NetApp share up primarily on EPS beatNetApp reported its Q2'26 yesterday evening overall better-than-expected with sales up 3% y-o-y and +1% vs cons, EPS +9% vs cons, and product sales primarily behind the beat. New billings were up 4% y-o-y in the quarter. US public sector is expected to remain somewhat slow for another 6 months due to the governmental shutdown, which doesn’t affect Proact as a European partner. NetApp left its FY revenue guidance unchanged but raised EPS by 2%. In terms of commentary, it highlighted strong demand for AI solutions, first-party and marketplace cloud storage services, and all-flash offerings. NetApp also highlighted near-term headwinds from USPS revenues, which should indicate a somewhat better momentum outside of Americas, which is what matters for Praoct. Share +5% in after-market. Dell storage revenues remain at no-growth modeDell also reported yesterday evening, its Q3'26 report, with overall slightly better-than-expected numbers and guidance and the share was up +3% in the after-market. Dell as a group is gaining most from an accelerated AI momentum for servers and networking revenues (up 37% y-o-y), and guides to ship AI servers for USD 9.4bn in Q4, making FY'26 to USD 25bn, up 150% y-o-y. Looking at the relevant segment for Proact, storage revenues were down -1% y-o-y and +2% vs consensus. Dell commented that it expects more data generated over the next 3 years than all preceding history, and that ~80% will be unstructured. This drives the need of increased storage capabilities ahead. Current slow-growth environment expected to improveProact is a value-added partner to both NetApp and Dell, and the correlation between Proact's system sales and the respective partner's growth rates are relatively good over time. The current growth rate is somewhat slow for all players, ranging from -5% to +3% in Q3, with expectations to improve to +3-6% in the coming quarters. The share currently trades at 8.5x NTM EV/EBITA, which is below the average of European IT re-seller peers. |
