2026-08-27

HP Stock Sinks 8.68% Despite Raised Guidance While CrowdStrike and Salesforce Jump Double Digits - Same Earnings Night, Opposite Outcomes

Written & reviewed by the TradeSmrt editorial team · 2026-08-27

In this article

What Happened
Why the Same Earnings Night Produced Opposite Reactions
What to Take Away From This
FAQ
Sources

What Happened

On Wednesday, August 26, three very different companies reported earnings within hours of each other, producing three very different stock reactions. HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ), the PC and printer maker, beat revenue and earnings estimates for its fiscal third quarter and raised its full-year guidance - yet its shares still fell $2.65, or 8.68%, to close at $27.87. Later that evening, after the closing bell, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike (Nasdaq: CRWD) reported earnings and jumped more than 11% in extended trading, while customer relationship management software giant Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) spiked as much as 14% after hours. All three delivered what looked like a headline "beat," yet one stock cratered while the other two surged.

Start with HP. Fiscal third-quarter revenue came in at $15.7 billion, up 12.5% year-over-year and comfortably ahead of the roughly $14.6 billion analysts had expected. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share reached $0.83, up 10.7% from a year earlier, though that figure included an $0.11 one-time boost from tariff refunds. The Personal Systems segment - HP's PC business - posted record third-quarter revenue of $11.8 billion, up 18% year-over-year, with commercial revenue up 22% and consumer revenue up 10%. On the back of those numbers, HP raised its full-year fiscal 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $3.19-$3.29 (midpoint $3.24, above the analyst consensus of $3.04) and lifted its free cash flow outlook to $3.0-$3.2 billion. On paper, it was a clean beat-and-raise quarter.

So why did the stock fall nearly 9%? The answer sits underneath the headline numbers, in HP's margin structure. DRAM and NAND memory chip prices have roughly doubled sequentially over the past few months, and memory now makes up an estimated 35% of a PC's bill of materials. That squeeze reportedly pushed Personal Systems operating margin down into the low-4% range. On the earnings call, CFO Karen Parkhill said the cost pressure would continue into the fourth quarter, with meaningful relief not expected until fiscal 2027. Bank of America reiterated its Underperform rating right after the report, citing "challenged" margins from rising memory costs, demand elasticity from price hikes needed to offset those costs, and a fourth-quarter Personal Systems margin outlook below the third quarter's. HP said it's responding with price increases, cheaper sourcing, and reduced memory configurations on some models - but investors reacted to the structural cost problem, not the guidance headline.

CrowdStrike told a completely different story that same evening. Fiscal second-quarter revenue reached $1.47 billion, above the $1.44 billion consensus and up 26% year-over-year, while adjusted EPS of $0.31 beat the $0.29 estimate. Falcon Flex - the company's flexible, bundled security subscription - more than doubled in value from a year earlier, with 935 new Flex accounts added in the quarter alone. CEO George Kurtz called it "the best quarter in CrowdStrike's history." The company raised its full-year revenue guidance to $5.99-$6.01 billion and adjusted EPS guidance to $1.25-$1.26, and shares jumped more than 11% in after-hours trading on the news.

Salesforce's numbers looked even more dramatic at first glance. Second-quarter revenue of $11.345 billion, up roughly 11% year-over-year, edged past consensus, while adjusted EPS of $5.90 blew past the $3.27 estimate - an apparent 80%-plus beat. The company raised full-year revenue guidance to $46.1-$46.4 billion and, more strikingly, lifted adjusted EPS guidance from $14.06-$14.12 to $16.67-$16.71. But that headline "80% surprise" deserves a second look before taking it at face value. Of the $2.63 gap between the reported EPS and consensus, roughly $2.53 traced back to a $2.6 billion mark-to-market gain on Salesforce's equity stake in AI startup Anthropic. Strip that one-time investment gain out, and underlying EPS lands closer to $3.37 - a beat of roughly 3%, not 80%. Even so, the stock still jumped double digits, because the operating metrics behind the investment gain held up on their own: current remaining performance obligations (cRPO) grew 14% in constant currency, marking the fastest new-order growth in four years, and combined annual recurring revenue (ARR) from Agentforce and Data 360 reached nearly $3.9 billion, up more than 210% year-over-year - with Agentforce ARR alone topping $1.5 billion, up more than 240%. Salesforce also used the report to expand its partnership with Anthropic, unveiling "Claudeforce," a feature letting sales reps pull customer data directly inside Anthropic's Claude chatbot.

