彭博9月1日财报前瞻：戴尔与慧与需在本周业绩中验证年内创纪录涨幅——该前瞻对应的财报已于其后两日兑现并被市场重定价

Artificial intelligence fever is powering Dell Technologies Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. to their best years in the stock market.

But with the tech hardware manufacturers set to report earnings over the next two days, investors don’t know if there’s anything they can say or do to extend the rally further.

“What is the additional surprise that can push them beyond high expectations? I’m just not sure,” said Ayako Yoshioka, senior investment strategist at Wealth Enhancement Group, which owns shares of both companies.

Dell shares have soared more than 250% in 2026, the third best performance in the S&P 500 Index, while HP Enterprise is up roughly 112%, 13th best in the benchmark. The moves are part of a broadening of the AI trade to include other parts of the infrastructure buildout, like the servers the companies sell. But the magnitude of the gains for these tech hardware companies is still eye-opening in a stock market that has been fixated on chipmakers, memory manufacturers, software developers and the hyperscalers building the computing capacity to power AI.

Shares of Dell fell as much as 3.4% on Tuesday while HP Enterprise dipped 2.8%.

“We used to have rolling pockets of leadership,” said Jack Janasiewicz, lead portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, which has $1.4 trillion in assets under management and owns positions in Dell and HP Enterprise. “For a while software was guilty until proven innocent. It got smashed, then rebounded. There were times when semis were in the lead, then turned. Sometimes it felt like a one-horse race. Now, it feels like there’s a rising tide that is supporting the whole tech complex.”

That said, most of the gains for Dell and HP Enterprise came in the first five months of the year, when equity indexes were racing ahead on AI euphoria. Dell shares leaped 47% in the two sessions following the company’s blowout May 28 earnings report, but are down 2.1% since then. HP Enterprise shares jumped 47% in the three sessions from May 29 to June 2 around the firm’s results, but since then have lost 7%.

While both Dell and HP are legendary tech names, their stocks are relatively new. Dell was taken private in 2013 and went public again in December 2018, while HP Enterprise was split off from the old Hewlett-Packard Co. on Nov. 1, 2015. Still, neither stock has posted a triple-digit percentage gain in a year, much less the kind of booming performance Dell is generating.

‘Important Report Card’

“My biggest regret of the year is not buying Dell,” said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of 50 Park Investments. “The past six months have shown tremendous growth and stock gains, but now these reports are a very important report card. Their upside was a surprise last quarter, but can it be a surprise again?”

The S&P 500 has gained 12% this year but just 1.4% since the start of June. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index is up 15% in 2026 but has lost 4% since June 1.

Earnings from Dell and HP Enterprise arrive in the wake of last week’s blowout revenue forecast from Nvidia Corp., which sent the chipmaker’s shares soaring and reinforced the durability of AI spending plans. After those results, the companies are facing an even higher bar for success.

“Expectations were already pretty strong, but they’ve gotten even more elevated after Nvidia,” Wealth Enhancement’s Yoshioka said. “That leads to a risk of disappointment if they don’t match the magnitude of what people want to see.”

Wall Street has grown increasingly optimistic on the pair due to the massive demand for servers, a key component to AI infrastructure. That view got validation last month when Super Micro Computer Inc. gave a bullish forecast of its own. Dell’s second-quarter net income is expected to jump nearly 150% on revenue growth of more than 50%. HP Enterprise’s net income is expectedto triple on a 30% rise in revenue.

Even with the improving earnings expectations, this year’s rallies have the stocks looking expensive. HP Enterprise, which historically carries a low multiple, is trading for roughly 13 times earnings estimated over the next 12 months, down from its high of almost 17 times on May 29 but well above its 10-year average of 8.7. Dell is priced at 21 times forward earnings, down from its high of 25 on June 1 but a significant premium to its 10-year average of 8.7.

The S&P 500 is priced at around 19 times forward earnings, while the Nasdaq 100 trades at 21, both of which are roughly in line with their historical averages.

The relatively high valuations for Dell and HP Enterprise give the companies even less room for error in these results — and will keep investors focused on what management has to say about what’s to come.

“Dell and HPE are a lot more expensive than they have been historically,” 50 Park’s Sarhan said. “That’s because their growth is higher than it has been historically. That’s the issue: they’re abnormally expensive relative to their history, because their growth is abnormally higher. If the results suggest that their growth is normalizing, then the valuation could start to normalize, which will mean the stock will pull back.”