Was The Run In Dell Stock Hiding In Plain Sight? Trefis Team Thu, November 12, 2026 at 9:19 AM EST 3 min read DELL -4.80% ^GSPC -0.32% HPQ -0.17% HPE -1.61% IBM -1.11% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
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A $10,000 holding in Dell Technologies (DELL) stock at the close on November 10, 2025, was worth about $26,460 by November 11, 2026, with dividends reinvested, against about $11,280 for the same sum in the S&P 500. That year turned out to be about Dell's data center business, the servers and storage it sells, and above all its servers built for AI. So what had Dell already told investors before November 2025?
Dell Pointed To Data Center Demand A Year Early
During its November 26, 2024 call, management said revenue of $24.4 billion for the quarter ended November 1, 2024 was up 10%, on strong growth in its Infrastructure Solutions Group, the unit that sells servers and storage. Management said on the same call that its pipeline for the next five quarters had grown more than 50% from the quarter before.
That pipeline took a long time to reach the sales line. Dell's revenue growth slowed in each of the next two quarters, falling to 5.1% in the quarter ended May 2, 2025. Growth then jumped to 19.0% in the quarter ended August 1, 2025, which Dell filed on September 8, 2025. On October 7, 2025, Dell raised its long-term target for annual revenue growth to 7% to 9%, from 3% to 4%.
So the signs were public, but for most of a year they were a promise of demand rather than a result. Dell shares were already rising before the run began: they gained 39.0% between May 12 and November 10, 2025.
Dell Now Sells Mostly Servers And Storage
The bigger change in Dell's sales came after November 10, 2025. Revenue growth went from 10.8% in the quarter ended October 31, 2025 to 39.5% in the quarter ended January 30, 2026. By the quarter ended July 31, 2026, revenue had reached $47.0 billion.
At its September 1, 2026 call, management said the Infrastructure Solutions Group brought in record revenue of $31.8 billion that quarter, up 89%. That is about two-thirds of Dell's sales. The largest part of it was AI servers, at $16.4 billion.
That is a different mix from fiscal 2025, which ended January 31, 2025. During that year, the Client Solutions Group, the unit that sells PCs, still brought in more revenue than the server and storage unit, at $48.4 billion against $43.6 billion.
Is Dell's Server Demand Still Building?
Dell's orders are still building, though its sales growth has eased. At the September 1, 2026 call, management reported a record $95 billion backlog of AI orders and said its pipeline kept growing from the quarter before. Management also said demand outran supply that quarter, just as it had the quarter before, with memory chips among the parts in short supply.
Revenue growth, though, slowed to 57.7% in the quarter ended July 31, 2026, from 87.5% in the quarter before. Management guided revenue for its fiscal third quarter to $49 billion at the midpoint, up roughly 80% from a year earlier, which would be faster growth than in its latest quarter.
The shares have already given back part of the run: they fell 34.6% between October 13 and November 11, 2026, while the S&P 500 lost 2.3%. The same sign that came before the run, a growing pipeline, was still there on its latest call. Dell is expected to report in November 2026. Revenue against that guide is the figure to watch then.
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