Penguin Solutions, Inc. Ordinary Shares Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026
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Well, hello everybody and welcome to the Penguin Solutions Fireside Chat at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. I have the privilege of hosting Kash Shaikh, CEO of Penguin Solutions. My name is Kat Murphy and I cover Penguin and IT Hardware here at Goldman Sachs. We will have about 35 minutes for today's discussion, inclusive of Q&A towards the end. Maybe to go ahead and get started, September marks seven months since you have joined Penguin as CEO. You joined at an interesting time as the company transitioned from a holdco into an AI solutions-oriented business. For the purposes of this audience, can you help us understand your current business mix and where Penguin is really positioned to go after this investment cycle around AI?
Thanks, Kat. In the last seven months, we have focused on three main areas. First, prioritizing our Advanced Computing AI infrastructure business and our Integrated Memory business. These two businesses have very high demand because of the super cycle of the infrastructure, and they represent our AI-driven businesses. Second, we have increased our investments in product innovation. Third, we have accelerated go-to-market execution with a clear focus on two main segments: the neocloud segment and the enterprise segment for our AI infrastructure business. We also introduced what we call our AI Factory Platform. This platform combines differentiated products like an OEM offering, as well as a system integrator like end-to-end services, design, build, deploy, and manage. This allows us to be the single partner for our customers, building the factories, AI factories, as well as operating the factories on their behalf. The results show the progress.
In Q3, which was our last earnings that we announced publicly, our AI-driven businesses represented 74% of company net sales, and they grew 104% year-over-year. The company also had record net sales at company level. Based on our guidance that we provided in the last earnings forecast, we are expecting yet another record quarter at company level, and it will be our first over $500 million net sales for the company.
Great. You also provided a preliminary outlook on earnings last quarter for FY27 and guided to 30% year-over-year growth at the consolidated level, which implies an acceleration sequentially. Can you talk about what is informing your confidence in that sequential acceleration? I know there are some moving parts within the business. Where in the business across those three opportunities that you outlined do you see the most incremental upside opportunity?
As we mentioned in our last earnings, our confidence comes from, first of all, the strength of the market we play in. We have two tailwinds, very high demand data center AI infrastructure market, very high demand memory market, and we have a very unique product market fit for both of these product lines. Combine that with the visibility that we have with our bookings, backlog, as well as the pipeline that is really driving the outlook for FY 2027. In terms of the upside for the outlook, it really depends on how fast we can convert some of the large AI factory opportunities that we have in our AI infrastructure business.
Gotcha. You have reported historically the company in three different segments, but I want to focus on Advanced Computing and then the Integrated Memory opportunity. First, on the Advanced Computing side, can you break down the lineup of hardware, software, and services within your portfolio and how you are going after both the neocloud and enterprise opportunities that you talk to with those products?
Within our Advanced Computing, we primarily focus on our AI infrastructure solution business. This is where we offer the AI Factory Platform, and this AI Factory Platform is a very unique combination of products. These products include ClusterWareAI, which is an AI factory operating system. Just like an operating system like Windows will provide a platform to combine all of the resources between memory as well as applications and CPUs, our AI factory ClusterWare operating system provides a similar consolidation of the cluster, as well as what we have done with our ClusterAI recently in the last six months. We have also created agentic experiences. As an example, the operators can now use the natural language to find out the health of the GPUs as well as the utilization of the GPUs. So that is one of the key differentiator from the product perspective in our platform.
We have also invested in our MemoryAI product line. This is a product line where we are leveraging our unique insights from decades of experience in the memory architecture as well as the AI infrastructure data center build-outs. This MemoryAI product line provides benefits especially for the inference workloads. As AI moves from training to inference powering agentic AI, this is where the context sizes of the messages are very long, and these require memory architectures that can help accelerate the LLM responses and performance. So that is the next product line. We have also introduced ComputeAI product line within this portfolio. What it is, essentially, is a set of GPUs and accelerators from NVIDIA as well as from AMD. So we can provide the products to our customers that help them manage the factories as well as build out the factories.
Then we combine them with our end-to-end services. So we get involved much earlier in the cycle with our customers. So we come in, we design the factories on their behalf, and as we are designing the factory, we recommend our products, partner products, and then we also build out, as in do the system integration for them. And then we sign contracts with them 3 to 5 years to manage those factories. So this is this unique combination of offering like an OEM product company. Combine that with an end-to-end system integration offering that allows the customer to work with us as a single build partner as well as a single operate partner for the AI factories, primarily focusing on neocloud build-outs as well as large enterprises.
That's very helpful. So you talked about AI factories, MemoryAI, ComputeAI services. That's the appropriate way to summarize them. And you're going after different customer verticals. For the neoclouds, which of those four products resonate most? And for the enterprise, is there a different kind of go-to-market or sales motion that you're trying to engage with your customers on?
It depends on the journey of the customer, right? Whether it is a neocloud customer or an enterprise customer. In some cases, we start small, as in they may be looking for GPUs, and we provide them GPUs with our ComputeAI product line, whether they are enterprise or neocloud, and then we expand with our services or other products. So that's our land-and-expand strategy across both enterprises and neocloud providers. However, in some cases, the land is pretty significant.
What we are seeing, especially in the last six months, what we have seen is the acceleration of the neocloud providers because both the hyperscalers that are giving them the business as well as the business they get from the enterprises, that creates a very unique opportunity for Penguin Solutions, where these neocloud providers are relatively newer providers, so they are setting up the entire data center. So they will go out and, let's say, lease the data center and the power. Then we go in and we do everything from them, as in design it, procure the hardware for them and the software, build it out, and then we are signing contract to help them manage the factory so they can focus on getting the off-takers, as in their customers, and we are the builder and the operator for their AI factories.
It really depends on where they are in the journey. In some cases, it's a smaller land with expand, in some cases, a pretty significant land, and then they continue to expand with us as they are building out new data centers.
Something that's also unique to Penguin is your agnostic approach to other third-party hardware within some of these ecosystems that you're helping set up. Can you talk about how that is a point of differentiation, and why and what in Penguin's portfolio, maybe this goes to the ClusterWare software operating system layer, allows you to bring forward a best-in-breed solution rather than a sole vendor solution?
Yeah. We believe in, first of all, an approach that is much more focused on meeting the objectives of our customers. Let's say it is a neocloud customer. The neocloud customers typically sign the SLAs with their off-takers or their customers. Based on those SLAs, we get engaged, as I mentioned, much earlier in the cycle with them. As we are designing those AI infrastructures for the factories, we build the architecture in a way that it meets their requirement, whether it is our products or it may be the products of our partners such as Dell, along with the ClusterWare. The advantage of the ClusterWare, especially with our engagement with the customers, which starts much earlier than the product companies, we have the discussion and conversation at the architecture layer, as in you have these SLAs.
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