New York, March 26, 2026, 11:14 EDT
- Shares of HPE slipped roughly 1.6% to $25.38 late Thursday morning, paring back after jumping 7.8% Tuesday and another 5.7% Wednesday.
- Evercore ISI bumped up its price target on HPE to $30, up from $28, while sticking with an Outperform rating. The firm pointed to stronger CPU-driven server demand as the reason.
- HPE is working through an AI backlog topping $5 billion, but supply costs keep pressing margins and the Juniper deal still carries some risk.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise slipped 1.6% to $25.38 late Thursday morning in New York, still holding close to this week’s highs. The pullback comes after Evercore ISI bumped up its price target and follows two strong sessions for the stock.
This shift is catching fire now as investors push the AI spending narrative further out, away from just chipmakers and toward companies handling the servers and networking hardware that support them. HPE, Dell Technologies, and Super Micro have all found themselves caught up in the trend, with Wall Street reconsidering just how much demand CPUs and supporting infrastructure can still draw.
HPE managed to hold up even as the broader market struggled. Major indexes slipped Thursday, pressured by renewed worries over the Middle East conflict and its impact on growth. Tech names bore the brunt of the selloff.
Evercore’s Amit Daryanani sees CPU-driven server demand holding up better than earlier forecasts suggested. CPUs—handling data and keeping AI systems working in tandem with graphics chips—are, as he puts it, “becoming a bigger part of the build-out.” Morningstar
Daryanani noted that more investors are looking at Dell—and, though less so, HPE—as names that could gain if Nvidia changes up its supply chain following the Justice Department news around Super Micro last week. Evercore bumped HPE’s price target up to $30 from $28, sticking with its Outperform rating.
Earlier this month, HPE offered investors a fresh round of solid numbers. On March 9, the company put out a second-quarter revenue outlook of $9.6 billion to $10.0 billion—topping what analysts had been expecting. It also flagged that its AI backlog, meaning orders placed but not yet recognized as revenue, had climbed past $5 billion. The company bumped up its adjusted earnings target for fiscal 2026 as well.
Back then, Chief Executive Antonio Neri described demand as “increasing double digits year over year across all segments.” That’s only strengthened expectations that HPE’s networking and AI-server units are set to capture the next wave of enterprise spending—even with margins still under pressure. Hewlett Packard Enterprise
HPE got a legal boost Tuesday after a London judge denied Mike Lynch’s estate permission to appeal in the lengthy Autonomy case. The company put the total damages and interest at roughly $1.24 billion. The estate isn’t out of options yet—it can still apply directly to the Court of Appeal.
The rally isn’t all smooth sailing. Earlier this month, HPE flagged it was shifting focus to higher-margin product orders—a move CFO Marie Myers acknowledged might weigh on AI-systems revenue growth. Meanwhile, court documents reviewed by Bloomberg News pointed to tepid interest in the Instant On assets HPE agreed to offload as part of its $14 billion Juniper Networks deal. That settlement still faces pushback from state attorneys general.
Investors continue to pile into stocks tied to AI infrastructure—think servers, networking equipment, and other hardware—not just the chip suppliers powering it all. HPE climbed back into that mix this week, joining Dell and Super Micro. Shares cooled off Thursday, but the group is still in focus.
