Dell reports the second quarter of fiscal 2027 — the three months ended 31 July 2026 — after the US close on Tuesday 1 September 2026, with the call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Consensus is $4.92 of earnings per share on $44.51 billion of revenue, press-reported from third-party estimate feeds.
Both of those are within a rounding error of what Dell told the market on 28 May: revenue of $44.0–45.0 billion, up 49% year over year at the $44.5 billion midpoint, GAAP diluted EPS of $4.48 at the midpoint and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $4.80. The Street is 2.5% above the non-GAAP guide. On a company that has beaten its own revenue guide in each of the last four quarters, that is not a bar.
The number worth reading on Tuesday is not in the second quarter at all. It is in the full-year guide Dell issued alongside it, and what that guide says about the two quarters after this one.
The points
- Dell's own full-year guide implies the second half is smaller than the first. Full-year fiscal 2027 revenue of $165.0–169.0 billion, less the $43.842 billion already reported and the $44.5 billion guided for this quarter, leaves $78.7 billion across the October and January quarters — $39.3 billion a quarter, 12% below the quarter Dell reports on Tuesday. The subtraction is ours; both guided figures and the reported quarter are Dell's.
- The AI-server line is guided to decline this quarter, before that. Dell guided $15.5 billion of AI-optimized server revenue for the July quarter against the $16.1 billion it recognised in April.
- And to decline again after it. Roughly $60 billion of full-year AI-optimized server revenue, less $16.1 billion recognised and $15.5 billion guided, is $28.4 billion for the second half — about $14.2 billion a quarter. Dell's own numbers put the sequential peak of this line in the April quarter.
- The backlog is not the constraint. Dell booked $24.4 billion of AI orders in the April quarter and ended it with $51.3 billion of AI-server backlog, against $43 billion at the close of fiscal 2026. There is more than two years of guided shipments already signed.
- Gross margin is. Dell's gross margin was 17.75% in the April quarter, the thinnest in the fourteen quarters this site holds, and the quarterly report filed with it commits to component-cost inflation persisting through the rest of the fiscal year.
- Our trailing Rule of 40 is 45.6 — revenue growth of 38.6% plus a free cash flow margin of 7.05% on $9.44 billion of free cash flow against $134.0 billion of revenue. Our arithmetic, on reported figures. We have written before about what that score is not measuring on a business keeping 17.75 cents of the dollar.
- Every case in our forward model sits below the price. Base $201.10, bull $381.77, against $472.26 at the 27 August close.
The second half Dell has already guided to
Dell gave three numbers on 28 May, and the third one constrains the first two.
| Revenue | AI-optimized servers | |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 FY27, reported | $43.842B | $16.132B |
| Q2 FY27, guided | $44.0–45.0B | $15.5B |
| Full year FY27, guided | $165.0–169.0B | roughly $60B |
| Second half, implied | $78.7B | $28.4B |
| Per quarter, implied | $39.3B | $14.2B |
The revenue and AI-server figures for the first quarter are Dell's reported results; the guided rows are its own outlook of 28 May. The implied rows are subtraction — the full-year guide less the quarter already banked and the quarter already guided — and they are ours.
Read the last row against the first. Dell has guided its own October and January quarters to about $39.3 billion, roughly 10% below the $43.8 billion it reported in April and 12% below the $44.5 billion it expects on Tuesday. For a company whose revenue nearly doubled year over year in the quarter just reported, that is a sharp statement, and it is Dell's own.
There is an honest caveat, and it cuts both ways: full-year guidance issued in May is deliberately conservative, and a company shipping into a $51.3 billion backlog has room to raise. Our own model declines to reproduce this profile — its base case lands fiscal 2027 at about $176 billion, roughly 5% above the guided midpoint and 4% above the top of the guided range, and the entire overshoot is in the second half. That gap between our path and Dell's guide is stated rather than tuned away, and Tuesday is when one of the two starts being wrong.
The line the market is actually buying
The AI-optimized server line grew 757% year over year in April, to $16.1 billion from $1.9 billion. It is the reason the stock is where it is. It is also the line Dell has guided down twice in the same breath — to $15.5 billion this quarter, and to an average of $14.2 billion in the two after that.
