Dell and HPE Lost Up to 43% in Weeks. Earnings Decide What's Next

Dell Technologies has handed back 43.1% of its stock value in a month, falling from $578.17 on October 7 to $329.00 in premarket trading on November 9, 2026. Hewlett Packard Enterprise fell 37.7% over the same stretch, dropping from $72.09 to $44.90, according to 24/7 Wall St. The two companies were the biggest hardware winners of the AI expansion. Now they report earnings within days of each other, and those reports will show whether either deserves to recover.

The numbers are brutal in the short term but still large over the year. Dell is up 164.2% in 2026 and HPE is up 89.0%, even after the selloff. Since October 30 alone, Dell has dropped 22.5% and HPE 18.5%. The selling matters beyond these two tickers, because they're the downstream builders of the AI data-center boom — if investors stop believing in their order books, that's a signal about the whole infrastructure trade.

What triggered the selloff?

The steepest selling began after the midterm elections. Investors grew concerned that a Democratic Congress and states across the country would crack down on artificial intelligence and data centers. That political fear landed on stocks that were already wobbling.

Dell's slide actually started in mid-October, before the election, when it led a selloff in data center equipment stocks over worries about the timing of enterprise AI spending. The post-midterm regulatory fears then hit a stock that was already falling. The macro concern also exposed a weak spot in Dell's own numbers.

HPE fell in the same post-midterm wave, but its risks are different. Its thesis depends on turning the Juniper Networks acquisition into a growth engine, and investors who fear a slowdown in data center construction are reconsidering that shift.

Dell: why did record revenue meet falling cash flow?

In fiscal Q2 2027, Dell posted record revenue of $46.97 billion — and free cash flow of $986 million, down 47% year over year. That combination is the core problem. Investors already wondering how long the AI expansion will last don't want to see record sales generating less cash.

Margins are the second concern, though here the news cuts both ways. The non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 12.6% from 7.7%, and the Infrastructure Solutions Group's operating margin rose to 15.0% from 8.8%. Dell CFO David Kennedy cautioned on the call: "While we would not expect every benefit to continue at this level, the quarter also reflects meaningful structural improvements in the business."

Supply is the third constraint. COO Jeff Clarke said: "The constraints remain the same. DRAM, DRAM, DRAM, followed by NAND, NAND, NAND." Memory chips, in other words, are the bottleneck — not customers.

Dell reports fiscal Q3 2027 on November 24. Management's guidance sets clear targets:

• Revenue of $49.0 billion, up 81% year over year
• Non-GAAP EPS of $6.50
• AI server revenue of $19 billion
• ISG operating income rate up just over a point year over year
• Full year: $192 billion revenue, $74 billion in AI-optimized server revenue, $25.50 non-GAAP EPS

Demand gives Dell a strong starting point. The company booked $60.9 billion in AI server orders in fiscal Q2 and ended the quarter with a record $95 billion AI backlog. It has beaten EPS estimates five consecutive times, including a 43.69% surprise in fiscal Q2. Clarke described the situation plainly: "Demand was even greater than the results that we published there. We are supply constrained."

The takeaway: Dell's problem isn't orders, it's turning a $95 billion backlog into cash while memory prices squeeze supply.

HPE: can Juniper become the growth engine?

CEO Antonio Neri framed the strategy on the September 2 call: "We are leading with networking. We are at the core becoming a networking company." That bet is now under scrutiny, because AI systems make up more of revenue and management has said gross margin should moderate toward historical levels as that happens. HPE expects the Cloud & AI operating margin to ease to approximately 13% in fiscal 2027.

The reported numbers flatter the picture. Networking revenue rose 74.9% year over year to $2.89 billion, helped by the Juniper deal. On the normalized basis management used on the call, networking grew 10%, and data center networking revenue declined 6% — which management attributed to shipment timing and supply constraints.

HPE has confirmed its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call for Monday, November 23, at 5:00 p.m. ET, covering the quarter ended October 31, per its November 2 press release. The report will be measured against:

• Fiscal Q4 revenue of $13.9 billion to $14.8 billion
• Non-GAAP EPS of $1.20 to $1.30
• Fiscal 2027 framework: revenue growth of 13% to 17%, EPS of $4.40 to $4.60, free cash flow of at least $5.0 billion

Cash flow supports the case better than it does at Dell. Fiscal Q3 free cash flow came in at $958 million, up 21% year over year, and the non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 16.2% from 8.5%. HPE has beaten EPS estimates for at least six quarters. Networking orders rose 36%.

There are fresh wins, too. HPE announced an expanded collaboration with Oracle under which Oracle will deploy HPE Juniper routers and switches across a large AI cloud expansion. Neri called it "a multi-gigawatt, multiyear opportunity." After the quarter closed, HPE also won a multibillion-dollar server deal with a hyperscaler customer for inferencing. Buyers returned briefly on November 6, when the stock outperformed competitors on a strong trading day.

The takeaway: HPE's story rests on whether the Juniper integration keeps delivering, and the Oracle deal gives investors a concrete way to watch it.

What has to go right — and what breaks the case?

For Dell, the bull case needs revenue to meet or beat the $49.0 billion guide, the backlog to grow beyond $95 billion, free cash flow to stop falling, and the non-GAAP operating margin to hold above 12% as lower-margin AI servers become a bigger share of sales. The thesis falls apart if free cash flow keeps falling while revenue grows, if the backlog stalls or contracts from $95 billion, or if AI server margins drop faster than scale can offset — or if Dell cuts its $25.50 EPS or $192 billion revenue guidance.

As 24/7 Wall St. notes, a shrinking backlog would support the October concern about enterprise AI timing more than any political headline.

For HPE, the bull case needs fiscal Q4 revenue at or above the midpoint of the $13.9 billion to $14.8 billion range, reported fiscal 2026 networking growth within the raised 73% to 74% guide, confirmation of at least $3.75 billion in fiscal 2026 free cash flow, and Juniper synergies on pace or ahead of schedule toward the $600 million annual run-rate savings target by the end of fiscal 2028.

The case fails if HPE cuts its fiscal 2026 non-GAAP EPS guide of $3.75 to $3.85, trims the fiscal 2027 framework, reports networking growth below guidance, or books new integration impairments. A stall in server growth after the 35.3% gain in fiscal Q3 would also suggest the post-midterm concerns about data center spending have reached HPE's customers.

Which comeback case holds up better?

HPE goes into earnings with the stronger setup: a confirmed November 23 date, free cash flow that is growing, and a fiscal 2027 framework that sets a clear standard. Dell has the larger growth engine and the more impressive backlog, but its recovery depends on cash flow — and a second straight quarter of lower free cash flow on record revenue would keep the stock under pressure regardless of how many AI orders it books.

Both companies sit downstream of the same data-center expansion that has powered the entire AI infrastructure trade. If Dell's backlog shrinks or HPE's networking growth misses, the damage would reach well past two tickers.