Dell Technologies Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the fiscal year 2020 third quarter financial results conference call for Dell Technologies Inc. I'd like to inform all participants this call is being recorded at the request of Dell Technologies. This broadcast is the copyrighted property of Dell Technologies Inc. Any rebroadcast of this information in whole or part without the prior written permission of Dell Technologies is prohibited. Following prepared remarks we will conduct a question and answer session. If you have a question simply press star then 1 on your telephone keypad at any time during the presentation. I'd like to turn the call over to Rob Williams, head of investor relations. Mr. Williams, you may begin.

Thanks Erica and thanks everyone for joining us. With me today are our Vice Chairman Jeff Clark, our CFO Tom Sweet and our Treasurer Tyler Johnson. During this call unless we indicate otherwise all references to financial measures refer to non-GAAP financial measures including non-GAAP revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, operating income, net income, EPS, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow. A reconciliation of these measures to our most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in our web deck and press release. Please also note that all growth percentages refer to year over year change unless otherwise specified. Finally, I'd like to remind you that all statements made during this call that relate to future results and events are forward looking based on current expectation. Actual results and events could differ materially from those projected due to a number of risks and uncertainties which are discussed in our web deck and SEC reports. We assume no obligation to update our forward looking statements. Now I'll turn it over to Jeff.

Thanks Rob. At our September business update with investors I talked about our two focus areas. First, innovating and integrating across Dell Technologies to create the technology infrastructure of the future. And second, innovating to win in the industry consolidation. We're making solid progress on both which is what I will update you on today plus I'll give you my take on the demand environment. Customers are looking to Dell Technologies to help them reinvent and automate all parts of their business. Essentially help them build the infrastructure of the future so they can quickly respond to market trends, customer needs and drive business outcomes. This drives long term value for our customers and for us. It also drives us to innovate and invest in new technologies that are simpler, faster and more capable even autonomous. All designed to be consumed the way customers want based on their business needs. We continue to invest in our power portfolio across ISG which represents our best innovation and capabilities for the data era. We ship PowerMax with storage class memory and industry first to market and it's now 50% faster. In September we announced the PowerProtect DD series that now features a modern software stack with 38% faster backups and 36% faster restores. Most recently at our Dell Technologies Summit earlier this month we introduced our all in one autonomous infrastructure PowerOne. Part of the Dell Technologies cloud portfolio PowerOne helps customers simplify their path to hybrid cloud combining PowerEdge compute, PowerMax storage, PowerSwitch networking, PowerProtect data protection and VMware virtualization all in a single system with intelligence built in to automate thousands of manual steps during its life cycle. Further we made the industry's broadest infrastructure portfolio simpler to consume with Dell Technologies on demand. Letting customers pay for infrastructure as they use it, freeing up resources, money, time and people to focus on transforming their business in today's on demand economy. This gives customers the ability to plan and predict around peak data consumption and IT spin cycles. We are excited about what these new innovations make possible for our customers and what they represent in terms of how we've readied ISG of the future over the, or how we've readied ISG for the future over the past two years. We've stabilized the business, reclaimed share, simplified and powered up the portfolio and added sales resources to fuel growth. At the Dell Technologies Summit Michael unveiled our ambitious new goals for 2030 focusing on inclusion, sustainability, transforming lives through technology and data privacy. For example, by 2030 our goal is that 100% of our packaging will be made from recycled or renewable material and more than half of product content will be made from recycled and renewable material. And for every product a customer buys we will reuse or recycle an equivalent product. These initiatives follow what we've achieved over the past 10 years, like recovering more than 2 billion pounds of used electronics via responsible recycling and reusing 100 million pounds of recycled content and other sustainable materials in our new products. We have a strong track record here to build on which helps us win in the marketplace. We've made several important social impact commitments that are increasingly important to our customers, team members and investors. I encourage you to learn more on our website and through the replay of the summit event. Before I get to the demand environment I want to remind you of our operating framework that remains unchanged. We expect to outperform the market and take profitable share. We have gained 375 basis points of storage share over the last two years, 580 basis points of mainstream server revenue share over the last three years and approximately 600 basis points of PC share over the last six years, now shifting to demand. From a customer set and geographic perspective we see solid demand in small, medium and commercial accounts with weakness in China and some softening in the large enterprise space. From a business unit perspective we see softness in infrastructure solutions demand driven by servers while client solutions in VMware are solid. Let me share a few examples. Our storage business grew 7%. We saw strong Q3 demand in data protection and hyperconverge with VxRail orders up 82%. We expect to gain storage share in North America and calendar Q3. More importantly our customers and sales teams are optimistic about our portfolio and positioning. The server demand environment remains challenged as many customers continue to digest last year's unprecedented growth. Excluding greater China our Q3 server order revenue was down mid to high single digits. While the server market remains soft we continue to focus on growing our server buyer base which was up 5% growing year over year for the fifth consecutive quarter. In addition our server business benefited from increasing mix of high value workload platforms, increased memory and storage content and component cost decreases. We expect to gain share in North America and EMEA and retain our number one share positions in x86 mainstream server revenue and units. Client solutions demand remains healthy with tailwinds from the Windows 10 refresh cycle expected to continue and then fade into the first half of next year. IDC is projecting a declining post Windows 10 which will be a headwind to CSG and fiscal 21 overall. In Q3 CSG delivered strong results across commercial. Going forward we remain focused on direct growth and optimizing our channel relationships. We have invested in our sales forces in both small and medium businesses and continue to accelerate growth there. In consumer we will focus on direct sales and high end premium PCs including XPS and gaming as well as increasing our attach of services, software and peripherals. We expect component cost to remain the same. We are now seeing inflation in SSDs with 20% inflation expected in Q4 and DRAM inflation beginning in Q2 of 2020 per industry and analyst estimates. We clearly have captured the operating benefits from the significant cost declines in fiscal 20 and it will be our job to mitigate these expected increases for our customers and for Dell and fiscal 21. And finally Intel CPU shortages have worsened quarter over quarter. The shortages are now impacting our commercial PC and premium consumer PC Q4 forecasted shipments. Now I will turn it over to Tom to take you through our financial results and guidance.

