Shares of Dell Technologies surged Friday after the computer hardware giant smashed analyst estimates for its fiscal first quarter, thanks to strong commercial PC sales. Dell stock jumped nearly 13% on the news.
The Round Rock, Texas-based company late Thursday said it earned an adjusted $1.84 a share on sales of $26.12 billion in the quarter ended April 29. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Dell earnings of $1.39 on sales of $25.03 billion. On a year-over-year basis, Dell earnings rose 36% as sales increased 16%.
Dell's infrastructure solutions sales rose 16% to $9.3 billion, led by gains in servers and networking.
Dell's personal computer sales increased 17% to $15.6 billion. Commercial PC sales jumped 22% to $12 billion in the first quarter while consumer PC sales inched up 3% to $3.6 billion.
Dell Stock Rises
On the stock market today, Dell stock popped 12.9% to close at 49.58. During the regular session Thursday, Dell stock advanced 1.5% to 43.93.
"Our first quarter — with record Q1 revenue, operating income and diluted EPS — demonstrates the benefits of having a strong, geographically and sector-diverse business covering the edge to the core data center to the cloud," Chuck Whitten, co-chief operating officer, said in a news release.
For the current quarter, Dell expects to earn an adjusted $1.63 a share on sales of $26.6 billion, both up 10% year over year. That's based on the midpoint of its guidance. Analysts were modeling earnings of $1.47 a share on sales of $25.53 billion for the fiscal second quarter.
Dell stock ranks fourth out of 13 stocks in IBD's computer hardware and peripherals industry group, according to IBD Stock Checkup. It has a subpar IBD Composite Rating of 43 out 99.
IBD's Composite Rating is a blend of key fundamental and technical metrics to help investors gauge the strengths of Dell stock and others. The best growth stocks have a Composite Rating of 90 or better.
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