super microcomputer Shares rose 18% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the server maker issued strong guidance, but fiscal third-quarter revenue fell short of expectations.
Here’s how the company performed compared to the LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 84 cents adjusted, 62 cents expected; Revenue: $10.24 billion, $12.33 billion expected.
Sales for the quarter ended March 31 increased 123% compared to the same period last year, the company said in a statement.
CEO Charles Liang told analysts on a conference call that customer preparations delayed revenue recognition in the quarter.
“While some customers did not yet have the power and network required for cloud deployment, we expect to capture this revenue in the coming quarters,” he said.
Supermicro’s head of finance, David Weigand, said industry-wide supply constraints were also hurting results.
Liang said memory prices are rising, while graphics processing units and Intel processors are in short supply.
For the fiscal fourth quarter, management called for adjusted earnings of 65 cents to 79 cents a share on sales of $11 billion to $12.5 billion. LSEG’s consensus was for earnings of 55 cents per share and revenue of $11.07 billion.
Super Micro sold servers powered by Nvidia’s graphics processing units and established itself in the artificial intelligence boom. But the company is plagued by other challenges.
During the quarter, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York indicted officials at an unidentified U.S. server maker for illegally diverting billions of dollars of NVIDIA-powered servers to China. Although Supermicro is not named in the indictment, the company said one of the defendants is a co-founder and executive, another is a manager and the third is a contractor.
“Supermicro appears to have been the victim of an elaborate scheme orchestrated by these individuals that deceived both federal authorities and internal compliance teams,” Liang told investors in March. Liang wrote that co-founder and executive Wally Liau, named in the indictment, no longer has any ties to the company and has resigned from its board of directors.
Weigand said executives do not believe it is necessary to announce the results again after the charges are filed.
Rather than being upset by the episode, most customers seem firmly committed to and growing their business with Super Micro, Liang said.
“Personally, I don’t feel any negative emotions at this point,” he said. relationship with broadcomNvidia and other partners remain healthy, he said.
As of Tuesday’s close, Supermicro stocks were down about 5% since the beginning of the year, while the S&P 500 had risen 6% in the same period.
Liang said in Tuesday’s earnings call that Supermicro has added a new manufacturing facility in Silicon Valley, and the company is “extremely well-positioned to meet the huge demand for various AI and enterprise applications.”
Supermicro announced in April that its fourth Bay Area location will be more than 714,000 square feet with space for manufacturing, design, testing and service.
Attention: Prosecutors indict Super Micro executive on charges of chip smuggling to China
