Dell Technologies stock is back under the spotlight today as investors brace for the company’s third‑quarter fiscal 2026 earnings report after the closing bell. Dell shares finished Monday, November 24, at $127.22, up about 3.8% on the day, but still roughly 24% below their early‑November high near $168. [1]
Over the past month, the stock has dropped almost 20%, even after Monday’s rebound, while it remains up around 10% year‑to‑date and down about 12% over the last 12 months. [2] That combination of strong year‑to‑date gains, a sharp recent sell‑off, and a big AI narrative makes Dell one of the most closely watched names on today’s earnings calendar.
Key takeaways for Dell stock on November 25, 2025
- Latest close: Dell closed Monday at $127.22, up 3.84% on the day, with recent volatility leaving the stock about a quarter below its 52‑week high of $168.08. [3]
- Recent performance: Despite the bounce, Dell is still down nearly 20% over the past month, even as its year‑to‑date return sits near +10% and its five‑year gain is about 81%. [4]
- Q3 expectations: Wall Street is looking for revenue of about $27.1–$27.3 billion and non‑GAAP EPS around $2.47–$2.48, implying low‑double‑digit revenue growth and mid‑teens earnings growth versus last year. [5]
- AI vs. margins: Dell’s AI‑optimized servers drove a 19% revenue jump last quarter, but lower‑margin AI hardware and rising memory prices are pressuring profitability, a key concern heading into tonight’s call. [6]
- Options & volatility: Options pricing implies about a 9.35% move in either direction after earnings, while shares have traded lower after five of the last six reports, with an average post‑earnings drop of roughly 9%. [7]
- Strategic overhang: Dell’s ambitious internal modernization effort, “Project Maverick,” has been delayed by about three months due to scalability concerns, adding a fresh execution question to the story. [8]
How Dell stock is positioned heading into earnings
As of Monday’s close:
- Price: $127.22
- 52‑week range: $66.25 – $168.08 [9]
- 1‑month performance: about ‑20%
- Year‑to‑date: roughly +10%
- 1‑year: about ‑12% [10]
The stock’s recent slide has been unusually steep. Dell was one of 2025’s big AI‑infrastructure winners, riding enthusiasm for data‑center and AI‑server demand to a new high near $168 earlier this month. [11] But sentiment flipped fast in mid‑November:
- On November 17, Dell fell nearly 10% in a single session and led S&P 500 decliners after Morgan Stanley double‑downgraded the stock from Overweight to Underweight and cut its price target to $110, citing a “supercycle” in DRAM and NAND memory prices that could squeeze hardware margins. [12]
- A follow‑up note from Morgan Stanley framed Dell as one of the most exposed OEMs to rising memory costs due to its heavy use of DRAM and NAND across major product lines. [13]
Technical traders have also grown cautious. The sharp pullback dragged Dell below key moving averages and to new 20‑day lows last week, leaving the chart looking fragile even after Monday’s bounce. [14]
In other words, the stock now sits at a pivot point: materially off its highs, still positive for the year, and with a high‑stakes earnings print on deck.
Q2 recap: AI servers delivered growth, but the bill is coming due
To understand what’s at stake tonight, it’s worth revisiting Dell’s fiscal Q2 2026 results (reported August 28):
- Revenue: about $29.8 billion, up 19% year‑over‑year, topping expectations. [15]
- Non‑GAAP EPS: roughly $2.32, also up 19% and slightly ahead of consensus. [16]
- Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG): Revenue about $16.8 billion, up 44% year‑over‑year, with Servers & Networking soaring around 69% as AI‑optimized systems took off. [17]
- Client Solutions Group (CSG): PC‑focused revenue around $12.5 billion, up just about 1%, highlighting a much softer PC environment compared with AI‑driven infrastructure. [18]
On the AI side, Dell reported:
- Around $8.2 billion in AI server shipments in Q2 alone, up dramatically from roughly $1.7 billion in Q1.
