Supermicro shares slumped 15 percent in after-hours trading as the company warned next week’s quarterly results will see it miss forecast revenue by up to $1.5 billion.

The server-maker on Tuesday revealed its previous guidance that its Q3 revenue would fall between $5.0 billion and $6.0 billion was wrong and will instead come in somewhere between $4.5 billion and $4.6 billion. Earnings per share will also fall short of predictions.

The company explained its woes in a business update that offered scant explanation for the situation, other than the following three bullet points:

• New generation product design wins are robust
• During Q3 some delayed customer platform decisions moved sales into Q4
• The GAAP and Non-GAAP gross margin for Q3 was 220 basis points lower than Q2 primarily due to higher inventory reserves resulting from older generation products and expedite costs to enable time-to-market for new products

Whatever the above means, this is almost certainly bad news for Supermicro given its past predictions of strong growth as it cashes in on the AI boom and opens more manufacturing plants capable of pumping out pre-assembled rack scale systems.

Supermicro’s finances have been controversial for years. In 2018 it didn’t publish audited results and was de-listed by the NASDAQ stock exchange before eventually resuming its place on the bourse’s boards.

In 2024 it again delayed delivery of its annual report due to issues with its internal reporting and endured the resignation of its auditor as it tried to put its books in order. That situation meant Supermicro was again at risk of being booted off NASDAQ.

The company later appointed a new auditor and in February 2025 managed to file an annual report and retain its listing.

Now it’s in trouble again.

Markets are currently sensitive to any hint that spending on AI won’t soar, an understandable anxiety given the hundreds of billions being spent on servers, GPUs, and datacenters to house them – without evidence of revenue flowing from those investments.

Supermicro’s reference to deferred purchases and slow movement of older products could therefore be taken as a sign of a cooling market. For what it’s worth, Dell shares slipped around five percent in after hours trading, and leading AI chipmakers Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD also saw their scrip lose a little value. ®