Dell Technologies Inc. Q4 FY2026 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Fiscal Year 2026 Fourth Quarter Financial Results Conference Call for Dell Technologies, Inc. I'd like to inform all participants this call is recorded at the request of Dell Technologies. This broadcast is the copyrighted property of Dell Technologies, Inc. Any rebroadcast of this information, in whole or part, without the prior written permission of Dell Technologies, is prohibited. Following prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you have a question, simply press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad at any time during the presentation. I'd like to turn the call over to Paul Frans, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Frans, you may begin.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us. With me today are Jeff Clark, David Kennedy, and Tyler Johnson. Our earnings materials are available on our IR website, and I encourage you to review these materials. Also, please take some time to view the presentation, which includes additional content to complement our discussion this afternoon. Guidance will be covered on today's call. During this call, unless otherwise indicated, all references to financial measures refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including non-GAAP gross margin, operating expenses, operating income, net income, diluted earnings per share, free cash flow, and adjusted free cash flow. A reconciliation of these measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our web deck and our press release. Growth percentages refer to year-over-year change unless otherwise specified. Statements made during this call that relate to future results and events are future-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results and events could differ materially from those projected due to a number of risks and uncertainties which are discussed in our WebDeck and our SEC filings. We assume no obligation to update our forward-looking statements. Now, I'll turn it over to Jeff.

Thanks, Paul, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. FY26 was a defining year in our company's history. We delivered record full-year revenue in EPS. Revenue reached $113.5 billion, up 19%, and EPS grew 27% to $10.30. We converted that performance into record annual cash flow, over $11 billion, and returned $7.5 billion to shareholders, including 54 million shares repurchased, more than doubled last year. The AI opportunity is meaningfully growing and transforming the company. In FY26, we closed $64.1 billion in AI orders, shipped $25.2 billion, and exited with a record $43 billion in AI backlog. Powerful proof points that our engineering leadership and differentiated solutions are winning. We are executing with discipline and speed. we are gaining share in our PC business and strengthening ISG with strong margins and traditional servers and storage all while positioning the company for the AI era it was a monumental year we exit with strong momentum and I couldn't be more proud of this team with that let me turn to the key highlights for the quarter we delivered a record quarter Q4 revenue was thirty three point four billion dollars up 39 percent and earnings per share was three dollars and 89 cents up 45 driven by discipline execution and demand for our ai solutions while operating in a dynamic environment we saw record cash flow generation and above trend capital returns for shareholders now let's move to ai we kept an already strong year with an exceptional quarter for ai record orders and broad-based demand in q4 we booked 34.1 billion dollars in ai orders evidence that demand is accelerating as customers deploy ai at scale we shipped 9.5 billion dollars in ai servers in the quarter we exited q4 with a record 43 billion dollars at ai backlog and our pipeline continued to grow sequentially even after converting 34.1 billion dollars of orders a clear sign of sustained momentum for the full year ai orders reach sixty four point one billion dollars our customer base surpassed 4,000 with growth across new clouds sovereigns and enterprise customers evidence that demand is broadening across all customer types we're winning for the reasons we've outlined all year engineering for performance and time to market while optimizing TCO for AI workloads deployment and installation at speed and scale ongoing lifecycle support that keeps clusters up and running and DFS financing. We're doing this with discipline. Profitability is in line with our mid-single digits operating margin target. We like our position, the line of sight we have with our backlog and pipeline, and the advantages our scale and supply chain bring. Moving to traditional servers, demand significantly outpaced supply in Q4. With strong double-digit demand growth across every region and momentum accelerated through the quarter as customers prioritized access to compute for critical workloads we saw broad-based strength with units up a larger active buyer base and a richer mix of our 16th and 17th generation platforms as customers shifted to dense high-performance configurations the ROI to refresh is compelling even at higher ASPs customers see a 7 to 1 consolidation when upgrading from the 14th generation to our latest platforms the runway is substantial. A majority of the install base remains on 14th generation or older servers, creating a significant opportunity to modernize, improve performance, and lower the cost of ownership. Traditional x86 is benefiting from AI infrastructure build-outs. While many AI workloads rely on specialized GPUs, traditional compute remains essential for orchestration, data processing, and inference support. As customers deploy AI, they are modernizing broader AI estates, refreshing and expanding general-purpose environments. Turning to storage, revenue was up 2% with continued outperformance from our Dell IP portfolio. We saw double-digit demand growth in Dell IP with momentum across PowerMax, PowerStore, PowerScale, ObjectScale, and Data Protection. All flash arrays delivered their third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. PowerStore, our primary mid-range platform, posted its seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Profitability improved, supported by our higher Dell IP mix. Lightning, our parallel file solution, remains on track for general availability in the first half of the year with early customer deployments already underway. Turning to CSG, revenue grew 14%, and we gained share as the October momentum carried through November and December. We leaned into share and expanded our buyer base, broadening the portfolio to reach more of the market, including the low end of the commercial market, emerging markets, consumer and education, and by targeting strategic accounts. These actions expand our install base and position us for future refresh cycles. As we leaned into growth, we saw a higher mix of competitive large bids and customer expansion than planned. A higher-than-normal industry channel inventory levels, which delayed price increases. We have already taken actions to address each of these. We implemented pricing moves effective January the 6th to reflect our higher input costs. Order's margins improved and are the basis for all new orders. We remain confident we can operate CSG within our long-term value creation profitability framework. Commercial revenue grew 16%, our sixth consecutive quarter of growth. with demand up for the eighth quarter. We are seeing growth across geographies, strong large enterprise demand, and traction in the lower end of commercial where we set to expand. The refresh cycle remains a meaningful opportunity given the large install base of devices that are over four and five years old. Consumer revenue is roughly flat with demand up for the second consecutive quarter supported by strength and gaining. Before I wrap up, a quick update on the supply chain and component costs. Across the industry, the environment remains highly dynamic, with unprecedented AI demand creating sustained supply tightness and frequent pricing resets. In Q4, we did what we said we would do, shorter quote validity periods, more dynamic pricing, and a tighter alignment between our supply chain sales and pricers. We saw the benefit of this in ISG and expect it to extend to CSG. Given CSG's higher transactional volume and deal velocity, repricing to reflect multiple cost changes takes longer to flow through. We're executing our operating model with urgency, securing supply as the first priority. Our scale, direct model, world class supply chain, and long-standing supplier relationships are a real advantage and they become even more visible in periods of disruption. We are We are managing this environment in real time, applying lessons learned from prior cycles to improve resilience and to strengthen our position. In closing, FY26 was a pivotal year for Dell. We delivered record performance, converted it into record cash generation, and returned significant capital to shareholders, all while building a stronger company. We executed across the portfolio. ISG is at record levels with accelerating AI demand. Traditional servers is growing sharply with demand outpacing supply. Dell IP storage continues to outperform the market, and CSG is gaining momentum with share gains in Q4. We are operating with discipline, lower OPEX alongside meaningful double-digit revenue growth. We've made the company more agile, which is on display in this commodity environment. Bottom line, we enter FY27 with momentum, a strong backlog in pipeline, and a proven operating model I'm excited about the road ahead and proud of our team's execution with that let me turn it over to David to walk through the

