Dell has reported a 9% increase in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2020 to $26.1bn, driven mainly by the strong growth in its Client Solutions Group (CSG) and VMware businesses.
CSG delivered record revenue for the fourth quarter of $13.8bn, up 17% year over year. This was driven by $9.9bn in commercial revenue, representing a 16% increase, and $3.8bn in consumer revenue, a 19% increase.
VMware’s subscription as a service reported revenue growth of 27% and revenue for the fourth quarter of $3.3bn.
“In the past year, our team rallied to support our customers and partners worldwide as technology played a central role in keeping our society, economy, and lives moving forward,” said Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer at Dell Technologies.
“We generated record revenue of $94.2bn this year by helping customers adapt to new work-and-learn-from-anywhere realities. We are advantaged to capitalize on the projected mid-single digits growth in IT spending in 2021.”
The company said it had experienced strong demand for commercial PCs, which posted a unit growth of 11%. Commercial revenue was up 3% to $35.4bn, according to a transcript of the earnings call posted on the Seeking Alpha financial blogging site.
“Orders for our commercial notebooks were up 46% on a unit basis and 28% on an orders revenue basis, while orders revenue for commercial Chromebooks was up triple digits,” said Clarke.
Dell stated that servers and networking revenue for the year were $16.5bn, down 4%, but Clarke said that server demand improved in the fourth quarter, with PowerEdge orders up “mid-single digits”.
Similarly, Dell reported a decline in storage. “Our storage revenue was $16.1bn, down 4%, but we saw demand growth in key areas. PowerMax, hyper-converged infrastructure, and PowerProtect Data Domain all saw solid growth during the year based on the order. Our midrange storage business returned to growth in the fourth quarter, driven by accelerated adoption of PowerStore,” said Clarke.
Dell is betting on people continuing to buy PCs for homeschooling and remote work from home. Clarke said he did not believe the trend would slow down post-pandemic or as people return to the office.
“We will continue to see an environment where people will do more work and more of their activities away from the office, driving demand for PCs, which have become essential in this work and consumer environment. The PC has become one of – if not the most – virtual device in this work-from-anywhere, do-from-anywhere environment that we’re in today,” he added.
Regarding VMware, Dell said it had seen strong growth in 5G networking. “We are on the cusp of widespread 5G connectivity driving real-time, automated, and intelligent outcomes at the edge. This will drive an estimated $700bn in cumulative spend on edge IT infrastructure and data centers within the decade,” Clarke said.