- $10 billion in AI solutions shipped in the first half of FY26, already surpassing the total for all of FY25.
- An AI order backlog of about $11.7 billion exiting Q2. [19]
Those numbers cemented Dell as a major “picks-and‑shovels” player for AI data centers, not just a PC vendor.
However, the quality of that growth sparked concern:
- ISG’s operating margin slipped into the high‑single‑digits from low‑double‑digits a year earlier, as high‑ticket AI servers carried lower margins than traditional storage and server products. [20]
- Investors worried that Dell was burning off its AI backlog faster than new orders were arriving, raising questions about the sustainability of explosive AI growth. [21]
Despite beating expectations and raising full‑year guidance (to roughly $105–$109 billion in revenue and about $9.55 in non‑GAAP EPS at the midpoint), the stock sold off after Q2 as the market focused on margin compression and the possibility that AI demand may be more cyclical than the earlier “infinite demand” narrative implied. [22]
What Wall Street expects from Dell’s Q3 FY26 results tonight
Dell will report fiscal Q3 2026 results after the U.S. market close on Tuesday, November 25, 2025, followed by a conference call at 3:30 p.m. CST. [23]
Across multiple data providers, expectations are tightly clustered:
- Revenue:
- Non‑GAAP EPS:
- Company guidance: Dell itself guided to $26.5–$27.5 billion in revenue and $2.45 ± $0.10 in non‑GAAP EPS, so the Street is effectively expecting results at or slightly above the midpoint of management’s range. [29]
Segment‑level expectations also lean toward solid, AI‑skewed growth:
- ISG revenue is expected to grow about 22% year‑over‑year to roughly $13.9 billion.
- CSG revenue is projected to rise around 4% to about $12.7 billion, a modest rebound for the PC and endpoint business. [30]
Meanwhile, TipRanks’ options tool indicates that derivatives traders are pricing in about a 9.35% move (up or down) on the earnings reaction — noticeably higher than Dell’s average absolute move of about 7% over the last four quarters. [31] Benzinga notes that historically, Dell shares have traded lower after five of the last six earnings reports, with an average decline of about 9.1% on the day after results. [32]
In short, expectations are constructive but not euphoric: the Street wants confirmation that AI growth remains strong and that margins aren’t deteriorating faster than feared.
Project Maverick: a quiet, but important, overhang
Adding to the earnings‑night narrative is Dell’s internal overhaul known as Project Maverick — a multi‑year effort to replace thousands of legacy applications and databases with a streamlined, AI‑ready internal platform. [33]
Recent reporting reveals:
- Project Maverick aims to consolidate roughly 4,700 applications and tens of thousands of servers into a simpler, modern backbone that can better support Dell’s AI strategy. [34]
- The first phase, originally slated to launch in February 2026, has been pushed to May, with a second major phase delayed from May to August 2026, after internal readiness reviews flagged scalability issues. [35]
While this delay doesn’t directly impact customer shipments today, it reinforces a broader theme: execution risk. For investors trying to model Dell as a long‑term AI infrastructure winner, the company has to show it can modernize its own systems while scaling AI servers and protecting margins.