financials and our outlook thanks Jeff it was a record year for Dell and as Jeff mentioned we're very excited about what's ahead the team executed extremely well this quarter delivering record revenue EPS and cash flow with strong returns to shareholders. Total revenue was up 39% to $33.4 billion. Gross margin dollars increased 18% to $6.8 billion. Gross margin rate was slightly better than anticipated at 20.5% and reflected a mixed shift to AI servers with AI revenue up more than 4x year over year, and improved profitability in storage. Operating expenses were up 5% to $3.3 billion, primarily from variable compensation tied to outperformance. We continue to drive meaningful scale within the P&L with OPEX down 320 bps to 9.9% of revenue. Operating income grew 32% to $3.5 billion, dollars or 10.6 percent of revenue primarily driven by higher revenue. Net income was up 36 percent to 2.6 billion dollars primarily driven by stronger operating income and our diluted EPS increased 45 percent to three dollars and eighty-nine cents a record. Moving to ISG, ISG revenue was a record $19.6 billion, up 73%, marking eight consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth. Before I get into the categories, we are now breaking out AI server revenue from overall server and networking line, reflecting the scale of the business and growth we expect to see going forward. AI server demand remained exceptional, with records across the board. We had $34.1 billion in orders, $9.5 billion in shipments, $9 billion in revenue, and an ending backlog of $43 billion. In traditional server, demand improved throughout the quarter, outpacing revenue with stable profitability. Traditional server networking revenue was $5.9 billion, up 27%. Storage revenue was $4.8 billion, up 2%, with strong demand across the Dell IP portfolio. Dell IP demand outpaced market growth, and PowerStore remained a bright spot with eight consecutive quarters of growth, seven of which were double-digit. ISG operating income was a record $2.9 billion, up 41%, marking seven consecutive quarters of double-digit growth this was driven primarily by higher revenue operating margin was 14.8% of 240 basis points sequentially the sequential improvement was driven by scaling and strong storage profitability due to a higher mix of Dell IP turning to CSG CSG revenue was up 14% to 13.5 billion dollars. Commercial revenue grew for the sixth consecutive quarter up 16 percent to eleven point six billion dollars while consumer revenue was roughly flat at one point nine billion dollars. CSG operating income was zero point six billion dollars or four point seven percent of revenue. As Jeff mentioned profitability reflects strategic share capture in a highly competitive market this is building our install base and expanding our services and attach opportunities positioning as well for the refresh cycle ahead moving to cash and the balance sheet we delivered a record cash quarter with cash flow from operations of 4.7 billion dollars this was primarily driven by higher profitability and sequential revenue growth we ended the quarter with $13.3 billion in cash and investments, up $1.9 billion sequentially. Our core leverage ratio is at 1.4x, in line with our target. We return $2.2 billion to shareholders this quarter, including repurchasing 14.9 million shares at an average price of $125 per share and paying a dividend of approximately 0.53 For the year, we returned $7.5 billion and repurchased roughly 54 million shares, more than double the amount of shares we repurchased in FY25. Looking ahead to FY27, we're raising our annual dividend by 20% to $2.52 per share, well above our long-term value creation framework. Additionally, the Board of Directors approved a $10 billion increase in our share repurchase authorization. These actions reflect our confidence in the business and our ability to generate strong cash flow in any environment. Next to guidance. Looking ahead to FY27, we expect to build on a record FY26 and deliver another exceptional year. AI demand continues to accelerate, and our value proposition is resonating with customers and driving continued wins and success. This is demonstrated by $10 billion in shipments in FY25 and 150% year-over-year growth to $25 billion in FY26, with an exiting backlog of $43 billion. For FY27, we expect $50 billion in AI revenue, about 100% growth year over year. This outlook reflects the composition of our existing backlog, customer readiness, and delivery schedules. Across the rest of the business, customers are assessing their needs and priorities in an environment where component demand is outpacing supply, which is elevating input costs and extending lead times. We have prized to offset these pressures, and our guidance incorporates a prudent view of second-half demand while navigating this dynamic environment. For a full year, we expect revenue of $138 billion to $142 billion, up 23% at the midpoint of $140 billion. ISG is expected to grow in the mid-40s, driven by roughly 100% growth in AI revenue. Traditional servers and storage are expected to be up mid-single digits, with growth concentrated in traditional servers and more weighted towards the first half. CSG is expected to grow roughly 1%. Margin rate expansion remains a priority. We're maintaining pricing discipline, and our transition to Dell IP storage is accretive to margins. Excluding the impact of AI mix, our gross margin rates are up year over year. We expect operating expense dollars up low single digits, delivering significant operating leverage as we continue to invest and modernize, simplifying, standardizing, automating, and enhancing our operating model with AI. We expect ISG and CSG operating income rates to be at the lower end of our long-term framework, work, reflecting the rapid mix shift to AI and the near-term CSG margin dynamics we discussed earlier. Operating income is expected to grow up approximately 18%. I&O is expected to be between $1.4 billion and $1.5 billion. Diluted non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be $12.90, plus or minus $0.25, up 25% at the midpoint. You're seeing the operating model at work with strong EPS growth driven by significant expansion of our AI business, growth and improving profitability across the rest of the portfolio, meaningful OPEX scaling, and EPS leverage from our share repurchase program. We're leveraging our strengths in a dynamic environment. For Q1, we expect revenue of 34.7 billion to 35.7 billion. up 51% at the midpoint of $35.2 billion. ISG is expected to grow over 100%, supported by $13 billion of AI server revenue, and CSG is expected to be up roughly 2%. Operating expenses are expected to be down low single digits. We expect operating income to be up roughly 60%, with sequential improvements in CSG operating income rate, we anticipate a diluted share count of roughly 664 million shares. Diluted non-GAAP earnings per share is expected to be $2.90, plus or minus 10 cents, up 87% at the midpoint. In closing, we delivered an extraordinary year with record revenue, EPS, cash flow, and capital returns. Revenue reached $113.5 billion, up 19%. PPS grew 27% to $10.30. We generated over $11 billion in cash and returned $7.5 billion to shareholders. Our focus is clear, drive durable shareholder value through consistent execution, profitable growth, and robust cash generation through any cycle or environment. I'm excited about the year ahead. We have the portfolio, operating model, discipline, and multiple levers to deliver growth that exceeds our long-term value creation framework. Thank you to the team for their outstanding work, and thank you all for your time. And now I'll turn back to Paul to begin Q&A.

