Barclays Downgrades HPE, Dell and NetApp Citing No Meaningful AI Inflection, Sending HPE Shares Down Nearly 5%

Barclays analyst Tim Long downgraded Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies and NetApp from Overweight to Equal Weight on October 14, citing valuation concerns and a lack of meaningful AI-driven growth in enterprise hardware. Long cut his price target on HPE to $77 from $83 and on Dell to $574 from $603, while maintaining his $219 target on NetApp. The bank argued that strong enterprise revenues have been driven more by elevated memory and commodity costs than by a genuine shift toward enterprise AI adoption.

HPE shares fell between 3.65% and 4.80% in pre-market and midday trading, touching around $66.30, making it one of the leading enterprise technology decliners on the day. Dell suffered more sharply, dropping roughly 11% and leading a broader data center sell-off that also pulled down shares of Oracle and Super Micro. NetApp fell nearly 3% to 4.2% on the session.

Separately, a Seeking Alpha analysis published the same morning highlighted what it described as mounting fear among HPE bears, pointing to signs of strength from the company's Juniper Networks acquisition. That positive read on HPE's networking integration stood in contrast to the market reaction triggered by the Barclays downgrade, underscoring divided sentiment around the stock.