Thanks Jeff. We have executed relatively well this year and again in Q3 as we balanced revenue and profitability with more challenging market conditions. Revenue was $22.9 billion up 1%. FX remained a headwind this quarter impacting growth by approximately 110 basis points. Our deferred revenue balance increased to $25.9 billion up 17% driven by our service and software businesses adding revenue and cash flow stability. Gross margin was up 11% to $7.8 billion and was .9% of revenue up 300 basis points driven by lower component cost and pricing discipline. Operating expenses were $5.3 billion up 8% due in part to investments we have made in sales coverage to broaden solution sales capabilities and expand buyer base. Operating income was up 18% to $2.4 billion or .7% of revenue. Our consolidated net income was $1.4 billion up 21% primarily benefiting from strong operating profitability. Our EPS was $1.75 for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.9 billion or .5% of revenue and $11.6 billion on a trailing 12-month basis. We generated $1.6 billion of adjusted free cash flow in Q3 driven by strong profitability and working capital discipline. Our Q3 adjusted free cash flow includes the impact of an approximately $400 million payment for a tax settlement and our trailing 12-month adjusted free cash flow is now $7.7 billion. We repaid approximately $1.1 billion of gross debt in the quarter and $3.5 billion year to date and we are positioned to repay approximately $5 billion of gross debt in total in fiscal year 20. We have now paid down $18.1 billion of gross debt since the EMC merger. Shifting to our business unit results, infrastructure solutions group revenue was $8.4 billion down 6%. Storage revenue was $4.1 billion up 7% with strong growth in data protection and our industry leading HCI business given our strong velocity with our VxRail solutions. Servers and networking revenue was $4.2 billion down 16% due to a soft market particularly in China and in large enterprise customers in the US and Europe. As Jeff mentioned, ex-China server order revenue was down mid to high single digits. We continue to be selective on larger deals when we see very aggressive competitive pricing. We are also focused on enhancing our coverage models and building sustainable long-term customer relationships. ISG operating income was $1 billion or .9% of revenue. Operating income percentage was up 140 basis points largely due to our business and geography mix. Our VMware business unit had another good quarter with revenue of $2.5 billion up 11%. Operating income was $717 million or .9% of revenue. On a standalone basis, Q3 VMware growth in revenue plus the sequential change in deferred revenue was 18% or an increase of 12% excluding unearned revenue assumed from the acquisition of Carbon Black. NSX license bookings grew 50% while the Sand license bookings grew over 35%. VMware closed the Carbon Black acquisition in Q3 and expects to close the pivotal transaction before the end of Q4. Client Solutions Group delivered strong Q3 revenue growth and profitability. Revenue was $11.4 billion up 5%. Commercial revenue was $8.3 billion up 9% including double-digit growth in commercial desktops and workstation . Consumer revenue was down $3.1 billion and it was down 6% if we continue to prioritize our commercial business and are focused on more profitable higher-end consumer PCs. CSC operating income was $739 million or .5% of revenue. Profitability was driven by component cost declines, commercial consumer mix and pricing discipline. Expect us to continue to balance revenue and profitability against market dynamics. If we have previously discussed, we are seeing and do expect operating margins to turn back to more historical norms given