Oracle Chief Financial Officer Hilary Maxson said on a Sept. 10 post-earnings conference call that the company expects fiscal 2027 capital expenditures to range from $90 billion to $95 billion. She said the spending will go mainly toward racks, liquid cooling and networking equipment for AI data centers, and she directly named Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell as suppliers.
In the next trading session on Friday, Sept. 11, Dell closed at $567.29, up 11.98% for the day. The stock touched an intraday high of $567.75, which was both a 52-week high and an all-time high. Its market capitalization reached $360.6 billion, and trading volume totaled 14.47 million shares. HPE closed at $62.09, up 12.44%. Super Micro Computer also gained 7.28%.
Oracle shares moved the other way. The stock closed Friday at $150.28, down 1.74%. After including the 5.38% decline on Sept. 10, the day Oracle reported earnings, the stock was down about 7% over two trading sessions.
Dell had a second catalyst on the same day
The report said it would not be precise to attribute Dell’s full 11.98% gain solely to Oracle’s comments. On the same day, RBC Capital Markets initiated coverage on Dell with an Outperform rating and a $640 price target. The analyst named in the report was David Paige.
RBC said Dell has a $95 billion server backlog and sold about $16.4 billion of AI servers in the prior quarter. The firm also pointed to enterprise AI investment, compute refresh cycles, storage expansion and PC replacement demand as factors that could keep Dell’s performance above its own long-term targets. RBC also cited Dell’s full product lineup across compute, PCs, storage and servers, along with its existing customer base and supply-chain capabilities, as support for additional market-share gains.
There was no new analyst note mentioned for HPE. According to the report, HPE rose 12.44% on Oracle’s mention alone. Comparing the two moves, the article said the market appeared to assign roughly a 10% valuation effect to being named on Oracle’s procurement list.
Dell had already disclosed a $95 billion AI server backlog
Dell’s AI server figures had already been published in its Sept. 1 earnings report. In fiscal 2027 second quarter, AI server revenue reached $16.4 billion, double from a year earlier. New AI server orders in the quarter totaled $60.9 billion, and backlog climbed to a company-record $95 billion by quarter end.
The customer base exceeded 6,500 and included emerging cloud providers, sovereign AI projects and enterprise clients. Total quarterly revenue came to $46.97 billion, up 58% year over year. Dell also raised its full-year fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to about $192 billion, $25 billion above its previous forecast, with AI servers contributing $74 billion.
The report noted that the scale of Dell’s $95 billion backlog is almost the same as Oracle’s upper-end annual capital spending plan. It also drew a distinction between the two figures: Oracle’s number is a single customer’s annual budget, while Dell’s number represents accumulated unshipped demand from all customers.
Dell shares have moved above the analyst consensus target
Dell is up 342.3% this year, with a 52-week range of $110.22 to $567.75. Over the past 12 months, revenue reached $151.2 billion, up 49%, while net profit was $11.38 billion, up 135.2%. The stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 33.10 and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 20.18.
The analyst consensus price target stands at $564.46, about 0.5% below Friday’s close of $567.29. The report said RBC’s $640 target sits near the high end of the range, while many analyst models have not yet caught up with the latest rally.
Oracle’s earnings figures and spending plan
The article said Oracle’s earnings report itself was not weak. For fiscal 2027 first quarter, Oracle reported revenue of $19.3 billion, up 30% year over year. Cloud infrastructure revenue reached $7.4 billion, up 121%. Remaining performance obligations, or RPO, increased by $26 billion from the prior quarter. Oracle also raised full-year revenue guidance to at least $90 billion.
Oracle said that after accounting for customer prepayments and financing arrangements, its own net cash capital expenditures for fiscal 2027 will not exceed $70 billion. Even so, that figure remains above the company’s full-year revenue guidance.
Key figures from the report
- Oracle fiscal 2027 capital expenditures: $90 billion to $95 billion
- Oracle net cash capital expenditures: no more than $70 billion
- Dell Sept. 11 close: $567.29, up 11.98%
- Dell intraday high: $567.75
- Dell market capitalization: $360.6 billion
- HPE Sept. 11 gain: 12.44%
- Oracle Sept. 11 decline: 1.74%
- Oracle earnings-day decline: 5.38%
- Dell AI server backlog at quarter end: $95 billion
- Dell quarterly AI server revenue: $16.4 billion
- Dell quarterly new AI server orders: $60.9 billion
- Dell customer count: more than 6,500