Dell is printing 'shock and awe' numbers, says Evercore's Amit Daryanani
Speakers
Amit Daryanani
— Senior Managing Director, Evercore ISI
Christy Okoli
— Chopping Block co-host
Summary
Evercore ISI's Amit Daryanani discusses Dell's blowout quarter, emphasizing AI revenue strength plus accelerating traditional server, networking, and storage growth that improves Dell's margin and free cash flow profile. He also argues enterprises are shifting workloads to on-prem hardware to avoid high frontier token costs, a trend visible at Dell, Cisco, and Pure Storage. On Apple, he sees the stock as a near-term anti-AI, cash-like defensive counterweight to semiconductor and AI trades.
- Dell beat earnings and raised guidance, with shares up about 8.7% after hours.
- Dell's AI revenue rose 100% in the quarter.
- Traditional servers and networking rose 122%; storage growth accelerated to 26% from 8%.
- The enterprise-driven mix carries better margin and free cash flow for Dell.
- Amit argues enterprises are repatriating workloads to on-prem compute, network, and storage to lower token costs.
- He sees this on-prem hardware trend at Dell, Cisco, and Pure Storage.
- Apple is viewed as an anti-semiconductor, anti-AI cash-like defensive name near term.
- Key focus areas include durability of Dell growth and supply chain component availability.
Ideas
Dell's diversified AI and enterprise growth accelerates.
Enterprises are actively looking at high frontier token costs and deciding they cannot keep spending that much, so they are repatriating workloads to on-prem compute, networking, and storage infrastructure because it is cheaper. This trend is already visible at Dell, Cisco, Pure Storage, and similar hardware vendors, supporting on-prem hardware demand.
Apple serves as defensive anti-AI cash.
Apple is acting as an anti-semiconductor, anti-AI stock and a de facto cash position. When semis and AI trades sell off, Apple tends to do well because investors treat it as cash-like defensive exposure; eventually product innovation and AI ecosystem execution under the incoming CEO will matter.
