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has revitalized the veteran computer giant, 40-year-old Dell. With the rapid increase in computing power required to run AI tools, high-performance server manufacturers like Dell, AMD, and HP have experienced unprecedented growth. Dell is seen as one of the key companies providing tools and systems to AI developers.

Dell is a top supplier in the field of computer clusters, which are essential for developing and deploying AI, especially computers based on NVIDIA chips. There is strong demand from cloud service providers, enterprises, and government agencies for NVIDIA AI accelerators, which often purchase systems equipped with tens of thousands of AI chips, while Dell sells complete systems.

Last year, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang praised Dell and its founder Michael Dell, suggesting customers order NVIDIA's next-generation Blackwell AI chips through Dell. Dell also shipped servers equipped with NVIDIA Blackwell to cloud infrastructure providers, "NVIDIA's favored child" CoreWeave.

A few years ago, driven by the surge in demand for remote work from students and corporate employees at the beginning of the pandemic, the PC market experienced a boom, but then underwent a historic decline. After a prolonged slump, the global personal computer market began to show signs of recovery in 2024. According to market research firm IDC, global PC shipments are expected to grow by 1.8% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2024