David, let's get to Q&A. In order to ensure we get to as many of you as possible, please ask one concise question. Operator, let's go to the first question.

We'll take our first question from Tim Long with Barclays.

Thank you. Yeah, I'll try to be concise. I did want to just follow up on the AI servers. Obviously, you know, pretty huge order number there, really good performance. Just curious if you could kind of provide us a little color. Clearly, given the demand backdrop, it seems like you're not really seeing any memory price impacts on that business. But I am curious, as the business scales continually, it seems like you're maintaining that mid-single digit operating margin, which is excellent. But as we see scale and all the diversification you're talking about, maybe you can just provide a little color on other opportunities, either on the margin front or pull through of other business as that business reaches a much broader, more diversified customer base.

Yeah, Tim, I'll take the question. I mean, let's start with we had an extraordinary quarter taking $34 billion worth of orders. And I think equally important, and we tried to call this out, the five-quarter pipeline grew as well. We didn't drain it. We actually grew it. And we grew it across all customer-type CSPs, softwares, neoplaus, as we call CSPs, and enterprise. Enterprise, in particular, I'd call out in Q4 demand, is very strong. We now have over 4,000 customers. We saw our enterprise AI business grow significantly quarter over quarter and very encouraging. And we're seeing AI deployed across many use cases in enterprise. So the backdrop of demand continues to be strong. And you called it out. We tried to call it out as well. We operated throughout the quarter and over the course of the year in that mid-single-digit operating income. With what we see in front of us, there's no reason to change that. That is our guidance of where we can operate this business, and we're going to continue to grow it. It's exciting to say that we can grow it twice what it was this year. We grew order six times over the previous year, and we're excited about the prospects of growth. And probably a backdrop from a technology perspective, as we see inference ramp, inferences driving more tokens tokens drive more compute capacity and intensity and ultimately that is good for the revenue stream of the company okay thank you and we'll

