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Investing.com — Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) reported Thursday fourth-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates and the hardware maker hiked its dividend.
The company also announced that Tom Sweet would retire as chief financial officer at the end of Q2. Yvonne McGill, currently corporate controller, will take up the reins as CFO at the start of Q3 fiscal 2024.
The company reported third-quarter adjusted EPS of $1.80 on revenue of $25.04 billion, compared with estimates for $1.65 per share and $23.51B, respectively.
The client solutions group reported a 23% decline in revenue to $13.36B year-on-year in Q4, offsetting 7% growth in its infrastructure solutions group business.
Although DELL initially jumped in after-hours trading, the stock trades 4% lower in pre-open Friday trading. This is because the company offered a soft FY24 outlook during the earnings call.
Dell guided FY24 revenue and EPS 5% and 16% below consensus, respectively, due to incremental demand weakness in ISG and CSG.
The company also hiked its dividend by 12% to $1.48 a share.
“We returned approximately $3.8 billion of capital to our shareholders in FY23 and are increasing our annual dividend by 12% in FY24, reflecting our confidence in our long-term business model and ability to generate and grow our cash flow over time,” CFO Sweet said.
Morgan Stanley analysts cut the price target by $2 to $45 per share. They highlighted a soft outlook.
“While we’re not yet at a point where we are confident in the point of stabilization, we lean more positively on the stock setup over the next 12 months given the de-risked outlook and valuation discount to peers,” the analysts said in a note.
Barclays analysts weighed in more negatively on the earnings report.
“PC segment continues to see demand reduction as DELL acknowledged still elevated channel inventory, and we believe ASPs should be inflecting negatively soon. Storage also began to crack,” they told the broker’s clients.