Why the Same Earnings Night Produced Opposite Reactions

The split ultimately comes down to how the same underlying event - a surge in memory chip prices - flows through fundamentally different business models. HP buys physical DRAM and NAND chips and installs them in finished products it sells to consumers and businesses. When component prices spike, HP's cost of goods sold takes a direct hit unless it can fully pass the increase through to buyers - and even where it raises prices, it then runs into demand elasticity, since pricier PCs sell in smaller volumes. HP itself said it's assuming memory prices will roughly double again sequentially this quarter, meaning a cost input it doesn't control has become the single biggest threat to its profitability. CrowdStrike and Salesforce sit on the opposite side of that equation entirely: neither buys physical memory chips in bulk to build products. They lease cloud infrastructure and sell software and AI services, so a DRAM and NAND price spike doesn't flow directly into their cost of revenue. If anything, they're riding the same broader AI infrastructure boom from the demand side - reflected in Falcon Flex adoption more than doubling and Agentforce ARR growing over 240%.

What makes this especially interesting is that the same memory price spike is producing opposite outcomes even within the semiconductor supply chain itself. As covered in our prior reporting, memory makers like Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital - companies that manufacture and sell the chips - have actually rallied on rising prices, and AI server names like Nvidia have treated higher memory prices as a signal of demand outstripping supply. HP, sitting downstream as a buyer that installs memory into finished PCs, experiences the identical price move as margin erosion instead. The same commodity price swing reads as bullish or bearish purely depending on which side of the transaction a company sits on.

Salesforce's case carries its own separate lesson. An investor who reacted only to the "80% EPS surprise" headline would have misjudged the quality of the beat - the bulk of that surprise came from a one-time, non-operating mark on an equity stake, not from core business performance. But the market clearly looked past the accounting noise: cRPO growth and Agentforce ARR - both measures tied directly to actual customer commitments - were strong on their own, independent of the Anthropic gain. That's a more accurate way to read Wednesday's rally than treating it as an accounting illusion: investors filtered out the one-time gain and still liked what remained.

Finally, HP's results extend a theme that has run through this entire earnings season - Nvidia's six-session losing streak tied to memory costs, and the rally in Micron, SanDisk, and Western Digital - into a new arena. What had mostly been a story about chipmakers and AI server builders is now showing up as a real, quantified margin hit at a mainstream consumer hardware company. With HP's own management pointing to fiscal 2027 before meaningful relief, whether other PC and laptop makers flag similar margin pressure in their upcoming reports is the next thing worth watching.

What to Take Away From This

A "beat-and-raise" headline doesn't guarantee a stock will rise. HP topped estimates on revenue and earnings and raised guidance, yet fell nearly 9% because a structural cost problem - not the headline numbers - drove the market's reaction.
The same commodity price move can be good news or bad news depending on supply chain position. Rising memory prices help the companies that manufacture and sell the chips, and hurt the companies that have to buy them and absorb the cost into finished products.
Always decompose a headline EPS surprise before trusting it. Salesforce's "80% beat" shrank to roughly 3% once a one-time investment gain was stripped out - a distinction that matters for judging whether a rally reflects real business momentum.
Hardware and software companies can ride the same AI boom and still see opposite stock reactions, because their cost structures expose them to physical component inflation very differently.

FAQ

When might HP stock recover?

HP's own management said meaningful relief on memory costs isn't expected until fiscal 2027, so a near-term rebound looks unlikely on current guidance. Watch whether HP's price increases, alternative sourcing, and reduced memory configurations actually stabilize margins, and whether fourth-quarter Personal Systems operating margin comes in as weak as the company has signaled.

Is Salesforce's quarter actually disappointing once you remove the investment gain?

Not really. Even excluding the Anthropic-related gain, underlying EPS still beat consensus, and more importantly, cRPO growth hit a four-year high while Agentforce ARR grew more than 240% - both measures of real customer demand that have nothing to do with the one-time investment mark. The headline "80% surprise" figure is misleading on its own, but the operating story behind it looks genuinely solid.

Could rising memory prices hurt other PC and hardware makers the same way?

It's too early to say definitively until those companies report their own results, but surging DRAM and NAND prices and a rising memory share of the bill of materials are being described as an industry-wide supply chain issue, not something unique to HP. It's worth watching whether other PC and laptop makers flag similar margin pressure in upcoming earnings reports.

Sources

This article is an original synthesis and analysis based on the reporting below, not a reproduction of the original articles. Please check the source articles directly for the most current figures and details.

⚠️ This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Market conditions change constantly - always verify the latest data before making investment decisions.