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Michael Dell at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 12, 2024 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

David Grogan | CNBC 

Dell reported quarterly results on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations, powered by an 80% increase in server sales. The stock rose more than 2% in extended trading after rising more than 7% at one point.

Here’s how the company did for the fiscal second quarter vs. LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Revenue: $25.06 billion vs. $24.53 billion expected
  • EPS: $1.89 adjusted, vs. $1.71 expected

Net income climbed 85% to $841 million, or $1.17 per share, from $455 million, or 63 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Revenue increased about 9% from $22.93 billion a year ago.

The stock took a leg lower after Dell revised its full-year guidance to between $95.5 billion and $98.5 billion, a slight upward revision from the company’s previous forecast. Earlier this year, the company told investors to expect revenue between $93.5 billion and $97.5 billion for the full year, up from $88.4 billion in the prior year.

For the current quarter, Dell said it expected between $24 billion and $25 billion in revenue, in line with the StreetAccount estimate of $24.6 billion.

Dell has emerged as a top vendor for servers that can handle artificial intelligence workloads, especially those based around Nvidia chips, as demand skyrockets from cloud providers. Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called out Dell founder Michael Dell as the person to contact to place orders for systems that include the company’s new chips.

Dell shares are up 48% so far this year, but have slumped 34% since the company’s last report.

AI sales are in the company’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, which makes servers and systems for data centers. It’s the company’s fastest-growing unit. Overall ISG sales rose 38% to $11.65 billion, ahead of StreetAccount expectations of $10.44 billion.

The standout in Dell’s report was Servers and Networking revenue, which includes both AI-oriented servers based around GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, as well as more traditional servers for older applications. It’s part of ISG.

“We are competing in all of the big AI deals and are winning significant deployments at scale,” Jeff operating chief Jeff Clark said on a earnings call with analysts.

The unit reported $7.76 billion in sales, rising 80% on an annual basis, and beating StreetAccount expectations of $6.37 billion. Dell said $3.1 billion of that was AI server sales, up from $1.7 billion in the May quarter.

Clarke attributed the increase in revenue to server demand that continues to rise, and said that there was an increasing “backlog” of $3.8 billion in AI server orders that haven’t been fulfilled yet. There’s also a multibillion-dollar “pipeline” of AI server deals from enterprises and cloud providers that haven’t been finalized.

However, Dell’s storage business, also part of ISG, fell 5% to $4 billion in sales.

Dell’s Client Solutions Group, which focuses on PCs and laptops, declined 4% on an annual basis to $12.41 billion in revenue. Consumer sales fell 22% to $1.86 billion, and the company’s enterprise PC business was flat at $10.55 billion in sales.

Dell said that it spent $1 billion in the quarter on share repurchases and dividends.

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MicroStrategy copycats are getting out of control as Canadian vape company joins fray

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MicroStrategy copycats are getting out of control as Canadian vape company joins fray

The logos of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether outside a cryptocurrency exchange in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. 

David Lombeida | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The crypto market’s bullishness may be tipping into speculative frenzy, if the latest MicroStrategy-style copycat is any indication.

On Monday, a little-known Canadian vape company saw its stock surge on plans to enter the crypto treasury game – but this time with Binance Coin (BNB), the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, excluding the dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether (USDT), according to CoinGecko.

Shares of CEA Industries, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker VAPE, rocketed more than 800% at one point after the company announced its plans. CEA, along with investment firm 10X Capital and YZi Labs, said it would offer a $500 million private placement to raise proceeds to buy Binance Coin for its corporate treasury. Shares ended the session up nearly 550%, giving the company a market cap of about $48 million.

Given the more crypto-friendly regulatory environment this year, more public companies have adopted the MicroStrategy playbook of using debt financing and equity sales to buy bitcoin to hold on their balance sheet to try to increase shareholder returns, pushing bitcoin to new records.

Now, with the S&P 500 trading at new records, the resurgence of meme mania and a pro-crypto White House supporting the crypto industry, investors are looking further out on the risk spectrum of crypto hoping for bigger gains.