take our next question from mark Newman with Bernstein thank you much taking the

question great numbers very impressive numbers on AI servers I wonder if you could talk about the profitability of AI servers given the huge numbers you're posting um any any any changed any change in directionly versus previous quarter uh and going forward uh that we we may anticipate given the huge uh upside on the top line uh and then and similarly i guess we'll get to this later in the call but a little bit more uh explanation on how rising memory prices are impacting profitability in CSG and traditional servers would be appreciated. Thanks very much. So two questions. The

first one I'll re-emphasize what we just talked about. We maintain throughout the quarter and the guidance that David just talked about that we can operate AI at the velocity we're seeing in the mid single digits. We have a significant technology transition in front of us we see our ability to work our way through that and maintain the single digits we clearly have a lot of backlog to clear with 43 billion dollars in backlog that backlog will ship at the single digit so hopefully those are three data points of backlog future demanded technology transition that are in in our guide that we can maintain the profitability that we've talked about when we look at the other two businesses traditional servers and CSG that you called out, I think we are operating at a high level of proficiency of changing our price as our input costs are rapidly changing. We began to change price, most notably in servers in mid-December, December the 10th to be specific, and we saw our margins and stabilize with higher input costs coming our way. CSG, we purposely, we were deliberate in delaying moving price because we leaned into a share position. We began that in October. We gained momentum in October, November, and December. You saw that in the share results. Our business grew 18% and a market that grew 10%. We took 100 basis points of share. We chose not to take our foot off the accelerator. We saw a change in the composition of the business in December in particular with a higher bid mix of large deals, as well as acquisition pricing of new customers. We grew our customer base in CSG, and then we made a price change on January the 6th. When we made a price change on January the 6th, our business normalized, margin stabilized, and they're where they need to be so we can operate within the profitability framework that we've committed to. Hope that was clear enough.

Great. Thanks, Mark. I actually really appreciate that.

And our next question comes from Louis Masosha from Daiwa.

Hey, thanks for taking my question, and great numbers, guys. Congratulations. If you look at traditional servers, obviously you're going exceptionally well in the AI ones. Some of our checks suggested faster growth in that area. So I guess I'm just trying to understand, you know, why numbers not higher for that, more into the solid double-digit range. And are you only seeing inference deployed on AI servers and not yet as much on traditional servers? Thank you.

Lewis, let me try to break that down, and I'll ask for David's help on sort of the forward guide. In the quarter, I think we were very outspoken about demand, outpaced supply, and traditional servers grew double digits. And we saw that across all use cases in small business, medium business, large, multinationals, across all geographies. We saw the continuation of the consolidation that we've talked about and modernization that we've talked about in traditional data centers where you get incredible efficiency upgrading old technology. For example, our 14G is converted to a 17G, converts it 6 to 1 to 7 to 1. So you're getting incredible efficiencies in power, space, and cooling. And that continued throughout the quarter, and we're projecting that to continue into fiscal 27. Additionally, we are seeing AI workloads on x86 pickup. I think that is significant. And we saw that in enterprises. A phrase that we use inside the company is AI forward. to the most advanced enterprises that are really adapting AI are moving quickly, and we saw them use that across a large number of use cases, whether that be software development, scientific computing, whether that be some of the financial traders that are using very sophisticated algorithms. We're seeing that deployed broadly as well as in some inference use cases. I'll let David take the guide.

Yeah, so to build on that, Jeff, like you said, demand far outweighs supply in relation to the Q4 results. Q1 guide, you know, a strong reflection. We see that momentum continuing, a strong double-digit growth in Q1. We have moderated that slightly as we go into the back half of the year. There's a lot of dynamics out there as we watch the supply-demand dynamics. Part of that will be us out there looking for more supply. But if this demand continues, obviously, there is the potential for growth. But you're going to see in Q1 we're guiding to a particularly strong quarter similar to Q4. Thanks.

And our next question comes from Amit Dharianani with Evercore.

Thanks a lot for taking my question. Clearly you folks did not get the memo that you're supposed to miss numbers by the way when memory prices go up, but it's good to see these results. And I'm hoping you folks can talk about, you know, as we shift to Reuben, could you just contrast how you think the ruben cycle plays out in 27 versus the blackwell cycle and really hoping you can touch on you know a do you think operating margins will be much more smoother through ruben or will it have the same cadence that we saw with blackwell and then b do you think the revenue lumpiness could be less severe as you have a much more diversified customer base perhaps i'd love to just contrast those things and then david perhaps i missed this free cash flow expectations for fiscal 27 would be appreciated as well thank you

you're on it on Vera Rubin look we're excited about the technology that's in front of us we have a significant technology transition to go through there's been a lot of lessons learned from the grace Blackwell implementations we're expecting a smoother transition we're expecting all of the manufacturing lessons and lessons around tests that are implemented into the next architecture to allow us to ramp with more velocity and speed so that's we believe that's the case we have our early engineering samples we're working with customers now on designs very encouraged with what we're seeing thus far when I look in terms of operating margins the question I guess will be consistent here up we believe we can operate in the mid single digits with the backlog at hand with the new orders that will take on over the course of the year which will include Vera Rubin and that's our outlook and guidance and what we've implied in the numbers that David is given and I think it is a smoother transition we've learned a lot we're more enabled more skilled we've invested in more engineering capability. Our forward-deployed engineers, again, are working with customers right now on advanced designs, and I like what we're doing, and I expect it to ship in the second half of the year because we know Vera Rubin is in production.

