Investing.com -- Super Micro delivered Tuesday upbeat revenue guidance for the current quarter while Q4 earnings missed estimates and the data center company announced a stock split as it looks to capitalize on growing demand for artificial intelligence hardware used to power AI applications.
SMCI also reported worse-than-expected gross margins for the fourth quarter, sending its shares tumbling around 12% in premarket trading Wednesday.
The company announced a 10-for-1 forward split of its common stock, expected to start trading on Oct. 1.
For fiscal Q1, non-GAAP net income per diluted share was estimated in a range of $6.69 to $8.27 on sales of $6.0 billion to $7.0 billion, compared with Wall Street estimates for $7.58 on revenue of $5.45B, respectively.
The better-than-expected guidance follows earnings that fell short of analyst estimates in Q4.
For the quarter ended Jun. 30, the company, which counts Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) among its customers for servers, reported adjusted earnings of $6.25 share on sales of $5.31 billion Analysts polled by Investing.com had expected earnings of $8.1 a share on sales of $5.31 billion.
SMCI's gross margin (GM) for the quarter stood at 11.3%, marking a multi-year low, and was notably below the analyst estimates of 14.7%. However, the company reiterated its long-term gross margin goal of 14-17%, implying a strong ramp in the second half of the year.
Looking ahead to fiscal year 2025, the company guided net sales between $26.0B and $30.0B, compared with estimates for $33.54B.
"Supermicro continues to experience record demand of new AI infrastructures," the company said.
Following the report, KeyBanc Capital Markets analysts reiterated a Sector Weight rating on the stock "with shares trading in the after hours at ~20x our increased CY24 EPS, which is a premium to the low double-digit GM% cohort of mid-teens."
"We feel this premium encompasses the Company’s dynamic growth and dominant industry position in building out AI infrastructure," they added.
Separately, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) downgraded the stock from Buy to Neutral citing anticipated margin pressures.
"While the l-t benefit from AI remains intact, we move to a Neutral rating, from Buy, as we see the next several quarters remaining margin challenged as SMCI navigates a competitive pricing environment, delayed shipment of Blackwell GPU systems that require liquid cooled racks (higher margin), and on-going issues with component availability," they said.
The Bank also cut its price target on SMCI shares to $700 from $1,090
Yasin Ebrahim contributed to this report.