Vertiv Holdings Co (VRT) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. My name is Warren and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Vertiv's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the program over to your host for today's conference call, Lynne Maxeiner, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Great. Good morning, and welcome to Vertiv's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. During the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events, including the future financial and operating performance of Vertiv. These statements are subject to material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Please refer to the cautionary language included in today's earnings release and the risks disclosed in our annual and quarterly reports and other filings made with the SEC. Additionally, non-GAAP measures referenced today are defined and reconciled in our earnings press release and in the investor slide deck found on our website at investors.vertiv.com. Finally, during the Q&A portion of the call, please be mindful of others in the queue and limit yourself to 1 question. With that, I'll turn the call over to Executive Chairman, Dave Cote.

Well, the paraphrase Mark Twain, "the rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated." I'm really pleased with the third quarter and our year-to-date performance. This performance is a testament to how customers look at Vertiv, our thought leader with leading technology and reliability, undeniable ability to scale and superior service performance and capabilities. This is reflected, among other things, in our strong Q3 organic orders on top a very strong first half organic orders, as Gio will mention. Q3 organic orders are not only strong, but also very balanced across customer types. Orders are strong no matter how you look at them with or without Neo cloud. Our customers clearly believe in us. By the way, to be clear, we're not planning to share orders data going forward. This order strength and financial performance notwithstanding will be the first to say that we are relentlessly focused on further improving our customer and financial performance across the board. We can still be a lot better. Gio is never satisfied. What you're seeing in these results isn't something that happened overnight. This is the payoff from years of seed planting, years of investing in technology, capacity, service and all capabilities because we believe this opportunity was going to be big. It turns out it's even bigger than most people imagined, and we believe it's going to stay big for a long time. We are just at the beginning of the digital age, and we anticipate it has decades left to run. The foundation for it is data storage and processing, which means data centers. No data centers, no digital age, and Vertiv supplies the picks and shovels. We were at the forefront of the technology change in those picks and shovels and intend to stay there. As you know, I've always believed it's important to have a great position in a good industry. preferably with technology differentiation and then develop a high-performance culture, so you then perform well for customers and investors. Vertiv is doing that. I'm pleased with how rapidly the high-performance culture is developing to Vertiv. And the more technology changes, the better it is for us. It's exciting stuff. Like that famous book says we're accomplishing 2 seemingly conflicting things at the same time. We're delivering very strong results today while investing aggressively for tomorrow. That's generally hard to do. Most companies choose one or the other. Gio and his team are doing both. And I believe the gap between us and everyone else just keeps getting wider. And the fact is, we're still early, we are not done yet, not even close. As you've heard me say in the past, buy now while supplies last. So let me hand it over to Gio to take you through it all. Gio?