And to touch on cash, but obviously we're coming off the back of a very strong FY26, $4.7 billion of cash flow from operations. That totaled up to $11.2 billion for the full year, that allowed us to maintain our commitments to our shareholders, right, to return over 80% of our adjusted-free cash flow back, you know, repurchasing over 54 million shares in the year. And while we don't die to cash, look, what I can say is we expect another really strong cash quote or cashier ahead. Our net income to adjusted-free cash flow will be at or slightly ahead of our commitment and our long-term value creation framework. and that consistency and ability to reward the shareholders will be strong again you can see that with our dividend commitment today 20% growth in our dividend per share that's the fourth year in a row of double-digit increase in our dividend per share that with our execution on the share buyback program means we should have a very strong and stable working capital year ahead all

right thanks Anna our next question comes from Ben Reitzes with Lilius

research. Hey, thanks a lot. Nice execution here, guys. I'll echo that. My question is on storage. It sounds like, you know, it's turning a little bit, you know, you beat the street by a little bit, 2%. And then you said, I believe that it'll grow in the mid-singles for the year. And it looks like it may outgrow servers in the back half of the year. So can you just talk about what's really going on with storage, your highest margin business, is it really turning, is it going to be a contributor to mix in the upcoming year that allows you to keep gross margins pretty flat for the year in the tough component environment? Thanks a lot.

Sure, Ben. Look, we're excited about our storage business. Again, we're reporting that on an orders basis, our Dell IP portfolio grew double digits. That's the entire portfolio. PowerMax, PowerStore, PowerScale, ObjectScale, and our data domain platforms all grew double-digit demand. Our all-flash grew double-digit demand. It grew in all regions, and we acquired new customers. PowerStore grew its eighth consecutive quarter, the last seven double digits. Half of those new customers that we're winning are new to PowerStore, and nearly 30% are new to Dell buying storage. We saw tremendous demand for our unstructured products as AI inference and AI continues to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. Our Dell IP portfolio is now a greater percentage of the mix year over year. We expect it to grow FY27 over 26. It will be a greater percentage of mix next year than this year. That's part of the profit contribution that David has outlined in our guidance. And we're entering an era, in my humble opinion, where architecture matters. So, where we have the leading data rate reduction 5 to 1 with our PowerStore product, we're going to increase customers' effective storage capacity. We're the leader there. If you take our data protection product, where we have up to 75 to 1 compression and dedupe, we are going to help customers through this memory crisis, shortage, whatever you want to call it, with advanced architectures that require fewer servers and fewer drives to back up customers' information. That architecture difference, we believe, is fuel that will continue to serve our Dell IP portfolio well in FY27.

I would also add there, Ben, I think you're asked about the contribution and the margin that we see going forward. Well, we see it today, right? The results from Q4 illustrate that in relation to the upping performance of the ISG P&L, which was tremendous. As we look into the guidance, particularly in the back half of the year, we talk about mid-signal digit between traditional server and storage, maybe a smidgen more on the traditional server side, but growth nonetheless. So I hope that helps.

Thanks, Ben. Okay, thanks, guys.

And our next question comes from Eric Woodring with Morgan Stanley.

Hey, guys, thank you for taking my question. Really impressive guide. And Jeff or David, I guess the question is, can you maybe just help us understand what kind of memory price inflation you're assuming in your fiscal 27 outlook? And since you're talking about margin rates improving year over year, maybe just help us also understand what you're doing different this cycle versus past cycles to protect your profitability. Thank you very much. Yeah, a few questions in there. I think

if you go line by line in terms of the business, so we talk CSG in relation to guidance. Our current assessment of the market is double digit, probably in around that minus 11, minus 12% range as we look at the year ahead, probably more acute in the second half. So obviously we believe our guide, which is 1% growth in revenue for the year ahead, is a prudent guide to start with, align with, a commitment to manage and maintain our margin rates within that portfolio. So you can see the difference between the units and the revenue there. We do and will take share, just like we did in Q4. We'll obviously learn as we go to the price increases have been there. Costs will continue to go up to a certain degree. We'll make quick and decisive decisions and execute. Jeff outlined earlier the ability and the execution of the team, particularly on the server side in relation to Q4. We're already seeing the signs of that for Q1. So all the actions we discussed around time validity of quotes, moving at speed, increasing list prices, moving to discount off list pricing, limiting to little or no promotions, all of those actions are strong operational execution levers we've got to work the business as we kind of move forward into the guidance.