the changing cost environment. Dell financial services originations were $2 billion up 27% with managed assets of $10.7 billion. We continue to see interest in our flexible consumption solutions including Dell Technologies on demand. Turning to our balance sheet and capital structure, we ended the quarter with $9.4 billion of cash and investments after a $1.1 billion in gross debt pay down and the approximately $400 million tax settlement payment. Our core debt balance ended the quarter at $35.9 billion, down almost $13 billion since the EMC acquisition. Net core debt ended Q3 at $29.6 billion. We remain focused on maximizing free cash flow and our capital allocation strategy is unchanged. Given our recent debt pay down and refinancing activity, we have only $2.3 billion of core debt due in the next 15 months. We will continue to look for additional opportunity to smooth our debt maturity profile and optimize our capital structure. We still expect to pay down at least $4 billion of gross debt next year and are committed to reducing leverage to achieve investment grade ratings. Moving to guidance, we continue to monitor the macroeconomic and IT spending environments as well as the ongoing trade discussions between the US and China. As Jeff mentioned earlier, we do see continued softness in large enterprise customers and in China. Based on Q3 results and the Intel CPU shortage Jeff mentioned, we now expect fiscal 20 gap revenue of $91.5 to $92.2 billion, operating income of $2.9 to $3.1 billion, and EPS of $5.83 to $5.98. We now expect our non-gap revenue range for the current fiscal year to be between $91.8 to $92.5 billion. The reduction of the range is principally due to the Intel supply dynamic. With our strong profitability year to date driven by favorable component cost and disciplined pricing, we are raising the low end of our non-gap operating income and EPS guidance ranges. Our non-gap operating income range is now $10 billion to $10.2 billion and our non-gap EPS guidance range is now $7.25 to $7.40. Our non-gap tax rate is expected to be 16% plus or minus 1%. We want to give you some insights into our preliminary thinking for fiscal 21. We continue to see macro headwinds in China and softening client solutions to them post the Win 10 refresh. That coupled with the Intel CPU supply constraints in the global macro environment leaves us slightly more cautious on fiscal 21 growth. We also expect the benefit of fiscal year 20 component cost deflation to wane as component costs are forecasted to be inflationary in fiscal 21. Accordingly, our preliminary view is that operating income margins may trend closer to fiscal 19 levels and we are balancing investments in the business and adjusting spending as appropriate. We will provide an updated view of fiscal year 21 expectations on our Q4 earnings call in February. In closing, you should expect us to maximize our equity value to all shareholders through the five distinct levers we talked about at our business update. Current operations, synergies, new opportunities, corporate structure and capital structure. Our model is focused on long-term profitable growth with the ability to adjust as needed based on market conditions. We are focused on growing faster than competitors in the industry, growing operating income and EPS faster than revenue over the long term and generating strong cash flow. You've seen that from us this year as we maximize cash flow and profit given the environment. You can expect us to adjust accordingly in fiscal 21. With that, I'll turn it back to Rob to begin Q&A. Thanks, Tom. Let's get to Q&A. We ask that each participant ask one question to allow us to get to as many of you as possible. Erika, can you please introduce the first participant?

