Barclays Downgrades Dell, HPE and NetApp to Equal Weight, Sees No AI Inflection Yet; Dell Falls 11%

Barclays downgraded three enterprise hardware names in a single note on Wednesday, Oct. 14: DELL, HPE and NTAP all moved to Equal Weight from Overweight. Analyst Tim Long cut his Dell price target to $574 from $603 and his HPE target to $77 from $83, while keeping NetApp's target at $219, according to StockTwits coverage on Yahoo Finance.

Long's case is about valuation rather than a collapse in demand. He wrote that valuations across corporate-focused hardware names have run too far, and that enterprise AI spending has yet to show a broad acceleration; "we don't see a meaningful AI inflection yet," the note said, as quoted in the Yahoo Finance coverage. The gains he is weighing are large: Dell shares have climbed more than 300% this year, HPE about 186% and NetApp about 123%. He still expects Dell and HPE to top earnings estimates.

The selling built through the session. Dell was down 8% at $526.86 and HPE down 5% at $65.45 in morning trading; our delayed snapshot after the close showed Dell at $507.93, down 11.3%, HPE at $63.11, down 8.3%, and NetApp at $222.20, down 7.0%. On HPE, Barclays trimmed the multiple it applies to fiscal 2028 EPS of $5.92 to 13 times from 14 times. On NetApp, it pointed to the stock's 123% year-to-date gain and said it expects the storage industry to normalize next year.

Because this is a valuation call rather than an earnings warning, the next test is whether Dell and HPE keep beating estimates, as Long himself expects, and whether enterprise customers start to show the broad AI spending acceleration he says is still missing. Even after Wednesday's drop, Dell closed about 13% below Barclays' new $574 target.