I mean, Eric, you asked about memory assumptions. Obviously, our price is proprietary. I'm not going to share our specific percentages. But look at the spot market. I mean, the spot market for a gigabit of DRAM over the last six months is up nearly five and a half times at two dollars and 39 cents a gigabit if you're to look at NAND the cost is 20 cents a gigabyte that's up nearly 4x over the last six months the industry analysts have q2 up over q1 in a range of 20 to 50 percent that q3 55 to 15 percent q4 5 to 10 percent those are estimates those are probably the ballparks where things are so we haven't changed anything we continue to work with our long-term partners we've had ltas in place we've had capacity agreements in place we know how to budgetary price i mean david's team has our best estimate of cost for q2 Q3 and Q4 and how our pricing deals today we're working with our memory partners to be as flexible and as agile as possible we are working through things of how do we minimize our complexity how do we improve our mix how do we sell what's coming how do we improve our designs to take whatever parts that are available and then to answer really to maybe put the bow around this the pricing actions. Look, we became very proficient during COVID, and all of the best practices that we learned during COVID, as I mentioned in the last call, we put in place, and we put in place faster. We changed the entire pricing of our server business on December the 10th in a couple of days. We had tens of thousands of open quotes in the PC business and changed them all on January the 6th. This notion of we recover our costs in two-thirds of it in 90 days, we moved that quickly. That's what we learned in COVID. That's what we put in place here. So we made list price changes across the board. We changed, in our vernacular, our internal mechanisms around smart price and margin floors all changed instantaneously. We're moving to discount off list price. We're compressing discounting. Our quotes are valid for the shortest period of time they've ever been. And we're reducing promotions and all sorts of special pricing going forward. That's what we've done. It's been in place. As I mentioned with one of the previous questions, we saw our server business stabilize with the higher input costs. You saw that in the performance of the business in ISG, which was extraordinary. And PCs, we purposely delayed implementing that price move to stay in the hunt to take share and to drive growth, which will serve us for the long run. And then when we made the change on January the 6th, it wasn't 90 days later, it was that day we stabilized margins. I hope that helped. Thanks, Eric.

And we'll take our next question from Krish Sankar with TD Catwin.

Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the amazing results. Jeff, I had a question on enterprise AI adoption. You kind of said that it's very strong in your server business, carry agent AI, long-horizon agents, all of them have implications across your server, Dell AI factory, and your storage business. I'm just wondering, is there a way to break down your AI server orders between enterprise, neoclouds, and sovereigns, and when do you expect enterprise AI adoption to spill over to historic segment and probably start a new historic cycle well of course

there's a way to parse it I won't do this on the call but we absolutely keep track of the health and growth of those three parts are neoclouds sovereigns and enterprise we try to give you a sense of the enterprise adoption with the number of customers which is now over 4,000 we gave I think some breadcrumbs if you will around the buyer base group it was a record quarter in enterprise revenue in q4 we're seeing usage models uh expand i take a look at our own company an example that i would give two years ago we deployed coding assistance and they used some gpu capacity mid last year we started deploying agents to write the actual software with basically specifications from our software developers and architects. And what we saw was an incredible need for more compute power. The amount of tokens that is required to do that well is significant. And that's just one use case in one company. And what we believe is we're seeing that broadly in the leading companies who have deployed AI and seeing their tremendous benefit and potential of this technology, that we're going to see AI and enterprise continue to ramp. We'll continue to give you signals of our customer expansion, the revenue going forward. I'd also just make sure that I am very clear, the enterprise portion of our five-quarter pipeline grew and actually was the fastest-growing portion of the five-quarter pipeline. I hope that helped put some context around it. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Grish.

And we'll take our next question with Wamsi Mohan with Bank of America.

Yes, thank you so much. Jeff, maybe you can talk a little bit about what you're seeing from a purchasing behavior standpoint as you're implementing these price increases. It sounds like Like, you know, you deliberately delayed your CSG price increases to take share obviously indicates that that is elastic in that sense. From a server perspective, you did implement and you've had some time now to look at sort of what the reaction from customers has been. And I'm kind of curious to see if you've either seen material elasticity both on CSG and ISG side. If you could, like, maybe put some bookmarks around that. And also, did you see any pull-forward behavior, given that the expectation is that you shortened sort of these windows of, quote, validity? You're talking about continued sort of price escalation from a component standpoint. Are customers worried about supply and is that creating any change in terms of pull-forward across your portfolio? And quickly, if I could, for David, the inventory stepped up a fair amount. I'm just kind of wondering if you could break that down for us a little bit on the composition of those things.

How about, David, you take the last one first because it sounds easier. I have a multifaceted question to answer. Yeah, sure.

I think, look, if you look at our cash conversion cycle, minus 32 days, that's actually flat quarter-on-quarter, and actually improvement of a day year-on-year. So if you think building on the expansion of our AI business and shipments that we've done to maintain our cash conversion cycle in that position shows the diligence that we have from a working capital perspective. We have guided to $13 billion in Q1 of AI shipments. That results in reality in February and March, we're shipping billions of dollars of gear. And obviously, we're positioning inventory to do that. So it's purely a function of the size and scale and growth we're seeing in the business that we've got.