We'll take our first question from Wong-Si Mohan with Bank of America.

Yes, thank you. I appreciate the early fiscal 21 thoughts. I was curious if you're anticipating any changes in the macro backdrop as you look at that. If I could, your storage growth of 7% was very solid compared to a lot of peers. Can you talk about particular areas of strength in the quarter and how much do you think was part of the bundled go-to market in the LAS? Thank you.

Hey, Wong-Si. It's Tom. Let me start and then maybe Jeff can jump in here as well, particularly on the storage and his view of the macro. As we think about fiscal 21, I just wanted to give you some, or we wanted to give you some preliminary thinking as we see some of the current macro dynamics, principally some of the caution in the environment given the US-China trade dynamics, the softness we've seen in large enterprise, consumption, particularly in servers, and the Intel CPU shortage is causing some dynamics that are causing us to be a little bit more cautious than perhaps we would have been, say, three to four months ago. We're going to work our way through that. We'll update you as we get through the end of Q4 and give you our view on our Q4 earnings call. I thought it was appropriate that we give you some perspective as we think about next year. We're clearly still in the middle of the year. Jeff, maybe you could talk about storage and any other comments on the

- I'd be too. Wong-Si, when I look at storage and highlights and things that we certainly are pleased to see, one is we referenced it in our opening remarks, VxRail and its 82% orders growth. We continue to see VxRail combined with VMware Cloud Foundation helping customers build out private cloud in this hybrid world that we look in. That's certainly a highlight that we continue to see. The acceptance of our new data protection products has been quite good, the integrated products as well as the new data domain. Platforms are off to good early starts, which to me is continued reinforcement as we've modernized the portfolio and got it increasingly more competitive. We're seeing the market respond accordingly. Then the other areas I'd point to is just the continued progress of our PowerMax platform and the new Unity XT. Both of them are growing in the double digit zip code as we look at Q3 results. Very strong demand for our new products, which is encouraging. The continued build out of on-prem private cloud, VxRail plus VCF are clearly things that are highlights of our storage business and storage demand.

Hey, and Wamsi, it's Tom. One more comment I should have added. Clearly as we think about component cost dynamics, we've enjoyed extraordinary deflation this year. I think most of you know we've talked about it from time to time that our model works extraordinarily well in a deflationary cost environment where we pass some of that cost through in terms of pricing, but we hold some of that clearly is not the dynamic. I think part of what we wanted to do was make sure people are thinking through that component cost dynamic year to year as you set up for next year. Obviously it's early up. We'll continue to monitor the forecast and our thinking around that, but there are some dynamics working through on component cost as we think about next year.

We'll take our next question from Katie Hubbardy with Morgan Stanley.

Good afternoon. Why do you think you're seeing such a bifurcation between continued strong storage segment and accelerating declines in servers? In recent quarters, it seemed like the China server business was the explanation, but now it looks like the unit weakness in servers has expanded outside of China. I'm just curious what the dynamics are to create such different trends between those two segments and any comments around how the industry is flowing through component cost to pricing and if maybe that's a factor in the results. Thanks.

Sure, Katie. This is Jeff. A couple of comments and I know Tom will jump in with his thoughts as well. I think we've consistently identified large enterprise and large bids in China in our previous quarters this year as soft spots. Clearly we saw unprecedented growth in the industry last year. That growth is being digested by the largest companies in the world and we're seeing that primarily in that large enterprise in the United States and EMEA. China has been a headwind. We've called out I think consistently now for the last three quarters for sure and that continues to be a headwind in that marketplace. There are also signs that we're encouraged by as the progress that we've made in our North America commercial. Our SB and MB sales forces have seen double digit order growth in those areas in the server so we're encouraged and I mentioned the growing buyer base in our opening remarks too. I believe it was up five percent which marks the fifth consecutive quarter of buyer base growth. It is a competitive market out there in the large bids. It's an aggressive marketplace from a pricing point of view. We're competing but those bids are clearly competitive and probably the other thing that is important to note is they're taking longer to close. The caution that we're seeing with our large customers is certainly being seen in our ability to close transactions or how long it's taking to get the order closed would be another piece of color that I would add.

Katie, it's Tom. I would just sort of hint at it but we clearly see where component cost deflation is being used to price pretty aggressively right now and we see that trend generally in the large bids across the globe and in China. We've talked about in the past that we're going to compete where we need to compete and we clearly want to grow the customer base but we want those customer base to be long-term, the right type of customer force in terms of profitability cycle that makes sense over time. We are being selective and so that's just the dynamic that we're in right now. I would also add and jump hinted towards it that our transactional server business is holding up reasonably well so the weakness is principally in those two areas. I think when you get to storage it's a different type of buying situation where you're generally putting a solution out there that is less price sensitive in the sense of it's not tied to a commodity cost framework as much and it's more of an IP framework that you're selling in terms of capabilities and feature functionality of the storage solution and it's a different type of it's a value selling process versus at times one might be a more procurement oriented

process. We probably have the dichotomy of what's happening in the industry. We're in this data era. The amount of data created is not slowing. It's got to be stored which is probably why we're seeing a slightly different trend from the compute side to the storage side but I would point to VxRail which is hyperconverged where we bring computing storage together in a modern two-tier architecture helping customers drive out their modern infrastructure build on-prem private clouds as a point of it's certainly that we're excited about given our position there and the opportunity that presents itself going forward.

Thank you that's helpful.

We'll take our next question from Tony Sakenegi with Bernstein.

