Connect with us

Published

on

Dell Technologies forecast fourth-quarter revenue and earnings below Wall Street expectations Tuesday, despite bullish commentary from the company on AI sales growth. The PC maker reported quarterly earnings Tuesday that beat analyst expectations for earnings per share but came up light on overall revenue.

Shares fell 10% in after-hours trading.

Here’s how Dell did for the fiscal third quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates for the quarter ending Nov. 1:

  • Earnings per share: $2.15 adjusted versus $2.06 expected
  • Revenue: $24.4 billion versus $24.67 billion expected

Net income climbed 12% to $1.12 billion, or $1.58 per share, from about $1 billion, or $1.36 per share, in the year-ago period. Overall revenue increased about 10% from $22.25 billion a year ago.

Dell said it expected between $24 billion and $25 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter, less than LSEG expectations of $25.57 billion. It said it expected $2.50 in adjusted earnings per share, versus expectations of $2.65 per share.

Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clark told investors on the earnings call that growth from AI will change from quarter to quarter.

“This business will not be linear, especially as customers navigate an underlying silicon roadmap that is changing,” Clark said.

The company’s shares have risen 86% so far in 2024 as investors realize it’s one of the most important companies selling tools and systems for artificial intelligence developers.

Dell is a top vendor for computer clusters required to develop and deploy artificial intelligence, especially computers based around Nvidia chips. It competes against other server makers such as Super Micro Computer and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as well as manufacturers in Asia.

Demand for Nvidia’s AI accelerators remains high from cloud providers, enterprises, and government institutions, who often buy systems installed with tens of thousands of AI chips. Dell sells the completed systems.

This year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave Dell and its founder, Michael Dell, a shout-out as the company to contact to place orders for its new Blackwell AI chips.

Dell executives said some of the demand from its customers was shifting to later quarters, waiting for Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell chips, which are in production now but have yet to ship to end-users in large quantities.

“We saw in Q3 a pretty rapid shift of the orders moving towards our Blackwell design,” Clark said.

Dell said much of its AI system growth was already reflected in a $4.5 billion pipeline of future orders.

“We’re only in the very early innings of enterprises learning how to deploy AI,” Clark said.

Dell’s AI server sales are reported in the company’s Infrastructure Solutions Group, which includes AI servers, storage, networking components, and traditional servers. The group’s revenue rose 34%, mostly driven by AI sales, to $11.4 billion.

The strongest part of Dell’s ISG business was its servers and networking subsidiary, which includes AI systems. Revenue rose 58% to $7.4 billion. Dell shipped $2.9 billion in AI servers during the quarter, and the company said during the quarter that customers had booked $3.6 billion of future AI server orders.

The company said increased AI server orders boosted demand by “double digits” for its traditional servers, which are less power-hungry and based around CPU chips from Intel or AMD, and can free up room or power inside data centers for companies investing heavily in AI infrastructure.

The company’s computer storage systems grew less strongly than servers, rising 4% to $4 billion. The overall ISG unit is more profitable, thanks to sales of pricier AI systems.

Dell’s Client Solutions Group, which sells PCs and laptops to consumers and enterprises, declined 1% on an annual basis to $12.1 billion.

While commercial clients buying PCs for their workforces rose 3% on an annual basis to $10.1 billion, the company’s sales from PCs to consumers fell 18% on an annual basis to $2 billion.

WATCH: Where to find value in AI stocks

Continue Reading

Technology

Intel is getting a $2 billion investment from SoftBank

Published

on

By

Intel is getting a  billion investment from SoftBank

Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks during the company’s annual general meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 27, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment in the embattled chipmaker.

SoftBank will pay $23 per share for Intel’s common stock, which closed on Monday at $23.66. The shares rose about 6% in extended trading to $25.

The investment makes SoftBank the fifth-biggest Intel shareholder, according to FactSet. It’s a vote of support for Intel, which hasn’t been able to take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom in advanced semiconductors and has spent heavily to stand up a manufacturing business that’s yet to secure a significant customer.

“Masa and I have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement, referring to SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.

Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, their worst performance in the company’s more than half-century on the public market. The stock is up 18% in 2025 as of Monday’s close.

Tan took over as Intel CEO in March after his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, was ousted in December.

Intel has been a major topic of discussion in Washington of late, due to the company’s role as the only American company capable of manufacturing the most advanced chips.

However, Intel’s foundry business, which is designed to manufacture chips for other companies, has yet to secure a major customer, a critical step towards stabilization and expansion. Last month, Intel said it would wait to secure orders before committing to certain future investment in its foundry.

