HPE surges 38% after hours, Nvidia plants its flag in PCs, and PANW reports tonight
HPE's Q2 beat sent shares up 38% after hours on 40% revenue growth and doubled AI backlog. Nvidia's COMPUTEX keynote unveiled the RTX Spark Superchip, lifting ARM Holdings 18% and setting up an Intel/AMD disruption. Palo Alto Networks reports tonight with a ~10% swing priced in; Broadcom and CrowdStrike follow Wednesday.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise opened Tuesday as the morning's most important data point: a blowout Q2 report sent the stock up as much as 38% after the close on Monday, confirming that the AI infrastructure wave has reached every tier of the server supply chain. Meanwhile, Nvidia's COMPUTEX keynote introduced a chip that could reshape the PC market and lifted ARM Holdings 18% in a single session. Palo Alto Networks reports after today's close — with options pricing nearly a 10% swing — and Broadcom plus CrowdStrike follow Wednesday. That's three high-stakes prints in roughly 60 hours.
HPE: 40% revenue growth, and the AI backlog nearly doubled
HPE's fiscal Q2 2026 results cleared every bar Wall Street had set. Revenue hit $10.678 billion, up 40% year-over-year, beating the $9.76 billion consensus.1 Non-GAAP EPS of $0.79 crushed the prior guidance range of $0.51–$0.55.
The segment breakdown was striking. Networking revenue grew 148% year-over-year to $2.7 billion; within that, data center networking was up 233%. Server revenue of $5.5 billion beat estimates of $4.66 billion by a wide margin. Both AI orders and the AI backlog nearly doubled compared to a year ago, according to management commentary.2
For Q3, HPE guided revenue of $11.5–$12.1 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $0.88–$0.93. Full-year revenue growth guidance was raised to 29–33%.1 The company also announced that new NVIDIA-powered server racks debuted at COMPUTEX have been adopted by the New York Stock Exchange for real-time AI workload processing.
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What this means for the sector: HPE is the second major enterprise hardware vendor in a week — after Dell's 32.8% jump last week — to report results that dramatically exceeded estimates. The common thread is the same AI infrastructure capex cycle. Despite the after-hours surge, HPE still trades at roughly 18× forward earnings, a valuation some analysts will argue leaves room to run if the AI server backlog remains sticky.2
Nvidia's RTX Spark: the PC market just changed shape
Jensen Huang's COMPUTEX keynote on June 1 (May 31 evening PT) delivered a product that had been expected but whose scope surprised analysts: the RTX Spark Superchip.3
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The chip combines Nvidia's Blackwell GPU architecture (6,144 CUDA cores) with an ARM-based N1X CPU co-developed with MediaTek, built on TSMC's 3nm process, and supporting up to 128GB of unified memory. It is not a laptop co-processor. It replaces Intel and AMD as the primary processor in the Windows machines it powers.4
Launch OEM partners confirmed include Dell (XPS flagship), Microsoft Surface, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI — targeting fall 2026 availability at premium price points above $1,400. Nvidia has indicated more than 30 laptop models and 10 desktop models in the pipeline.
The market reaction on June 1 told its own story:
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| Stock | Move (June 1) | Catalyst |
|---|---|---|
| ARM Holdings (ARM) | +18%, to ~$416 | Every RTX Spark unit earns Arm royalties via the N1X instruction set |
| Dell Technologies (DELL) | +8% | Confirmed launch OEM partner; follows prior Q1 beat |
| Microsoft (MSFT) | +2% | Co-developed N1X; Windows on Arm gets its strongest silicon partner yet |
| HP Inc. (HPQ) | +8.3% | Also an OEM partner |
| Lenovo (LNVGY) | +8.5% | OEM partner |
| Intel (INTC) | -3.65% | RTX Spark competes directly with x86 CPU revenue |
| AMD | -1.24% | Secondary exposure to the same threat |
ARM's single-session jump is worth noting on its own: the stock entered June 1 already up 223% year-to-date. An 18% move on royalty news that won't materially hit revenue until Q4 calendar 2026 says something about how much premium the market is willing to pay for Arm's AI-era positioning.5 Bernstein has forecast Arm profits growing 5× by 2030. The stock trades at roughly 382× trailing P/E, well above even a bullish discounted cash flow fair-value estimate — a tension that won't resolve until RTX Spark units start shipping.
