Flex enters S&P 500 after AI-driven rally, analysts split on valuation ahead of earnings

Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, reported a 47% year-on-year surge in third-quarter revenue, beating estimates on strong AI demand. Revenue for the July-September quarter was T$3.03T, or $95.4B, well above an LSEG SmartEstimate of T$2.83 trillion. The Apple and Nvidia supplier, formally known as Hon Hai Precision, reported September revenue of $1.16T, up 38.42% year-on-year. The company said AI-related operations are expected to continue growing in the fourth quarter, and together with the traditional peak season for electronics products in the second half, this should support overall performance in line with current market expectations. Foxconn will report full third-quarter earnings on November 12.

Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or CCET, has announced a five-year business strategy, building on its EMS business toward higher-value technology products. Managing Director Khongsin Chokvicharoen said the company will expand into new businesses in AI servers, CSP, LVDC and HVDC, alongside developing automation and AI to elevate itself into a smart factory. This year the company is accelerating the setup of an AI server production line, which is expected to begin operations before the end of the third quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, CSP-related products are in the process of setting up production lines and are preparing to start manufacturing in Thailand within the second half of 2026. On the high-end power supply side, the company has already begun producing electric vehicle chargers, while CRPS and LVDC products are in trial production and are expected to begin commercial production in the second half of this year. HVDC, developed jointly with affiliated companies, is targeted to start production within 2027. For its long-term plans, the company has a quantum computing project, having already developed and produced a working prototype, and is conducting joint research with ITRI in Taiwan as well as leading universities in Taiwan. It also has an LEO satellite project through a long-term partnership with a leading satellite service provider from Taiwan, which is currently in the development and business model study stage.

Dell Technologies has joined a planned $15 billion AI data center initiative in Japan aimed at supporting large-scale AI workloads by pairing new data facilities with dedicated power supply capacity. The company also introduced rugged laptops with on-device AI features and added security aimed at field and mission-critical use cases. Dell's participation plugs directly into its existing hardware, software and support services business, tying its gear more tightly to power-hungry enterprise workloads and edge environments. The move fits a narrative centered on converting a US$95b AI backlog and a large pipeline into deployed systems, while the rugged laptops push AI closer to field workers in sectors such as public safety and energy. Dell still relies heavily on hardware in segments where HP and Lenovo also compete on price and features.

Dell Technologies has booked more than $130 billion of AI server orders over the past year and ended its latest quarter with a $95 billion AI backlog, with its AI customer base expanding to more than 6,500 customers. The company says some AI engagements require more than 50 unique designs as customers optimize systems around workload performance, power, cooling and data-center constraints. Dell's stock has risen more than fourfold since the end of February and trades at just 21.3 times forward earnings, with revenue expected to surge 69% this year before growing another 20% next year. Hedge fund sentiment strengthened in the second quarter, as the number of funds in Insider Monkey's database holding the stock rose from 72 to 77 and the value of those positions more than doubled from about $1.7 billion to $3.6 billion. Dell acknowledges component costs are rising, particularly for memory and storage, and that supply remains constrained across much of the AI infrastructure chain.

Super Micro has started shipping server racks built for NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin AI architecture, sending its shares up 4.3% in the afternoon session. The start of shipments reinforces the server solutions provider's role in the AI infrastructure supply chain, as Vera Rubin-ready racks house and interconnect the high-density systems data centers need for advanced AI workloads. The stock was trading at $43.69, up 4.4% from the previous close. Super Micro is up 41.1% since the beginning of the year, but at $43.69 per share it remains 25.6% below its 52-week high of $58.68 from October 2025. The company's shares are extremely volatile, having logged 69 moves greater than 5% over the last year.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise received a US$1.2 billion order from Vultr for its new AMD Helios AI servers, marking the first commercial deployment of the Helios racks that combine AMD chips with HPE Networking hardware. The deal is an early revenue milestone for HPE's integrated AI data center platform as Helios moves from launch to customer rollout, and it gives the company a concrete reference customer for model training and inferencing workloads. The US$1.2 billion Vultr order is only one piece of the broader Hewlett Packard Enterprise story, and the company's Helios rollout plugs into its wider role supplying infrastructure for AI workloads at cloud providers and enterprises worldwide. The contract lines up with HPE's existing narrative, which leans on AI infrastructure, Juniper networking and higher margin recurring services as key catalysts. Investors will watch whether HPE converts this first Helios deployment into a visible pipeline of similar rack scale AI deals and repeat orders from Vultr, along with disclosed Helios contract wins and networking order intake linked to AI racks.