Dell Is Winning AI Server Market Share. Plus, Alphabet Cloud Growth, Shake Shack, and More Stocks. -- Barrons.com

Dow Jones
01 Nov 2024

These reports, excerpted and edited by Barron's, were issued recently by investment and research firms. The reports are a sampling of analysts' thinking; they should not be considered the views or recommendations of Barron's. Some of the reports' issuers have provided, or hope to provide, investment-banking or other services to the companies being analyzed.

Dell Technologies -- DELL-NYSE Outperform -- $121.63 on Oct. 30 by Evercore ISI We think Dell Technologies is poised to gain share, and it remains a logical partner for customers who look for better/different supply-chain diversity and, crucially, a strong services offering through the deployment life cycle.

Our framework remains that key customers like CoreWeave and Musk companies (Tesla, X, xAI) are largely dual-sourcing production across both Dell and Super Micro Computer [whose shares plunged 32.7% on Oct. 30 following a report indicating that Ernst & Young had resigned as the company's auditor].

Given this latest concern surrounding Super Micro, we think it's critical to think through the competitive landscape when it comes to AI servers....Our sense is that AI server share split is roughly 50/50 between Dell and Super Micro at the Musk companies; however, we think Dell has been winning incremental share at various large accounts on the heels of better reliability and services.

We estimate that Dell's AI server revenue is on track to do $8 billion-plus in sales this year, and likely get to more than $10 billion next year -- though, critically, the focus for Dell will be how it sustains acceptable Ebit margins and its potential to cross-sell various solutions (networking, storage, services) to these customers.

Longer term, we think that Dell is well positioned as the enterprise vendor of choice once enterprise/commercial customers deploy their own AI infrastructure, given Dell's customer reach within standard x86 servers, superior services, and comprehensive portfolio. Target price/base case: $140.

Shake Shack -- SHAK-NYSE Hold -- $113.62 on Oct. 30 by Stifel Shake Shack reported solid results, with third-quarter comps above consensus (4.4%, Stifel 4%, Street 3.6%) and adjusted Ebitda of $45.8 million, above the Street's $43.5 million. The company remains focused on leveraging several drivers to support SRS momentum, including culinary innovation, promotions, and improved marketing efforts.

Longer term, the company believes that launching a loyalty program will drive guest engagement. Progress also continues to improve throughput and efficiency via better labor planning, supply-chain initiatives, and a longer-term review of store layouts and operational processes that can improve the speed of service and guest experience, particularly in the drive-thru.

We believe the current valuation fairly balances the risk/reward, leading us to maintain our Hold rating.

Gibraltar Industries -- ROCK-Nasdaq Buy -- $67.90 on Oct. 30 by Seaport Research Partners Results for Gibraltar Industries [a manufacturer and provider of products and services for the renewable energy, residential, agtech, and infrastructure markets] were in line with the third-quarter 2024 prerelease.

We see the recent pullback as a buying opportunity. We like that the Gibraltar team has started up share buybacks. We thought that the third-quarter conference call was helpful in providing a greater understanding about the issues impacting the community solar and residential segments.

The Gibraltar team commented that fourth-quarter 2024 and first-quarter 2025 renewables sales and profits should be at a low level....The 2025 period should have sales growth that gets back to double digits and profits improving, especially for the 1P tracker....The residential profits were impressive, despite some timing issues around market-share gain ramps with customers. There could be some near-term mergers and acquisitions that provides a catalyst. Price target: $90.

Alphabet -- GOOGL-Nasdaq Outperform -- $179.52 on Oct. 30 by Wedbush Alphabet delivered strong third-quarter results with better-than-expected advertising and cloud growth. Upside to ad revenue in the quarter was primarily driven by Google Search, while results for YouTube were only slightly ahead of expectations....

We are raising our estimates and price target following strong third-quarter results....

After hours, shares are trading for about 20.2 times our revised 2025 GAAP earnings-per-share estimate. We continue to think valuation is attractive, as shares still trade below the estimated 2025 S&P 500 EPS multiple (about 21.3 times).

We think there is a case for multiple expansion for Alphabet in the coming periods as investors gain more comfort related to regulatory risk and the impact of generative artificial intelligence on Google Search. We reiterate our Outperform rating and increase our price target to $210.

Camping World Holdings -- CWH-NYSE Outperform -- $22.89 on Oct. 29 by Raymond James We are upgrading our rating on the shares of Camping World Holdings from Market Perform to Outperform to reflect our view that the company is extremely well positioned to deliver healthy sales and adjusted Ebitda growth in 2025 without any help from macro or industry factors. Key drivers include further market-share gains, a refocus on its higher-margin used-recreational-vehicle segment, and a very attractive mergers-and-acquisitions pipeline.

Price target: $27.

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November 01, 2024 18:47 ET (22:47 GMT)

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