Tonight: Palo Alto Networks Q3 earnings — 10% swing priced in
PANW reports fiscal Q3 2026 after the close today. The Street consensus sits at $0.43 EPS on revenue of approximately $2.94 billion (implied +28–29% year-over-year), per guidance the company issued earlier.6
Several factors make this a higher-stakes read than the flat EPS estimate suggests:
- PANW's last four quarters include a 38.78% beat in January 2026, followed by a 16% miss in July 2025 — so the range of outcomes is genuinely wide.
- The options market is pricing an expected move of ~10% on the June 5 expiry, well above the historical average Day+1 move of 4.64%.
- The stock trades at $300.48, a 58% premium to its 200-day moving average of $190. A miss or soft guidance could send it back toward the 20-day MA at $234.
- Investors will focus on platformization metrics: are large enterprises actually consolidating onto PANW's integrated stack, or is deal friction slowing the rollout? The Q2 FY2026 EPS beat of 38.78% was impressive, but it followed a miss — meaning execution consistency is still a question mark.
Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, noted that PANW, like Broadcom, "broke out" ahead of its report and will need both a beat and a guidance raise to avoid a pullback. He cited the $410–$415 area as a viable buy zone if shares slide on Broadcom — a parallel he believes applies to PANW as well.7
Analyst moves: Zscaler downgraded after 32% post-earnings collapse
In cybersecurity, the contrast to PANW's strength is sharp. Zscaler (ZS) dropped 32% following its fiscal Q3 2026 results, which showed revenue of $850.5 million (+25% YoY) and adjusted EPS of $1.08 — both above estimates — but the damage came from guidance.8 The company projected fiscal 2027 ARR growth of only 16–17%, well below the 25% revenue growth it had just reported. It also revised free cash flow margin guidance to 22.8–23.3%, down from 26.5–27%, as capital expenditure rose.
Evercore analyst Peter Levine subsequently downgraded ZS from outperform to in-line.9 JPMorgan Chase issued a revised price target of $205.10 Zscaler now trades below its 2023 levels with a P/S ratio under 7, lower than both CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. The divergence within cybersecurity — PANW at 58% above its 200-day MA while ZS is at multi-year lows — reflects how sharply platform consolidation winners and losers are separating.
What to watch
| Event | Date | Key numbers |
|---|---|---|
| Palo Alto Networks (PANW) Q3 FY2026 | Tonight, June 2 after close | Consensus: $0.43 EPS, ~$2.94B revenue; options imply ~10% swing |
| Broadcom (AVGO) Q2 FY2026 | Wednesday, June 3 after close | Street expects ~$22B revenue, ~$10.7B in AI revenue; stock up 89% in 12 months |
| CrowdStrike (CRWD) Q1 FY2027 | Wednesday, June 3 after close | Consensus: $1.36B revenue, ~$1.07 EPS; Moody's recently upgraded the company |
| May Jobs Report | Friday, June 6 | First major labor market read under new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh |
| RTX Spark device availability | Fall 2026 | 30+ laptop models, 10+ desktops; watch Dell XPS and Microsoft Surface |
| Arm Q1 FY2027 results | TBD | Management guided $1.26B ± $50M revenue; RTX Spark royalty ramp begins this quarter |
Goldman Sachs refreshed its conviction buy list on June 1, adding Tyson Foods ($81 price target, +33% upside), Block ($95, +25%), TPG ($61, +43%), and Casella Waste Systems ($120, +46%).11 None are tech names, which is itself a signal: the bank's differentiated conviction for June sits outside the AI rally rather than piling further into it.
References
- 1HPE Q2 2026 earnings results
tradingkey.com
- 2Stock Market Today, June 1: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Jumps
finance.yahoo.com
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- 6
- 7
- 8Zscaler Q3 2026 earnings
cnbc.com
- 9Wall Street Just Cut This Tech Stock's Rating
finance.yahoo.com
- 10Zscaler new price target at JPMorgan
marketbeat.com
- 11
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