Yes thank you. I just wanted to understand this notion of incremental pricing pressure pricing being passed along to customers so perhaps you can help on the server side. What was unit versus ASP growth for server in the quarter and when you talk about operating margins you know I realize it's very preliminary in fiscal 21. Is what you're anticipating that the benefit of component pricing will be increasingly passed along or are you actually more worried about prices staying where they are but component prices going up to the detriment of the margins and perhaps in addressing that you can talk about both PCs and servers and where you think you are in terms of halfway three quarters of the way just starting in terms of prices being passed along component prices being passed along in the form of lower prices to consumers. Thank you.

That's a heck of a one question. Or parts that I got so if I look at the trend of revenue in your specific question Tony about revenue unit trends our revenue growth was greater or our revenue decline was greater than our unit decline which I know the obvious question is that's an ASP. Interesting thing we see is continued progress on high value workloads which is driving higher DRAM content, higher SSP content, both SSP and DRAM content was up double digits. We actually sold up the Intel CPU stack and servers at the same time but it did not none of those three were enough to offset a modest ASP decline. I think that answers the first two questions. Tom will jump in in a second on the long-term implications. What we're seeing in the marketplace again if you think of what we've done in the series of price moves we've taken over the first three quarters of this year we have the product line specifically servers in price position or quite comfortable with the price position. We're the high side of that but in our historical norms of price position in the marketplace and you see the businesses that are very subjected to street price respond well. That's the MBR North America commercial business which are good indicators for us. In the largest business as Tom and I just mentioned that's where the most aggressiveness is and where we see I guess the commodity deflation being passed on to customers.

Yeah and as you think through Tony for it's Tom for FY21 and look we're still looking at this but if you take what Jeff just said which is particularly for our PCs and servers that there are certain list price and street price frameworks that we want to run towards as component cost deflation stabilizes I'll say it that way or flattens out and then you start to get inflation you have this dynamic where you know you ultimately will make decisions about how do you price or how do you adjust pricing to adjust for those component cost input rises. If you decide to raise prices we've talked about this in the past in general you only get about 60 percent of the price increase in any given quarter so if you make a price increase in the quarter you don't automatically move to that new price so it takes time to digest price increases and you're going to balance that relative to competitive dynamics in terms of where are you from a list position in a street price position such that you stay competitive and so in a component deflation environment which is what we've been in this year we've been able to adjust street pricing or adjust pricing downward but the rate of deflation has been greater than that with such that it has allowed us to capture some of that deflation in the form of incremental dollars to the bottom as you move to an environment of inflation that opportunity is not there and then you're trying to balance pricing versus demand generation and ensuring that you stay in price position but yet protect the pnl as best you can and so look we've navigated through these cycles in the past you know the model we'll adjust the model appropriate but that's the dynamic we're working our way through we're thinking about as we think about next year right now this will get you know hopefully we'll continue to get more clarity on particularly potentially second half cost frameworks of second half fiscal year 21 as we go into fy21 but our view right now is that the cost environment becomes inflationary as you go through the year correct

and then your question specifically to pc's tony largely the commodity goodness in the first half of the year has already passed through in price we've kept that the product line in price position as well it's largely seen most of the cost goodness first half passed through i do think we have to work our way through the supply shortages and what ultimately the market pricing will be but there isn't a a bunch of costs being held back it is already pushed through in price

we have seen in areas where there are parking shortage that obviously the the pricing competitiveness or the pricing aggressiveness i should say um size to some extent because you're you have a fixed amount of supply that you need to you need to to allocate you know in an appropriate way so we'll just have to work our way through that as we go through the early parts of next year thank you all right erica let's go to the next question please

we'll take our next question from rod hall with goldman sachs

yeah hi thanks for the question i guess i wanted to start with by asking whether the trade situation has driven any kind of inventory increases i know it's probably dominated more by shortages of cpus but just wondering if you guys have seen any inventory changes particularly in the u.s. but maybe in other parts of the world as well as as potential tariffs approach and then i wanted to come back to this unit and pricing answer and just clarify whether that is inclusive of china i guess it is and i wonder jeff if you could maybe comment excluding china what happened to those prices and aup on servers thanks

the tariffs inventory real simple our inventory levels have not changed we continue to run this business on very low levels of inventory and to your point it's the shortages particularly there were specifically cpus that are really driving our position of materials across our global supply chain not tariffs whatsoever in terms of unit price we don't parse it out excluding china and i certainly won't do that today it's but it's the trend that i described we're seeing again those transactionally oriented businesses respond to the price position in the marketplace as i mentioned our units were down as well not as down as much as the revenue we did see increases in content of d ram and ssd as well as the cpu that i mentioned earlier and i think that bodes well longer term as we think about content we think about high value workloads are an ability to offset some of the change in the cost environment going forward if you recall the front end of this last server build up we had commodity increases across the board

