Dell Technologies Beats Q1 Estimates With Strong Commercial Notebook Sales

Dell Technologies reported a strong first quarter on Thursday, with strong growth from key elements of its Client Solutions Group, particularly commercial notebooks. However, total revenues were effectively flat year-over-year with infrastructure sales declining. 

Dell's non-GAAP diluted earnings per share came to $1.34 on revenue of $21.9 billion. 

Analysts were expecting earnings of $1.01 per share on revenue of $20.83 billion. 

"Customers need essential technology now more than ever to put business continuity, remote working and learning plans into practice," Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and COO, said in a statement. "In Q1, we saw orders with banking and financial services, government, healthcare and life sciences customers up 15 to 20 percent – all to meet immediate needs of their customers, communities and patients. As the world pivots from response to recovery, we'll continue to put our broad capabilities to work to deliver differentiated results for our customers and our company."

Specifically, revenue from the Client Solutions Group for the first quarter was $11.1 billion, up 2 percent versus the first quarter of last year. It saw double-digit unit and revenue growth in commercial notebooks and high-single-digit revenue growth in mobile workstations. Dell noted that it was the only Top 5 PC vendor to gain year-over-year worldwide share in total and commercial client units. 

Revenue from the Infrastructure Solutions Group came to $7.6 billion, an 8 percent decrease year-over-year. Storage revenue was $3.8 billion, down 5 percent year-over-year, while servers and networking revenue was $3.8 billion, down 10 percent.

VMware revenue was $2.8 billion for the first quarter, up 12 percent driven by broad-based strength across a diverse product portfolio.