Okay, Wamsi, I'm going to take a run at all the parts of that question. So how are customers doing, reacting? I mean, clearly early on, there was a wide range of emotions as it wasn't completely understood. And there's a dynamic that I think it's important for me to communicate, a different reaction in PCs versus infrastructure. So I'm going to talk initially about infrastructure, then I'll pivot to PCs. and infrastructure after the sticker shock and our customers began to understand the gravity of the situation the conversations quickly turned to access the supply it was not literally a light switch but it was some pretty quick order after the emotions of price increases it was oh this is real and as know over the course of the quarter the understanding of this situation became better understood customers began to see that and large the largest customers in the world the most sophisticated cuffs customers in the world began to move aggressively to protect their infrastructure build outs and we saw that over the course of the quarter in AI certain traditional servers and in storage PCs was a little different because you had inflated in inventory positions in the channel so the cost did not hit that inventory which is another reason why we stayed in price position for growth and when we began to see it MPCs was in large fits, where they would be fulfilled over the course of the year, course over the first half, and what have you, customers began to see the reality that this was going to be tight, costs were going to go up, depending on when you wanted product and delivery, there was an associated cost with it, and then when you started having conversations, what's this going to cost me in the first half versus today, and you give an answer I don't know it certainly heightens a buyer's awareness and understanding the cost today is likely better than the price that will be tomorrow the next day and so on so that clearly has driven some amount of pull ahead I don't know how to quantify that what we do know is IT budgets are generally fixed at the beginning of the year so this pull-in is going to obviously drain those IT budgets to some degree that's sort of what we put into our guide our best understanding of that and why you saw some of the numbers around our PC business and traditional server business but clearly technology has to be replaced if budgets aren't sufficient this year that just means replacement cycles will be elongated and extended and I think the result over the next couple of years is we'll see product bought early, but we'll also see the replacement of some technology extend over time. I hope that answered the multi-party question. Yeah, thanks Jeff. Thanks everybody. And our next question

comes from Samik Tatterjee with JP Morgan. Hi, thanks for taking my question and

congrats on the outlook as well. Jeff, maybe just want to get sort of any more color that you can share on the AI order backlog of 43 billion? How does it break down between Blackwell and where Rubin and what are the implications of when some of that backlog ships based on the backlog mix? And you're now guiding to 50 billion of revenue on that front. How should we think about capacity? You're doubling sort of revenue, but to the extent that demand is higher, how should we think about your ability to add capacity over time? Thank you.

So in the $43 billion backlog summit, it is predominantly, overwhelmingly Grace Blackwell. There is no Vera Rubin in the backlog. There is Vera Rubin in the five-quarter pipeline. The largest percentage of our five-quarter pipeline is a combination of Grace Blackwell and Blackwell. We're seeing a rise in X86 Blackwell in the five-quarter pipeline, driven primarily by enterprise deployment, air being the number one consideration. The second consideration that's driving that demand in the five-quarter pipeline tends to be around some of the scientific work and some of the, as I mentioned, one of the earlier questions, some of the financial trading models and algorithms, the high-frequency traders, and using some of the x86 air-cooled solutions to meet their AI needs. So I think that's sort of the composition of both the backlog and the ability to convert that five-quarter pipeline. That is clearly our job is to take that five-quarter pipeline and convert the potential into POs. The corresponding next part of that is we'll go find parts to match the POs. The $50 billion guidance that we gave is the alignment of what we believe at this point in time, four weeks into the fiscal year, of our best understanding of our customers' deployments and build-out of buildings and power and infrastructure, the availability of DRAM and E1 drives and E3 drives. Our ability to deliver that yields the $50 billion number that David gave, but leading the operational part of the organization, we're out looking for more parts. Our job is, again, those orders get converted to be able to fulfill our customers' needs and to do that in a timely fashion. That's what we're working on.

Kurt, thank you.

Thanks, Andrew.

And we'll go to our next question from Aaron Rakers with Wells Fargo.

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Also, Mike, congrats on the quarter. I guess one just housekeeping thing, when I look at the slide deck and you talk about 9.5 billion of AI shipments, you're now disclosing an AI revenue number that's a little bit different, right? 8.95 versus 9.5. Can you help me understand what that difference is, number one? And then number two, on the traditional server side, I'm just curious, Jeff, you know, with all of the pricing stuff going on, it sounds like a very healthy demand backdrop. How do I take the context of mid-single-digit growth and maybe separate that between what that underpins in terms of unit growth versus what I would assume to be a pretty healthy ASP uplift environment through the course of this year?

yeah so look at the first piece of that in relation to shipments versus revenue normally in any given quarter they'll be close to the same number um it's simply in transit so as we ship out 9.5 billion dollars some of that obviously would have been happening time-wise right at the end of january so literally just in transit it will show up you know days later from a p&l perspective so just normal run the business there in relation to that piece