and by the way that was a server comment that was yet yes right that wasn't a pc comment correct and i would i would add rod just on the we have seen some elasticity in server you know transaction and it's particularly in the small and medium business that's responded well to the the price price position the price moves that jeff and his team have done it's just been a we've had a i would say a pretty significant headwind on large enterprise bids and then you know particularly in the china business given some of the macro dynamics over there okay thank you

so we'll take our next question from aaron rakers with wells fargo

yeah thanks for taking the question and i do have a product question as well on the component side you you talked about with regard to the client pc business that ssd pricing would be up i think 20 percent sequentially in the calendar fourth quarter and at d ram pricing would start to trend higher into a two q of 2020 can you give us the same kind of framework or commentary of how you're seeing those trends specific to the server our enterprise ssd as well as the server d ram market you know how are you thinking about you know those dynamics as you kind of you know give the commentary with regard to fiscal 2021 and then any update on the mid-range next platform on the storage side when is that expected to start to ship and and impact the storage business thank you

sure aaron and real quickly the man trends and d ram trends that i mentioned were across all of our man purchases and d ram purchases so industry analysts and experts have projected the cost that i referenced earlier the 20 percent ssds now d ram i believe i said q2 of calendar 2020 that's across our broad purchase of both server components as well as pc components and in the mid-range we're still on track so the commitment i've made in the number of these calls that we will have the product completed by the end of the fiscal year and it will be released we're pretty excited about that particularly with momentum we've seen on unity xt which is the bridge from the old unity product a performance increase of significant performance increase that we launched over the summer that's take takes us to the new mid-range product out at the end of the fiscal year we like what we've done certainly we've talked a little bit about the feature set it's a modern stack containerized capability it's a modular design without getting into pre-disclosing what the exact product is we're excited about what it means we have the right bridge strategy and we'll be able to help our customers migrate from their current technology to our new mid-range storage product

thank you

of

course

we'll take our next question from simon leopold with raymond james

thank you for taking the question i wanted to see if we could double click on the dynamics of of what's happening in china specifically set some context for us how how much of the business comes from china and then in terms of what's going on there how much do you attribute to their weaker economy and how much do you attribute to let's call it a political aspect of maybe not buying from dell because you're a u.s company in which case one one is resolved by trade the other is dissolved by a resolved by a better economy thank you

hey simon it's tom let me um let me just give you some context here right so from a size perspective we've said this in the past that the china business unit is sort of high single digits in terms of as a percent of revenue of the total company so you can do sort of rough math on that you know as we think about the demand environment in china and i'm not going to parse it for you whether you know what we our belief is as we want as we look at the business is that there there's a couple of dynamics happening one there is an overall sort of macroeconomic softening that's happened in the country we've seen that in elements of the china business it's hard and i'm not under any ability to sort of say it's some of that because of some of the more political dynamics i can't really call that what we're trying to do right now is ensure that we've got the china business properly framed such that when the the chinese economy comes back into growth mode or into more a stronger mode that we can take advantage of the opportunities over there and and you know and continue to supply our customer needs over there so so look it's not a it's it's a tough environment we've done a number of actions to set that business on a framework that makes sense for us we'll continue to optimize as you know to our to the extent we can over there and you know we're in there we're in china for the long term but we have to make sure that the business model makes sense relative to the opportunity

do you feel as if you're losing share or holding share in china

oh we there are it's a it's a mixed bag we are taking share in in pcs we've taken some share in storage we have deliberately walked away from a number of large server deals over there where the pricing just was absolutely made no sense to us i'll say it like that with

the hyperscalers

yeah principally with the hyperscalers over there and so we have lost server share in in china and part of that was by design most of it was by design at the same point in time what we've asked our chinese team to do is say hey look we want you to build a sustainable long-term model around a broader set of customers of building the customer base to drive a more what we would call a more healthy environment in terms of the server framework server business over there

thank you for taking the question

sure

we'll take our next question from amit darianani with evercore isi

um thanks a lot guys i guess two questions for me as well jeff uh first for you uh you know how should we think about the broader storage market given all the commentary you made in fiscal 21 and perhaps you can touch on both what do you think the end markets are going to do and does dell's share gain narrative become more powerful in fiscal 21 given some of the comments you made on the unified mid-range offering earlier

