Buffett Brain · Research note
Score updated 29 Oct 2026 · analysis from 2 Jun 2026
DELL· Technology
Dell Technologies
Dell is a fine box-shipping machine priced like a software star, trading at 32.5 times earnings on a 19 percent gross margin.
Buffett fit
Partial fit
Owner
32
Durability
48
Management
100
Price
14
Score updated 29 Oct 2026 · analysis from 2 Jun 2026
Buffett's checklist
Each number against Buffett's bar, and where it ranks among Technology stocks in our database.
How much profit the business makes on each dollar invested in it. Higher is better.
What is left of each sale after the cost of making the product. A high number often means pricing power.
The cash the business earns for its owners, compared with the price of the whole company.
How fast sales grew each year over the last five years.
How many years of today's profit you pay for at today's price. Lower means cheaper.
How much the company owes compared with what it owns outright. Lower is safer.
The four pillars
How the business measures up on each of Buffett's four tests.
If I owned all of Dell at this price, I would be handing over 420.91 dollars for about 13 dollars of annual earnings, an earnings yield near 3.1 percent.
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Durability here is only middling, and the numbers say so. A 19 percent and 8 percent leave little cushion when a price war breaks out, and earnings have already shown they can fall by more than half in a bad stretch, an epsMaxDecline of negative 54 percent.
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This is the bright spot. Returns on capital of 18.5 percent this year and 17.2 percent over five years are genuinely good for hardware, and runs at 1.44 times reported net income, so the earnings are real cash, not accounting.
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There is no at 420.91 dollars. An owner-earnings yield of 3.0 percent and a of 32.5 are what you pay for a wide- , not for a thin-margin box maker, and the EV to of 36 only underlines the stretch.
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For and against
The strongest points on each side, with the numbers behind them.
In its favor
6- 1Returns on invested capital of 18.5 percent this year and 17.2 percent over five years are strong for a hardware business.
- 2 is 1.44 times net income, meaning the reported profit converts into real cash rather than accruals.
- 3Management shrinks the share count by 3.4 percent a year, steadily increasing each owner's slice.
- 4Earnings have grown 5.3 percent a year, outpacing the 2.9 percent revenue growth through operating and .
Concerns
7- 1Valuation is the central problem: a of 32.5 and an EV to of 36 price a thin-margin assembler like a software franchise, leaving an owner-earnings yield of just 3.0 percent.
- 2 is only 19 percent and just 8 percent, leaving almost no cushion against a price war.
- 3Earnings have fallen more than half in a single bad stretch, an epsMaxDecline of negative 54 percent, so profits are far from steady.
- 4The score of 32 says scale is the only real edge, and weak means competitors set the terms.
Price history
$476+743.7%· 5-year return
Weekly closing prices. Touch or hover the line for a date.
The business
How the business works
Dell sells servers, storage, and personal computers, a high-volume hardware business where it keeps only about 19 percent of every sales dollar as gross profit and roughly 8 percent as operating profit. It makes its money on scale and turns, not on fat margins, so revenue growth of just under 3 percent a year has to be squeezed hard to produce the 5.3 percent earnings growth shareholders have seen. The AI server wave is lifting the top line, but it is the kind of demand that arrives on thin margins and demanding customers.
How this analysis has moved
The call has held across 6 reviews.
Sep 27, 2026 → Oct 29, 2026
What other investors would say
The same company, judged by three other documented playbooks.
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