In recent months, investors have rotated out of bitcoin and into ether, which led to a burst of companies seeking a similar treasury strategy around ether. SharpLink Gaming, whose board is chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, was one of the first to make the move. Other companies like DeFi Development Corp, renamed from Janover, are making similar moves around Solana.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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Trump Organization says Amazon, Walmart, eBay sellers are hawking knockoff shirts, hats, mugs

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Trump Organization says Amazon, Walmart, eBay sellers are hawking knockoff shirts, hats, mugs

Donald Trump

Getty Images

The Trump Organization has filed a lawsuit against unnamed online merchants it said are hawking counterfeit merchandise promoting President Donald Trump.

In the suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Florida, the company accused the merchants of selling “inferior imitations” of Trump-branded products on several online marketplaces, including Amazon, Walmart and eBay.

The Trump Organization company, which is owned by Trump, sells a variety of branded merchandise through its website, including a gold T1 smartphone. The Trump Organization alleges the online merchants didn’t license its trademarks and weren’t authorized resellers of genuine merchandise.

“By selling counterfeit products that purport to be genuine and authorized products using the TRUMP trademarks, defendants cause confusion and deception in the marketplace,” the complaint says.

Coffee mugs, hats, t-shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with “Trump,” “Trump 2028,” and American flags were among the examples of alleged knockoffs listed in the suit.

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The Trump Organization intends to file a motion to seal an exhibit listing the merchants’ identities, according to the complaint.

The company is seeking to prevent the merchants from using Trump trademarks. It also asks a judge to compel Amazon and other online marketplaces to destroy the alleged counterfeit goods and close the merchants’ selling accounts.

Representatives from Amazon, Walmart and eBay didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Amazon, Walmart and eBay all operate thriving online marketplaces that allow third-party businesses to list and sell goods. The companies have all battled issues in the past around the sale of inauthentic or unsafe goods on their platforms.

Amazon sellers looked to cash in on Trump’s return to the White House earlier this year.

Sales of Trump-branded merchandise, including calendars, toilet paper and greeting cards, spiked in January, according to e-commerce marketing company Omnisend, which collected its data from seller software provider JungleScout.

In the lead-up to last year’s election, Amazon sellers made $140 million from Trump-related merchandise and $26 million from products promoting presidential candidate and former Vice President Kamala Harris, Omnisend found.

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Firefly Aerospace sets IPO range that would value rocket maker at $5.5 billion

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Firefly Aerospace sets IPO range that would value rocket maker at .5 billion

Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim sits for an interview at the Firefly Aerospace mission operations center in Leander, Texas, on July 9, 2025.

Sergio Flores | Reuters

Firefly Aerospace will price shares at $35 to $39 each in its upcoming initial public offering, a deal that would value the rocket maker at about $5.5 billion.

The Texas-based space company said in an updated prospectus Monday that it’s planning to sell about 16.2 million shares. The offering could raise up to $631.8 million.

Earlier this month, Firefly filed its plans to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “FLY.”

Its debut comes amid a renewed push in the space race, as billionaire-led companies such as Elon Musk‘s SpaceX funnel more money into space activities and startups try their luck at the public markets.

Space tech firm Voyager went public in June, while reusable rocket developer Innovative Rocket Technologies said it plans to debut through a $400 million special purpose acquisition company merger.

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Firefly’s public market launch also coincides with a revival in IPO activity as debilitating interest rates and an overhang from President Donald Trump‘s tariff plans begin to clear. Design software company Figma is slated to go public this week after raising its range.

Firefly makes rockets, space tugs and lunar landers, including satellite launching rockets known as Alpha. At the end of March, the company reported a sixfold jump in revenue from $8.3 million a year ago to $55.9 million.

The company also reported a net loss of about $60.1 million, up from a loss of $52.8 million a year ago, and said its backlog totaled about $1.1 billion.

Some of Firefly’s major backers include AE Industrial Partners, which led an early investing round in the company. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman invested $50 million in the startup this May, and Firefly says it has collaborated with Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and NASA.

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