What Sent Dell Stock Lower?
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Dell Technologies (DELL) shares dropped 14.9% on Thursday, November 5, 2026, during a session where the S&P 500 lost 4.4%. The move occurred on the second straight day of a post-midterms sell-off in AI hardware stocks, and the company released no announcement, earnings report or filing around the move. The Motley Fool reported that investors feared a Democratic Congress and new state leaders could slow data-center construction. So how much of Dell’s business is tied to AI hardware?

How Much Of Dell’s Revenue Comes From AI Servers?
AI servers accounted for more than a third of the company’s business in fiscal Q2 2027, bringing in $16.4 billion of Dell’s $47.0 billion revenue for the quarter that ended July 31, 2026. Management said on the September 1, 2026 call that Dell also ended that quarter with a record $95 billion AI backlog.
Management expects that business to keep growing. The company guided to $74 billion in AI server revenue for fiscal 2027 as a whole, a figure three times the year before. Dell is one of the biggest server makers, a group hit hardest by the November 5 sell-off.
Did Dell Fall More Than Other Tech Stocks?
Technology stocks declined broadly during that session, but Dell experienced a steeper drop. The XLK technology sector fund lost 8.0%, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 5.5%. Every company on Dell’s Trefis peer list also fell, ranging from 1.5% for Apple to 11.8% for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Dell’s drop was larger than its sector fund’s and larger than any of those peers’.
The week after a day like this is a coin flip. The year after is another story: see the last 21 times.
Dell’s Largest One-Day Fall In A Year
Dell has not recorded a one-day decline this large in the prior 365 days. The stock had four moves of at least this magnitude over that span, but all were gains, concluding with a 15.8% rise on September 2, 2026.
The fall deepened a steep slide. Dell closed the session at $316.91, against its highest close of the past year of $588.40 on September 17, 2026. The shares lost 45.2% over the past month, while the S&P 500 fell 5.7%. Over twelve months they are still up 107.1%, against 9.9% for the index, and the lowest close of those twelve months was $111.07 on January 20, 2026.
At the November 5 close, Dell’s market value stood at 1.4 times its revenue over the past four quarters, against 3.2 times for the S&P 500.
Dell is expected to report its fiscal Q3 2027 results later in November 2026. In that report, the figure to watch will be AI orders, which reached a record $60.9 billion in fiscal Q2 2027.
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