A backlog is not a growth rate. Dell has $51.3 billion of AI-server orders on the books and has told the market it expects to recognise roughly $60 billion of AI-server revenue this fiscal year. Those two facts together describe a business converting a very large book at a high but flat rate — not one compounding. The distinction is the whole valuation question, because a backlog drains and an annuity does not.
Jeff Clarke's framing on the last call was that this has stopped being a spot market: customers are negotiating multi-year supply arrangements running up to five years. If that is right, the AI line is a different object from the one a hardware multiple prices, and our model carries that argument as its own separate case, worth $282.57 a share. It is worth saying plainly that this case is an argument about durability and multiple, not about Tuesday — it does not raise the near-term shipment path above Dell's own guidance, because the constraint there is memory.
What the price is paying for
Our Dell model was published on 27 August against a share price of $463.82. Its four cases, all ours:
| Case | Fair value | vs $472.26 |
|---|---|---|
| Bear | $102.14 | −78% |
| Base | $201.10 | −57% |
| Clarke | $282.57 | −40% |
| Bull | $381.77 | −19% |
Every one of them is below the 27 August close of $472.26. The single assumption doing that work is the exit multiple: the base case values the terminal business at 0.9 times revenue, which on a terminal year running roughly an 11% EBITDA margin is about 8 times EBITDA — where a hardware assembler belongs once the AI mix is no longer growing.
Hold every other assumption in the model fixed and solve for the exit multiple that makes fair value equal the price, and it is 2.57 times terminal-year revenue — nearly three times the base assumption, on a business whose gross margin is 17.75% and falling. That solve is ours, and it is the cleanest statement of what a buyer at $472 is underwriting: not this quarter's shipments, which are guided, but the proposition that in five years Dell is still valued as something other than a box maker.
Note what Tuesday does to that, which is very little. The second quarter is guided to the dollar and the Street is 2.5% above it. The line in the release that can actually move the model is the full-year guide — specifically whether the roughly $60 billion AI-server figure and the $165–169 billion revenue range go up. A raise says the second-half decline the current guide implies was conservatism. Left alone, it says it was a forecast.
What to watch
- The full-year revenue range, currently $165.0–169.0 billion. Left unchanged, it holds the second half at about $39.3 billion a quarter. Raised, it retires the most interesting thing in the current guide.
- The full-year AI-optimized server figure, currently roughly $60 billion. The same test on the line that matters: $16.1 billion is banked and $15.5 billion is guided, so anything above $60 billion is a second-half raise on the AI line specifically.
- AI-server revenue against the $15.5 billion guide, and orders and backlog against $24.4 billion and $51.3 billion. Backlog growing while recognised revenue plateaus is the memory constraint; both falling is demand.
- Gross margin against 17.75%. April was the thinnest quarter in the series and the company has said component costs stay inflated all year. Where this lands decides whether the AI line is a low-margin business or a shrinking-margin one.
- Non-GAAP EPS against $4.80 guided and $4.92 expected, and GAAP against $4.48. The two per-share bases are 32 cents apart at the guide. Both will be quoted; only one is comparable to the $5.24 GAAP figure this site carries for April.
Dell reports the quarter ended 31 July 2026 after the US close on Tuesday 1 September, with the call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Consensus of $4.92 and $44.51 billion is press-reported from third-party estimate feeds as of 1 September 2026 and is not a series this site stores or verifies; the guided figures it is compared against are non-GAAP and the guide's GAAP line is separate. All guidance — second-quarter revenue and both EPS bases, the full-year revenue range and the roughly $60 billion AI-optimized server figure — is Dell's own, from its first-quarter fiscal 2027 release of 28 May 2026, as are the reported revenue, segment revenue, orders, backlog and gross margin, and the statement on component-cost inflation from the quarterly report filed with it. Ours rather than Dell's: every implied second-half figure, which is the full-year guide less the reported and guided quarters; the trailing Rule of 40; and the fair values, exit multiples, discount rate and the multiple implied by the price, which are assumptions in our Dell model of 27 August 2026 and not company forecasts. The price of $472.26 is the 27 August 2026 close; a live quote will differ.
