Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) released its latest earnings results showing expanded supply chain concerns that impacted its performance versus rivals like Cisco and Dell, but HPE did sneak in a dig that at least one of its operating divisions outperformed a rival.

Despite strong demand, HPE’s second fiscal quarter results came in basically flat year over year, and were down slightly sequentially. Company management pinned that flatness to the now common supply chain issues that hit many vendors in March and April when key supply points in China were put into COVID-19 related lockdowns.

“We have momentum across our portfolio with our as-a-service model differentiating us,” HPE CEO Antonio Neri said during the vendor’s earnings call. “This quarter, through a combination of supply constraints, limited our ability to fulfill orders as well as some areas where we could have executed better. We did not fully translate the strong customer orders into higher revenue growth.”

That sentiment has been echoed by most of HPE’s rivals. However, analysts picked up on the fact that despite the common complaint, HPE’s rivals have managed to squeak out slightly better results.

Neri attempted to steer that concern toward a broader view, noting HPE was coming off a particularly strong first fiscal quarter.

“I look at this from a half performance. … We made it better in Q1, maybe a little bit less so in Q2 against some of our competitors, namely Dell, let's just say on some aspects, but on a balance, not that far off,” Neri said. “Against Cisco, we definitely did well on every metric you want to look at. … But in the end, we're focused on the full year to deliver that guidance of three to 4%, and obviously exit the year with still quite a large backlog, which bodes well for [2023].”

That Cisco dig also continued to HPE’s Aruba operations, which compete against rival offerings in the WLAN space. HPE CFO Tarek Robbiati claimed Aruba “outperformed” the competition during the quarter.

“Aruba is continuing to do extremely well and we outperformed the competition, specifically Cisco, in the second quarter,” Robbiati said. “And the order book in Aruba is absolutely substantial.”

Cisco remains the WLAN market heavyweight, holding more than twice the market share of No. 2 Aruba.

Despite the Cisco dig, Robbiati echoed comments from that rival in being cautious on HPE’s near-term outlook due to ongoing supply chain challenges and global currency trends. This resulted in HPE stating full-year results would likely come in at the lower range of its guidance.

Investors took that adjustments to heart, sending HPE’s stock down more than 5% on Thursday, despite the broader market trading up more than 1%.