Over the past six months, Dell’s stock has gained 59%. Being part of the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out sure pays off.

And even though the stock jumped that much, it still seems a little bit invisible compared to the rest of the AI pack.

Not making GPUs or AI models makes it less prone to hype. However, pragmatic investors view it for what it is —a key AI player that you need if you want to build infrastructure for AI or any other data center.

Dell Q2 net income grows 32% to $1.16 billion year over year

On August 28, Dell  (DELL)  reported its results for Q2 of fiscal 2026.

Dell Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said during the earnings call:

Customers are seeing real-time the value in our ability to deploy large-scale clusters quickly and [reliably]. Our execution, value-add through engineering, and ability to Dell design and even Dell manufacture components within our at-scale data center solutions drive margin rate improvement within AI.

Here are the Dell Q2 earnings highlights:

• Record revenue of $29.8 billion, up 19% year over year
• Diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.70, up 38% YoY
• Cash flow from operations of $2.5 billion
• Net income of $1.16 billion, up 32% YoY

The company provided an outlook for Q3 of fiscal year 2026:

• Revenue of between $26.5 billion to $27.5 billion
• Diluted EPS expected to be $2.07 at the midpoint, up 26% YoY

Dell launches PowerEdge XR8720t

Dell Technologies launched the new Dell PowerEdge XR8720t on September 30, targeting edge and telecom infrastructure, with a focus on open radio access network (RAN) and Cloud RAN deployments.

Until now, the necessity for multi-server deployments has slowed down the adoption of Cloud RAN and advanced edge computing, due to high costs, space constraints, and power requirements.

The Dell PowerEdge XR8720t is a single-server solution for Cloud RAN, thereby eliminating those problems and reducing the total cost of ownership for modern network and edge deployments.

Bank of America raises price target for Dell stock

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan and his team updated their opinion on Dell shares, ahead of Dell’s securities analyst meeting on October 7.

Analysts noted questions that should be addressed during the event:

• AI server revenue trajectory and total addressable market
• The durability and margins around AI servers
• A clear roadmap for storage
• True viability and demand for AI PCs

Mohan reiterated a buy rating and raised the price target from $167 to $170, based on approximately 15 multiple of his estimate of earnings per share of $11.15 for calendar year 2026. 

His target multiple compares to the median 5 multiple of the historical range of 3 to 18 for Dell since it returned to the public markets in 2019.

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His team believes that multiple higher than the historical range is warranted, given favorable exposure to AI, improved storage portfolio, and lower financial leverage, and since the company balances opportunities to invest in core areas of growth, with ongoing weak macro.

Analysts noted downside risk factors for Dell:

• Faster-than-expected slowdown in the global economy
• Faster-than-expected strengthening of the U.S. dollar
• Trade war with China
• Higher-than-expected tariffs
• Dell not being able to source needed processors from Intel
• Unexpected share loss to competitors

Dell upside risks:

• Faster-than-expected revenue growth and market share gain
• Faster mix shift to storage and premium PC and server configurations
• Faster-than-expected ramp of sales teams
• Adoption of AI that can drive upside to cash flow across PCs and servers (negative cash conversion cycle)

Related: 47-year-old tech stock gets new price target on AI demand