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Luke Kawa8/5/25

Super Micro craters after earnings and revenues miss

Super Micro Computer is down double digits after posting fiscal fourth-quarter results that missed on the top and bottom lines.

For the three months ending June 30, the AI server company reported:

Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.41 (estimated $0.44, guidance for $0.40 to $0.50).
Net sales of $5.76 billion (estimated $6 billion, guidance for $5.6 billion to $6.4 billion).

Super Micro had been warning that it would take time for Nvidia’s Blackwell ramp to pay dividends for the company, and it looks like the payoff will have to wait a little longer.

Management said first-quarter net sales would come in between $6 billion and $7 billion, which fits neatly with the Street’s view, but that adjusted earnings per share would range from $0.40 to $0.52, well below the $0.59 consensus estimate.

And so begins a massive fiscal year for Super Micro, as CEO Charles Liang had previously outlined a massive $40 billion revenue target for the 12 months ending June 2026, which is now lowered to at least $33 billion. That’s still higher than the $30 billion analysts had anticipated.

Prior to Friday’s sell-off, Super Micro had been at its 2025 highs in what’s been a tumultuous year so far. The stock doubled in February as management filed the necessary paperwork to stay listed on the Nasdaq on the heels of its accounting issues last year.

The stock’s price was then cut in half during the ensuing rout in momentum stocks and tariff-driven angst that brought the S&P 500 to the verge of a bear market in April.

Shares rebounded as President Donald Trump watered down and paused tariffs, with Super Micro’s $20 billion deal with a Saudi Arabian data center firm and a renewed AI boom powering the stock higher once again.

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Super Micro soars on heavy call volume as management trumpets its work with Taiwan to avoid chip smuggling into China

Super Micro Computer is spiking on elevated call demand amid the company’s push to show it’s part of the chip-smuggling solution, rather than the problem.

Call volumes are running at 392,857 as of 12:16 p.m. ET, already well north of the 214,893 average over the past 20 sessions. The put/call ratio of 0.16 is also well below the 20-day average of 0.29, underscoring the bullish tilt in options.

This morning, management put out a statement saying that the company had “worked closely with Taiwanese authorities” to help prevent its servers (which contain Nvidia’s AI chips) from making their way into China in violation of export controls, and that this collaboration “resulted in the arrest of three suspects and the seizure of 50 servers that had been deceptively acquired after being sold by Supermicro to an authorized reseller.”

The company also aimed to emphasize that none of this was its fault.

“This case highlights the challenges that can arise when products are resold through multiple downstream parties beyond direct manufacturer control,” per the statement.

Back in March, Super Micro’s cofounder was among those charged by US prosecutors for allegedly attempting to sell $2.5 billion in servers with Nvidia GPUs to China. The stock had swooned on the news and lifted fellow server companies that weren’t tainted by this association. One analyst even suggested that Super Micro lost a billion-dollar contract with Oracle in part because of these allegations.

Shares have since recovered all those losses, and then some.

On the conference call following Super Micro’s big Q3 earnings beat, CEO Charles Liang said he didn’t “feel a negative feeling” from customers at the time despite these charges.

CFO David Weigand added that the company also hasn’t seen a decrease in its allocation of chips from Nvidia in the wake of this news.

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Retail traders are making stock picking look easy

Study after study tells us that stock picking is incredibly difficult, with the lion’s share of active fund managers underperforming the S&P 500.

To that, retail traders say: “What, like it’s hard?”

According to JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain, retail investors’ stock picks are trouncing strategies that would employ dollar-cost averaging into the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 and even the best-performing slices of the AI trade so far this year.

Within ETFs holdings specifically, retail’s relative performance is more mixed: besting the S&P 500 year to date, but lagging the Nasdaq 100 (again, assuming dollar-cost averaging strategies).

“In single stocks, retail has unsurprisingly outperformed benchmarks over the past month or so, consistent with a concentrated tilt toward MU, AMD, and NVDA,” Jain wrote.

JPM Retail PnL

Of course, as the old saying goes, don’t confuse brains with a bull market.

But there’s another saying that tells us to make hay while the sun shines. And it seems retail traders are making some serious hay.

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Dell jumps after landing a $9.7 billion Pentagon contract

Dell is surging after the company won a five-year $9.7 billion software agreement with the US Department of Defense to consolidate and manage Microsoft software licenses across the American military ecosystem.

It’s a big win for the company ahead of its earnings release after the close on Thursday.

This massive award has also drawn attention to Dell’s relationship with President Donald Trump and his administration. On Giving Tuesday in December, Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, appeared alongside Trump at the White House and announced a $6.25 billion charitable commitment to fund investment accounts for older kids who would not be eligible to receive money through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Trump has also publicly championed the IT firm on multiple occasions. At a Mother’s Day event at the White House earlier this month, Trump publicly endorsed Dell, saying, “Go out and buy a Dell. They’re great.” Filings showed the president’s trust owned Dell shares during Q1.

Dell’s stock has skyrocketed over 145% year to date.

Per CNBC, Department of Defense Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies said at a Pentagon press briefing that Dell Federal Systems beat out multiple competitors for this agreement, with the Pentagon expecting this arrangement to provide $422 million in annual savings.

IBM rallies after committing to spend $10 billion to pursue the holy grail of quantum computing

IBM boasts of “more quantum computers than reported by all other industry players combined.”

Scholz Inaugurates Europe's First IBM Quantum Data Center

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Max Knoblauch5h

Best Buy surges on better-than-expected Q1 sales, earnings

Best Buy is on pace for its best trading day in more than a year in premarket trading Thursday, following Q1 earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations.

In its first quarter, the retailer reported:

Adjusted earnings of $1.28 per share, compared to estimates of $1.23 per share from analysts polled by FactSet.
$8.94 billion in sales, versus the $8.82 billion consensus estimate.

Best Buy reaffirmed its full-year guidance and said it expects comparable sales growth of 1% in Q2. (The same quarter last year saw the launch of Nintendo’s Switch 2.)

The company will replace CEO Corie Barry with company veteran Jason Bonfig in October of this year.

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