Dell's AI Factory Is Booming With a Backlog of $51 Billion, But Will It Lift Margins?

Dell (NYSE: DELL) is no longer just a server and personal computer (PC) company. A historic surge in demand for hardware to power artificial intelligence (AI) has sent the stock soaring. It has nearly tripled over the past 12 months.

The demand driving the rally has been impressive. In the first quarter, Dell reported AI-optimized server revenue of $16 billion, up from less than $2 billion last year. The company now sits on an AI server backlog of $51.3 billion and has raised its full-year revenue guidance for the category to approximately $60 billion.

The market has responded by revaluing Dell from a mature PC vendor to a core AI infrastructure play. With the new valuation comes higher expectations, particularly along the bottom line. For the new valuation to hold, Dell will have to prove it can convert those orders into reliable earnings growth.

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A backlog built on AI

Dell's transformation is driven by its ability to capture a significant share of the enterprise AI build-out. The company booked $24 billion in AI server orders this quarter as its customer base broadened to more than 5,000.

Dell is leveraging its core strengths to win these deals. Its scale and integrated portfolio allow it to design and deploy entire AI factories for large enterprises, neoclouds, and government clients.

The company's supply chain, which combines its own manufacturing with a network of contract partners, helps it respond to demand shifts and secure critical components, like graphics processing units (GPUs), in a supply-constrained market. This end-to-end capability reduces complexity and procurement costs for customers.

The results are showing up in the company's infrastructure solutions group (ISG), which houses the server and storage business. This segment now generates over 80% of Dell's total operating income, with margins of 11.7%, making it the clear profit engine of the company.

The AI wave is also beginning to fuel growth in Dell's traditional server business as companies upgrade their entire IT stacks to support growing workloads. Meanwhile, the commercial PC refresh cycle is underway, helping lift profitability at Dell's client solutions group segment. This combination provides another growth avenue while generating reliable cash flow for the company.

The high cost of growth

While the ISG's overall profitability is healthy, the mix of revenue within the segment is changing in a way that pressures margins. The AI-optimized servers driving the growth carry significantly lower margins than Dell's traditional enterprise hardware.

Management is targeting mid-single-digit operating margins for its AI servers compared to the ISG segment's average of around 12%. As these lower-margin systems become a larger portion of sales, they create a structural drag on the company's overall profitability.

The effect showed up last year as Dell's consolidated gross margin compressed by 220 basis points, falling to 20%, as AI hardware became a larger part of total sales. This pattern continued in Q1, with gross margins down 330 basis points to 17.8%.

The company is attempting to offset this by increasing attach rates of higher-margin storage and services, but the margin pressure is expected to continue. In a cyclical hardware business facing margin headwinds, any delays that could slow revenue growth, such as memory and GPU bottlenecks, will also weigh on earnings growth.

Management raised full-year guidance. It's now expecting earnings growth of 74% to nearly $18 per share. After the company released its blowout Q1 report, the stock rose about 37%. With shares trading at roughly 24 times this year's earnings estimates compared to its five-year average of around 9.5 times, it may be wise for investors to let the dust settle a bit.

Bryan White has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.