The Maverick delay also landed just days after the Morgan Stanley downgrade and during a broader tech pullback, contributing to the negative sentiment that pulled Dell down to recent lows. [36]
Valuation and Wall Street sentiment: divided, but still tilted bullish
Despite the recent drawdown, Dell’s valuation remains relatively moderate versus many AI‑linked peers:
- At Monday’s $127.22 close, Dell’s market cap sits in the low‑to‑mid $80 billion range. [37]
- Dell trades at roughly 18x trailing earnings and around 11x forward earnings, based on consensus estimates, and less than 1x forward 12‑month sales (≈0.7x), compared with much higher multiples across the broader tech sector. [38]
- The company pays a quarterly dividend of $0.52 per share, for a dividend yield around 1.6–1.7% at current prices. [39]
On the ratings front, views are mixed but lean positive:
- TipRanks: “Moderate Buy” consensus based on 12 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell, with an average price target around $167, implying roughly 30–36% upside from recent levels. [40]
- MarketBeat / other aggregators: Similar “Moderate to Strong Buy” consensus, with average targets in the mid‑$160s and a range that typically spans $110–$200 per share. [41]
- Zacks: Rates Dell as a Rank #3 (Hold), noting that while the shares screen as cheap on metrics like forward price‑to‑sales, they have underperformed the broader tech sector year‑to‑date. [42]
Individual analyst calls highlight the split:
- BofA Securities has a Buy rating with a trimmed price target of $160 (down from $170), emphasizing that higher DRAM/NAND prices could compress 2027 margins but arguing Dell remains early in an AI adoption cycle that could drive double‑digit EPS growth through the decade. [43]
- Morgan Stanley stands on the other side with an Underweight / Sell‑equivalent rating and a $110 target, positioning Dell as one of the OEMs most at risk from a prolonged memory “supercycle” and potential AI hardware down‑cycle. [44]
- Some independent research (for example, Seeking Alpha) argues that if Dell can sustain ISG growth while improving margins and expanding recurring services, the stock could justify fair values closer to $180 over time. [45]
Net‑net, most on Wall Street still see upside from current prices — but with higher perceived risk than earlier in the year.
What today’s earnings call needs to answer
For traders and long‑term investors alike, several themes will likely dominate Dell’s Q3 report and conference call:
- AI server demand and backlog
- Does ISG revenue hit or beat expectations around $13.9 billion, and how much of that is truly AI‑driven? [46]
- Is the AI backlog growing again, or still being drawn down as shipments outpace new orders?
- How concentrated is AI demand across a handful of hyperscale customers?
- Margins vs. memory costs
- How much did rising DRAM and NAND prices impact Q3 gross and operating margins?
- Does management still believe it can offset higher component costs through pricing and expense control, as BofA’s analysis suggests, or are guidance cuts coming? [47]
- PC and AI PC trends in the Client Solutions Group
- Are we finally seeing a stronger PC refresh cycle, including AI PCs, or is growth still stuck in the low‑single‑digits? [48]
- What does Dell expect for commercial PC demand in calendar 2026, especially with Windows 10 support ending?
- Progress and costs for Project Maverick
- How central is Maverick to Dell’s AI strategy, and will the three‑month delay have any financial or operational impact in FY26? [49]
- Can management provide more clarity on expected cost savings and productivity gains once the program is fully rolled out?
- Updated full‑year and longer‑term outlook
- Does Dell reaffirm or update its FY26 guidance (currently calling for roughly $105–$109 billion in revenue and a mid‑$9s EPS midpoint), and what does it say about FY27 and beyond? [50]
- How big is the company’s AI opportunity by 2030, and what margin structure does management think is achievable?
Given the options‑implied move and Dell’s history of large post‑earnings swings, even seemingly small tweaks to margin forecasts, AI server commentary, or backlog trends could drive an outsized reaction in the share price. [51]
Bottom line: Dell at a crossroads for the AI hardware trade
Heading into today’s Q3 report, Dell sits at a crossroads:
- On one side, the company is a clear beneficiary of surging demand for AI‑optimized infrastructure, with Q2 showing explosive growth in AI servers and a still‑sizable backlog. [52]
- On the other, the market is questioning whether Dell can translate that demand into durable, high‑quality earnings growth in the face of rising memory costs, potential AI cycle normalization, and the complexity of massive internal projects like Project Maverick. [53]
With the stock trading well below its recent highs, but still up for the year and carrying a dividend, tonight’s results and guidance could reset the narrative — either restoring confidence that Dell is an under‑appreciated AI infrastructure play, or reinforcing worries that margins and growth may struggle to keep pace with AI hype.
As always, this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Investors should consider their own objectives, risk tolerance, and do additional research or consult a qualified financial professional before making trading or investment decisions.
References
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