Ever have one of those evenings where you think the trading day is done, you crack open a beer, and then your phone starts exploding with alerts? Yeah, that was Tuesday night.
While most people were figuring out dinner plans, a handful of big-name companies dropped earnings bombs that sent their stocks whipping around in after-hours trading like it was 1999 all over again. Some moves made perfect sense. Others? Let’s just say the market is feeling a little emotional right now.
The Night AI Rewrote the Rules (Again)
Look, I’ve been watching earnings seasons for longer than I care to admit, and rarely does one single theme dominate an entire after-hours session the way artificial intelligence did on November 25, 2025. It didn’t matter if you sold printers, clothes, cloud security, or enterprise software; if your story touched AI in any meaningful way, you probably caught a bid. If you didn’t… well, the market had thoughts.
Urban Outfitters: The Surprise Retail Rocket
Let’s start with the only way this night deserved to start: with a 17% moonshot.
Urban Outfitters came out swinging after the bell, posting $1.28 per share against expectations of $1.20 and revenue of $1.53 billion when the Street was looking for $1.47 billion. Same-store sales looked solid, margins expanded nicely, and management actually sounded optimistic; three things you don’t always get from retail these days.
Honestly, I had to double-check the ticker. When was the last time a legacy apparel name moved this violently to the upside on earnings? The stock has been in the doghouse for years, yet here we are watching teenagers apparently spend money again on Free People dresses and BDG jeans. Maybe Gen Z really is alright.
- Revenue beat by $60 million; feels massive in retail land
- Earnings per share 6.7% above consensus
- Digital channel continues strong double-digit growth
- No scary inventory buildup mentioned on the call
Perhaps the most interesting part? Management didn’t even lean on AI as the explanation. This was pure old-school retail execution. In a quarter dominated by tech narratives, sometimes a straightforward “we sold more stuff at higher prices” is exactly what investors want to hear.
Dell Technologies: The AI Server King Refuses to Die
Dell’s headline numbers were, let’s be kind, messy. Third-quarter revenue came in light, and the stock initially dipped. But then management dropped the guidance bomb everyone was waiting for: fourth-quarter outlook well above expectations, entirely driven by exploding AI server demand.
Shares flipped from red to almost +3% in minutes. Classic Dell move, really.
“We are seeing unprecedented demand for AI-optimized infrastructure.”
– Dell management team
I’ve lost count of how many times analysts have declared the PC market dead, only to watch enterprise hardware come roaring back on the next big secular theme. First it was cloud, now it’s AI training clusters. Dell keeps finding itself in the right place at the right time, even when consumer PCs are rolling over.
The street will spend the next 48 hours arguing whether the AI server boom has legs into 2026 or if we’re looking at a digestion period after the initial frenzy. My take? As long as Nvidia keeps printing numbers like they have been, somebody has to build the boxes those chips live in. Dell remains very much in that conversation.
HP Inc.: When “Restructuring” Sounds Scary
On the flip side, we had HP Inc. delivering what looked like a perfectly fine quarter on the surface; beats on both lines; only to get absolutely crushed after hours because of forward commentary.
Shares down more than 5% almost instantly. Why? Two words: job cuts. Actually, make that 6,000 job cuts; roughly 10% of the entire workforce.
CEO Enrique Lores framed it as necessary transformation to “accelerate AI adoption across the portfolio” and promised $1 billion in annualized savings over three years. The market heard “we’re going to spend the next year shrinking to greatness” and hit the sell button.
Look, I get it. The PC business is brutal right now. Consumer demand is soft, commercial refresh cycles are stretched, and everyone is waiting for the much-hyped “AI PC” to actually matter. Announcing massive layoffs the second you report earnings rarely inspires confidence, even if the long-term math works.
Still, there’s an argument that HP is finally facing reality instead of kicking the can down the road like some competitors. Whether investors reward that honesty remains to be seen.
Workday and NetApp: Cloud Veterans Still Have Pulse
Workday beat nicely ($2.32 adj EPS vs $2.18 expected) but dipped 5% anyway because, well, sometimes the market just needs a scapegoat. Subscription revenue growth decelerated slightly, and investors are nervous about competition in HR software.
NetApp, on the other hand, straight-up crushed it. $2.05 adj EPS against $1.89 expected, revenue beat, and guidance raised. Shares jumped 5% because when you’re the quiet storage company that suddenly everyone needs for their AI data lakes, life is good.
Zscaler and Ambarella: Good Numbers, Bad Feels
Zscaler beat top and bottom but dropped 7+% because they posted an operating loss and investors hate when growth companies remind everyone they can actually lose money sometimes. Ambarella beat and raised yet fell 5% because the CTO resigned; markets really do hate uncertainty more than bad news.
What This All Means for Regular Investors
If you take one thing away from Tuesday night’s chaos, make it this: the market is currently valuing AI exposure above almost everything else, including current profitability, margins, or even coherent guidance.
Urban Outfitters didn’t mention AI once and jumped 17%. Dell missed revenue and still went up because AI servers go brrrr. HP is literally cutting 10% of staff to fund AI initiatives and got punished. The narrative rules everything right now.
That kind of environment creates incredible opportunities if you can stay rational. Some perfectly fine companies are getting thrown out because they aren’t sexy enough, while others are flying on pure story. We’ve seen this movie before; it usually ends with a rotation when the music stops.
Until then? Buckle up. After-hours trading just reminded us all that in 2025, the close is rarely the close.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go update about six watchlists before Europe wakes up and decides what Wednesday is going to look like.