On traditional servers, Outlook, reconciling unit growth of the industry TRU expansion, we clearly saw TRU expansion in Q4. Customers are continuing to migrate towards our 16 and 17G server and buying them with a lot of DRAM and a lot of storage. That's part of the consolidation play, replacing 5-to-1 if it's a 16G, 7-to-1 if it's a 17G, and we'll continue to see that behavior of buying servers with more CPU capability, more memory, more storage. Our best estimate in demand for units next year, or I guess the year when, sorry, excuse me, in FY27 calendar 26. is units are clearly down while TRUs are up. To reconcile the difference of that spread of prices increasing, I think what we try to outlay in our guidance, and David can chime in here, is the uncertainty. We're being prudent in our planning, in our guidance to you, because of the uncertainty associated with the second half, we try to put that in our best reflection in our guidance, and that's how you can reconcile between what we talked about in Q4, that demand was out ahead of supply, double-digit growth, TRU expansion, clearly seeing that in Q1. But as we see go into the second half of the year, we're trying to describe that uncertainty.

Again, just to dovetail on that, again, it's linked to the articulation. If we enter the year, we have sufficient supply to support and meet the guide that we've laid out. Obviously, demand is far at stripping supply. Right now, if that continues, like Jeff operationally said, and he'll be out hunting for more parks to try and find that. But right now, I think it's a good guide. We see the strength, double-digit growth for Q1, and then we'll take care of the rest of the year as we go.

Thanks, Aaron.

And we'll take our next question from Asiya Merchant with Citi.

Great. Thank you for squeezing me in here. If I could just, you know, the clear, if you could provide any incremental color on the attach rate that you're seeing as you're shipping out these AI servers, you know, are you seeing a better attach rate perhaps than what you have and any other further color on that, on what else we can attach to those AI servers that you're shipping? Thank you.

Well, clearly, the attached items for us around an AI server, I think, lie in three distinct groups. Storage, and given the enterprise momentum, we're seeing more storage with enterprise customers. Networking, our networking business continues to grow. And the third bucket would be around all of the types of services. installation deployment services break fix services which which are proven to be a huge source of differentiation for us in the marketplace our ability to deploy and install these very complex customers is unmatched in the marketplace today our uptimes are the best in the industry And then our ability to maintain them with Dell-badged employees on-site, taking care of any challenge, any miscue, again, is a differentiated capability that we have in the marketplace. So, those are the three areas that we focus on in Attach. We're seeing continued growth and acceptance of that, and we're optimistic that we'll continue into FY27. Thanks, Yasia.

And we'll do one more question before we have Jeff close to call.

We'll now take our final question from David Vogt with UBS.

Thanks, Paul, for squeezing me in. Jeff, just a quick question on the structural share gains in PCs. Is it sort of the premise here that your ability to dynamically adjust price and steer demand based on your supply chain availability and your expertise relative to maybe some of the smaller competitors puts you in a position to structurally have a better sort of CSG backdrop in fiscal 27, calendar 26, and more likely than not in fiscal 28 as we think about where you're positioned. Is that really where you're going to see share gains? I'm just trying to get a sense for how you're going to outgrow a market that's going to be down double digits. I get the pricing umbrella that's going to happen, but just want to get a better sense for where the gains are going to come from.

David, I couldn't have said it better myself. Uh, if you look at the last industry-wide shortage, uh, Dell excelled and took share across the board, most notably in its PC business. Our long-term relationships, uh, supply agreements with our partners, we believe position us to take share in all of our businesses, and in particularly PCs, again, which is, again, That reinforcing point, why we didn't back off on the pricing position and the posture that we had during the court. We believe we are entering and change the trajectory of the business. We had lost share for three years. We exited the year with tremendous momentum. You saw it in the Q4 results, 14% revenue growth. IDC number was 18% unit growth for Q4, calendar Q4 to be specific. That momentum is important to us. We grew customers, and we're going to continue to focus on driving and winning in that business. And we think there is a structural share gain opportunity for us, certainly over the next couple of years, as our supply chain team has positioned us quite well. I believe we can do that in servers, and I believe we can do that in storage as well.

Perfect. I appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

All right, Jeff, go right ahead. We closed FY26, a defining year for the company, with record results and strong execution. And we are entering FY27 with clear momentum. We have tremendous AI traction entering the year with $43 billion in AI backlog. The supply environment is tightest we've ever seen, and input costs are moving higher. Our priorities are straightforward. First, secure supply. Next, price to protect our margin rates. You've seen this in ISG. CSG will follow with improvements beginning in Q1 and continuing through the year. In Q4, our gross margin rate came in slightly better than anticipated. Excluding AI mix, we are guiding FY27 gross margin rate up on a year-over-year basis. The operating model we've executed for the past four decades allows us to move fast and adjust as demand evolves, with a broad portfolio and several levers at our disposal. Our FY27 guide reflects that, 23% revenue growth at the midpoint and 25% EPS growth, driven by the expansion of our AI business, growth and improving profitability across the rest of the portfolio, meaningful OPEX scaling, and EPS leverage from our share repurchase program. We are positioned for another record year. Thanks for your time today.

This concludes today's conference call. We appreciate your participation. You may now disconnect at this time.