yeah if we look at what the industry analysts are projecting for next calendar year i believe the storage external storage forecast is roughly minus one percent i think is the aggregate consensus of all of the industry experts and analysts there well my job is to do better than that outperform the marketplace and take share we're going to do that with the industry's broadest storage portfolio from our classic three-tier storage architecture so primarily arrays with high end mid-range and the entry level products we have the advantage in the high end of the marketplace with our paramax products our unity xt product as i mentioned earlier is doing well growing double digits it's a bridge to the the new product that will be out next year as i mentioned we've made progress with the entry level product our broad storage portfolio moves into the areas of data protection which the new integrated data protection appliance and the new data domain products off to a good start as they've been refreshed then we have the hci and ci portfolios of power one that i just mentioned a leader in the converged infrastructure category and then we've certainly been the market leader in the fast growing hci space so with that broad portfolio and now largely refreshed and modernized i'm optimistic that we can outperform the marketplace as we head into next year that's certainly the targets that we have in place you combine that with the sales force build out that we've put in in place over the last two plus years more storage sellers more storage specialists we've made progress in what we call the enterprise acquisition accounts that business is growing nicely so i'm optimistic that we have put the right plans together with the right portfolio the right investments to grow our storage business at a differentiated rate to the marketplace i'd circle back we've largely done that in the last two years we've taken 375 basis points of share and over the two-year period we've largely grown the external storage business in a market that's slightly down

that's really helpful and i guess tom i just want to make sure i heard you correct initially you said fiscal 21 operating income margin will be closer to fiscal 19 i think that's the comment you made is there a way to think about what does free cash flow does in that narrative and maybe you could qualitatively talk about what are the puts and takes of free cash loan fiscal 21 versus fiscal 20 for you guys

yeah hey i know what i said was our preliminary view is that operating income margins may trend closer to fiscal 19 levels and you know principally because as you think about and this will also depend on what ultimately happens with component cost environment but right now we expect it to be inflationary we don't forecast free cash flow externally i should say we do forecast it internally clearly so look it'll be a function of free cash flow is all as a function of profitability and working capital and other dynamics within the company and so it's our job to optimize working capital is all job to optimize free cash flow more importantly you heard me say on the call that hey we're committed to the 1.5 billion essentially the 1.5 billion dollars of debt down in q4 to get to the 5 billion dollar target we've laid out we've paid three and a half billion three and a half billion dollars of debt down so far here today and that we're committed to the four billion dollars of debt pay down next year and even as we run the sensitivities around that given what we know today that all looks you know within the framework of that we're comfortable with so you know we'll continue to update you guys and give you further thinking on that as we as we come back at the end of q4 but you know that's that's the framework we think of right now

thank you

we'll take our next question from shannon cross with cross research

thank you just one question wanted to go back to pc's you you indicated that the shortages from intel are going to impact the current quarter and then you talked a bit about i know perhaps lingering pressure in 2021 so i'm just kind of curious as to what you see the trajectory like and you know do you expect i think hp just indicated they expect a bit of a push out in terms of or continued i guess stronger demand than maybe one would have thought in the coming year because of some of the the mixed dynamics and and pressure from intel i'm i'm curious as to what you're seeing thank you

yes shannon let me at least try to give a couple of data points one i think we've talked about this we've largely mitigated the supply challenges to date and we think our direct models allowed us to do that with the speed and flexibility that it gives us to adjust to the outputs out of the factory clearly with what we said earlier there's been a change in q4 and we're dealing with that real time history would suggest if we can't fulfill demand in the industry that we will see it spill over into the coming calendar year particularly with windows 10 we're roughly two-thirds through the refresh cycle and to the point there's a delay with that that's going to spill over into the following calendar year perhaps maybe another way to say it is we think that along elongates the cycle we've talked about we think it spills over into the first half already i think there's just another validation that it will spill over into the first half of next year given the continued or increasing challenges with intel supply so that's how we've certainly look at it we're certainly dealing with the information that we have real time and making the adjustments accordingly

thank you

we'll take our next question from andrew batten with wolf research hi

thank you i had one on margins so if we put aside products gross margin expansion and turn over to services this is the second consecutive quarter of services gross margin being around 100 100 150 bips lower than where it was tracking last year through q1 of this year can you just walk through the puts and takes on that line item and whether anything structurally has changed

well there's nothing that has structurally changed on services margin um the only thing that and i and i don't have the data right in front of me i would offer you a far a couple of comments one is overall we've seen actually a good attach rate on services our services offerings in general and in fact the content rate on our tech on some of our products increased so we're pleased with that content rate you know as we think about the margin dynamic the comment i would offer you is principally whether you know we're putting a lot of that services profitability onto the balance sheet that's getting building up the deferred revenue so you'd have to think about of that dynamic but there's nothing structurally that's happened in the in business or how we're marketing or positioning the services that would call out any significant structural issue okay thank you