Tan met with President Donald Trump last week after the president had called for the CEO’s resignation. The U.S. government is considering taking an equity stake in Intel, according to reports.

SoftBank, meanwhile, has become an increasingly large player in the global chip and AI markets.

In 2016, SoftBank acquired chip designer Arm in a deal worth about $32 billion at the time. Today the company is worth almost $150 billion. Arm-based chips are part of Nvidia’s systems that go into data centers.

And in March of this year, SoftBank announced plans to acquire another chip designer, Ampere Computing, for $6.5 billion.

SoftBank was also part of President Trump’s Stargate announcement in January, along with OpenAI and Oracle.

The three companies committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the AI infrastructure project. Two months later, SoftBank led a $40 billion investment into OpenAI, the largest private tech deal on record.

“This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role,” Son said in a statement.

WATCH: Intel’s message to Washington

Intel's message to Washington

Continue Reading

Technology

Palo Alto Networks reports earnings beat, says founder Nir Zuk retiring from company

Published

on

By

Palo Alto Networks reports earnings beat, says founder Nir Zuk retiring from company

Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, looks on during the closing bell at the Nasdaq Market in New York City on March 25, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued upbeat guidance for the current period. The cybersecurity software vendor said Nir Zuk, who founded the company in 2005, is retiring from his role as chief technology officer.

The stock rose about 6% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

  • Earnings: 95 cents adjusted vs. 88 cents expected
  • Revenue: $2.54 billion vs. $2.5 billion expected.

Revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter rose 16% from about $2.2 billion last year, the company said in a statement. Net income fell to about $254 million, or 36 cents per share, from about $358 million, or 51 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

The company also issued upbeat guidance for the fiscal first quarter. Earnings per share will be between 88 cents and 90 cents, Palo Alto said, topping an 85-cents estimate from StreetAccount.

For the full year, Palo Alto said revenue will range from $10.48 billion to $10.53 billion on adjusted earnings of $3.75 to $3.85 per share. Both estimates exceeded Wall Street’s projections.

Palo Alto said that for the fiscal first quarter, remaining purchase obligations, which tracks backlog, will range between $15.4 billion and $15.5 billion, surpassing a $15.07 billion estimate.

Last month, the company announced plans to buy Israeli identity security provider CyberArk for $25 billion. It’s the largest deal Palo Alto has made since its founding, and most ambitious in an acquiring spree that ramped up after CEO Nikesh Arora took the helm of the company in 2018.

Shares sold off sharply after the news broke and have yet to recover previous highs. The stock is down about 3% this year as of Monday’s close.

“We look for great products, a team that can execute in the product, and we let them run it,” Arora told CNBC following the announcement. “This is going to be a different challenge, but we’ve done well 24 times, so I’m pretty confident that our team can handle this.”

Lee Klarich, the company’s product chief, will replace Zuk as CTO and fill his position on the board.

WATCH: Power check on Palo Alto, Viking Holdings and Estee Lauder

Power Check: Palo Alto Networks, Viking Holdings, and Estee Lauder

Continue Reading

Technology

Musk’s Starlink suffers apparent outage as SpaceX launches more satellites

Published

on

By

Musk's Starlink suffers apparent outage as SpaceX launches more satellites

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Satellite internet service Starlink, which is owned and operated by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, appeared to suffer a brief network outage on Monday, with thousands of reports of service interruptions on Downdetector, a site that logs tech issues.

The outage marked the second in two weeks for Starlink. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The network’s July 24 outage lasted for several hours, with SpaceX Vice President of Starlink Engineering Michael Nicolls blaming the matter on “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network” behind Starlink.

That outage followed the launch of T-Mobile‘s Starlink-powered satellite service, a direct-to-cell-phone service created to keep smartphone users connected “in places no carrier towers can reach,” according to T-Mobile’s website.

SpaceX provides Starlink internet service to more than six million users across 140 countries, according to the company’s website, though churn and subscriber rates are not publicly reported by the company.

Read more CNBC tech news

The SpaceX Starlink constellation is far larger than any competitor. It currently features over 7,000 operational broadband satellites, according to research by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

On Monday, Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched another group of satellites to add to its Starlink constellation from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California.

SpaceX is currently aiming to increase the number of launches and landings from Vandenberg from 50 to about 100 annually.

On Thursday last week, the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to oppose the U.S. Space Force application to conduct that higher volume of SpaceX launches there.

The Commission has said that SpaceX and Space Force officials have failed to properly evaluate and report on potential impacts of increased launches on neighboring towns, and local wildlife, among other issues.

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order seeking to ease environmental regulations seen by Musk, and others, as hampering commercial space operations.

Continue Reading

Trending