Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) shares advanced 5.1% in premarket trading on Monday, reaching $45.27, as investors anticipated the company's fiscal second-quarter earnings report due after the market close. The uptick follows a strong performance from Dell Technologies, which reported robust AI server revenue on Friday, lifting sentiment across the server hardware sector, including HPE and Super Micro Computer.
The rally comes on the heels of HPE's announcement of a new ProLiant Compute DL394 Gen12 server, built around Nvidia's Vera CPU. Designed for agentic AI and reinforcement learning workloads, the server targets systems that execute complex, multi-step tasks with minimal human intervention. HPE plans to make the server available in fall 2026, signaling its commitment to capitalizing on the surging demand for AI infrastructure.
HPE's pre-earnings momentum reflects broader optimism in the AI server market. Dell reported $16.1 billion in AI server revenue for its latest quarter, surpassing its PC sales, which propelled HPE and Super Micro to 14% gains on Friday. Analysts now view Dell's results as a bellwether for the group, with KeyBanc's Brandon Nispel noting that Dell characterized demand as "broad-based and structurally supported," particularly as agentic AI drives new use cases.
HPE enters its earnings report with a strong backlog. In March, the company disclosed an AI backlog exceeding $5 billion, with 64% coming from enterprise and sovereign buyers. It guided second-quarter revenue to a range of $9.6 billion to $10.0 billion and raised its fiscal 2026 adjusted earnings target to $2.30–$2.50 per share. Analysts currently expect earnings of 54 cents per share on $9.78 billion in revenue for the quarter.
Investors are keenly watching for updates on HPE's AI server sales, backlog conversion, and the performance of its Juniper networking unit. The company has indicated that supply remains tight relative to demand, with elevated prices expected to persist into 2027. Nispel highlighted that customers are accelerating orders to secure supply, adding a layer of complexity to pricing dynamics. Any sign of order softness, margin compression, or guidance that fails to justify the recent share price could quickly reverse the premarket gains.
The broader market context is supportive, with Wall Street futures pointing to a higher open on Monday. S&P 500 futures rose 0.20% and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.14%, as AI-driven optimism outweighed concerns about geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Nvidia also unveiled new technology aimed at embedding AI into PCs, further fueling interest in the AI ecosystem.
HPE's earnings call, scheduled for 5:00 p.m. ET, will be a critical test. The company's ability to translate AI buzz into sustained profitability—through backlog execution, server sales, and the Juniper unit—will determine whether the stock can hold its recent gains or if the premarket pop fades as quickly as it appeared.