all right next question from jerry long with deutsche bank

thanks for uh thanks for let me ask a question i just want to understand the bridge uh from sort of fiscal 19 fiscal 20 back fiscal 21 which is going to be similar fiscal 19 for the operating margin uh two ways to think about it i'll let you kind of answer number one uh you know in terms of the the downshift in margin is it is it what what portion of this is revenue or perhaps you know component pricing mixed driven to drive that lower margin or another way to think about it would be segment based which would be how much of the margin degradation year on year is going to be isg versus csg versus other business thank you you're

talking hey it's time you're talking about fiscal 20 to 21 is that the comment is that the question

yes yes that is yes that is the question

well i think you got to go back to what we think the drivers are around a potential you know sort of potential margin pressure or operating margin pressure next year and we have been pretty vocal throughout this year principally in the last couple of quarters on these calls around the profitability profile of our csg business and that it has turned it higher than normal given some of the component cost deflation we've seen and so a significant majority of the margin dynamic year to year assuming that component cost move from deflation to inflation which is the forecast that we have right now will impact the profitability profile of our csg business back towards historical norms so i would think about most of that pressure being in you know our that dynamic is a big driver of some of the profitability potential profitability shifts year to year you will have a little bit of that dynamic within the server because again you got to think about which lobs are more commodity cost sensitive in terms of pricing dynamics and those two lobs tend to be our most sensitive you know impact the ones impacted the most

well they are it's not something i think you hit it is if you look at the deflation in calendar 19 our model generally captures that more quickly and it's advantaged when we have that deflation and i think you see it from what was our beginning of the year expectations for profit to where we're at today and as tom said we have a deflationary period coming and those distances will perform back towards their historical norms

we'll now take our final question from matt cabral with credits please

thank you you guys have talked about china several times but wondering if you could back up and talk about the the demand environment across other geographies around the world and also just wanted to clarify if you think the macro overhang has actually gotten worse versus where we were in the second quarter or if the the drag is more kind of consistent over the last you know let's call it 90 plus days or so

yeah look it's tom let me i think the macro overhang is reasonably consistent maybe slightly worse but you know it didn't fall off the cliff or anything like that but we are just seeing continued caution in the environment continued softness environment you know we've talked about it a couple of times but principally in server we have seen softness in large enterprise slowness in procurement cycles elongation of procurement cycles i should say you know critical projects are still getting done but they seem to be taking longer from a procurement cycle you know and i think that's just a function of sort of macro dynamics that many companies see them you know are in in the sense of trying to navigate what is a little bit of an uncertain macro political economic environment right now and so our perspective is there's a bit of caution out there that we're seeing you know you know our sales organizations are out there selling every day so we've got the broadest reach in the marketplace we are being disciplined on on pricing and so i'm not chasing and driving deals that just make economic sense to me over the long term so there is some you know there is some level of that happening within our business as we step back and think about your question around jeez if you think about the various geographic dynamics we'll tell you that in general the u.s remains reasonably healthy right you know yes there's some large there's some softness at large in on the large enterprise procurements and servers in particular but you know our commercial north america business our small and medium north american businesses are doing quite well we're pleased with the progress we have seen some softening in europe western europe in particular in q3 you know i think japan continues to be strong for us you know india continues to be reasonably strong china's been soft as we've talked about australia new zealand has been soft and so and brazil's been strong so i mean if you just bounce around the globe and some of the major economies it's a little bit of a mixed bag which is i think the message we're trying to send you guys which is it's a bit of a mixed bag look it's our job to navigate through all of that and drive the business forward and i'm confident we'll do that and that's the navigation that we have to get down here in q4 on into next year so i think from an overall positioning i think we're well positioned we've got the broadest product and solution portfolio in the market customer receptivity to our offerings is high so it's a matter of us going out there and making sure that we're having the appropriate conversations with our customers every day and helping them drive to their the outcomes that they desire all right good well thanks tom and thanks matt as a reminder we'll be at the welch fargo summit in las vegas and the bank of america leverage finance conference in boca retana on december the third will be a credit suite in scottsdale on december the fourth then the following week will be in new york at the raymond james conference on december the 10th and the ubs conference on december the 11th and finally we'll be at ces in las vegas in january so thanks for joining us today and we hope you all have a great thanksgiving

this concludes today's conference call we appreciate your participation you may now disconnect at this time