The stock Trump said to buy no matter what... Why did it surge 39% overnight?

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[Financial News] Dell Technologies delivered a record-breaking earnings surprise, powered by the boom in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure investment. The stock jumped nearly 40% in after-hours trading and hit a new all-time high, helped by the fact that President Donald Trump has been aggressively urging investors to buy Dell shares since the beginning of this year.
According to foreign media including CNBC on the 28th local time, Dell said in its after-market earnings release that revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 (February to April) rose about 88% from a year earlier to $43.84 billion. That far exceeded Wall Street’s estimate of $35.43 billion compiled by LSEG and marked the company’s strongest revenue growth since its 2018 relisting. Adjusted earnings per share also came in at $4.86, well above the market forecast of $2.94.
The main driver behind the stronger results was the AI server segment. Revenue from AI servers equipped with NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) surged 757% year over year to $16.1 billion. Dell’s AI server backlog now stands at $51.3 billion, and the company sharply raised its full-year AI server revenue outlook to $60 billion from $50 billion.
Revenue from traditional CPU-based servers, at $8.5 billion, and the PC division, at $14.6 billion, also rose on strong corporate demand. After the earnings announcement, Dell shares briefly soared as much as 39.09% to $441.00 in after-hours trading on the NYSE.
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As Dell’s stock price surged, attention in the market has turned to President Trump. According to public financial disclosure records for U.S. government officials, Trump bought between at least $1.03 million and as much as $5.11 million worth of Dell stock in four separate transactions from February through March this year.
His actions became even more explicit after the purchases. At a rally in Georgia in February and again at a White House Mother’s Day event on the 8th of this month, he publicly urged people to buy Dell computers, saying, "Go out and buy a Dell computer. They are really great."
The problem is that large contracts between Dell and the U.S. government keep piling up. Recently, the U.S. Department of Defense signed a $9.7 billion procurement contract with Dell for Microsoft 365 productivity services.
Adding to the controversy, ethics watchdog groups in the U.S. have raised strong concerns that the president’s stock investments and acceptance of donations could create a conflict of interest with government procurement contracts, after it emerged that Michael Dell and his wife donated $625 million to the Trump account about five months ago in support of children in the U.S.
Despite the dazzling results, rising component prices and supply chain shortages are seen as hurdles the company must still overcome.
Jeff Clarke, Dell’s chief operating officer, said on a conference call, "Inflationary pressure is so intense that it feels like we are repricing almost every day." He added, "From fuel and raw materials to DRAM, NAND and CPUs, unfortunately these supply constraints and inflationary conditions are likely to continue in the second half as well."
moon@fnnews.com Moon Young-jin Reporter