Well, thank you very much, Dave. And let us go to Slide 3. A very strong quarter indeed. Net sales up 61% versus Q3 2025 with broad-based trends across all regions. Americas up 75%, APAC up 50% and EMEA back to convincing growth at 23%. Organic net sales grew approximately 55% with an additional 6% from acquisitions. Disciplined execution drove adjusted operating margin to 25.2%, up to 190 basis points year-on-year, exceeding our guidance. Adjusted operating profit was over $1 billion, up 83% year-over-year. Adjusted diluted EPS of $2.21 were up 78%, primarily driven by higher volume and continued operational productivity. Adjusted free cash flow was up 50% year-on-year at $652 million. Our net cash position continued with negative leverage of 0.2x at quarter end. The balance sheet remains very strong. We are raising our full year guidance across all key metrics. Net sales expected at $14.65 billion, $650 million up on July guidance and approximately 38% organic growth. Adjusted diluted EPS now expected at $7.15, up 70% from '25 and adjusted operating profit guidance raised to more than $3.5 billion, up 68% year-on-year. Full year adjusted operating margin expected to be 24% approximately 360 basis points higher than 2025, and adjusted free cash flow guidance raised to $2.7 billion. And with that, let's move to Slide 4. I'll start with the market environment. Our pipeline remains very strong, global. Demand signals are clear and broad-based across technologies, customer types and regions. We expect another year of robust orders growth. We do not disclose orders, and we'll continue not to, but it is worth sharing that our Q3 orders were more than 100% up year-on-year organically, this to get a sense of what this strength practically translates into. Also important to share that our customer mix call or hyper enterprise, neo cloud, et cetera, very much represents the market mix. Let's now talk regionally. Americas Pipelines sequential quarter-to-quarter growth is the fastest we have seen earlier, translating into very strong organic Q3 orders. Yes, power availability, permitting, general sentiment and construction site skilled labor availability are pacing items, but not slowing down growth. We've been talking about the EMEA spring uncoiling. In Q3, the pipeline in EMEA has approximately doubled year-on-year and organic orders grew even more. Momentum is now in the market, and we see these dynamics carrying well into 2027 and beyond. When it comes to APAC, it's a broad-based strength, particularly in Australia and India. Organic orders were up substantially in the quarter in APAC. China is showing encouraging green shoots. Commercial execution continues to be favorable and we expect positive price cost in '26, including the current impact of tariffs and countermeasures. And now to the right of the slide, and let's talk about operations and supply chain. The sequential and year-on-year revenue growth you saw in the quarter reflects the combination of ongoing capacity expansion, improving utilization, Vertiv operating system adoption and overall disciplined backlog execution. It also reflects increasingly mature execution for complex converged infrastructure projects. We are making significant capacity investments globally to be well positioned to serve our customers and execute on a robust backlog. In the Americas, we announced several new or expanded facilities for infrastructure solutions, power management, thermal management and rack systems. In EMEA, we are expanding our Slovakia campus for power and there management and infrastructure solutions, scaling up our power facilities in India -- in Ireland, sorry. We are also on track to doubling chiller production capacity by year-end. In Asia Pacific, our new Johor, Malaysia factory is now operational, strengthening our ability to serve customers across Southeast Asia and Australia. These capacity additions are already contributing to our Q3 and Q4 growth. And it's not just our own capacity. We keep on proactively securing and expanding long-term capacity agreements with key suppliers to ensure their scale in lockstep with our growth. Let me also welcome Mike Rice, our new EVP of Manufacturing and Logistics. Mike brings very strong operational experience and capabilities and very strong lean expertise. Anders remains with us in a senior advisory capacity focused on the successful handover and our special projects. And let us now go to Slide 5. Time to first token matters a lot to our customers. It indicates how quickly an investment in AI data center and compute becomes revenue generating. I want to highlight the work we're doing with NVIDIA, Dassault Systemes and Polar data center to significantly reduce time to first token, accelerating every phase of the cycle. The design phase, for example, pre-engineered reference designs are configured and validated in a digital twin. This reduces the design time by a factor of 10, and the deployment phase factory build and modularly deployed infrastructure significantly removes complexity from site. It happens in parallel with site preparation. This cards deployment time by up to half. The result is up to 30% more cumulative AI token output in the first 12 months from project kickoff. Same installed capacity just productive much sooner for our customers. Polar data center is already applying this at the first 41 megawatts phase of its Heroya campus in Norway and is scalable to 100 megawatts. And with that, over to you, Craig.

Thanks, Gio. Let's move to Slide 6 and talk through our third quarter financial results in more detail. Our adjusted diluted EPS was $2.21, up $0.97 or 78% versus prior year and $0.41 above the midpoint of our guidance. The year-over-year improvement was driven by higher after-tax adjusted operating profit, primarily from increased revenue and operating profit rate expansion. On the top line, net sales were approximately $4.3 billion. That's up approximately $1.6 billion or 61% versus prior year. Organic sales growth was approximately 55% with an additional 6% from acquisitions. By region, Americas grew 66% organically, APAC grew 48% organically and EMEA grew 19% organically. All regions were above the 3Q revenue guidance. Moving to adjusted operating profit. We delivered approximately $1.1 billion. That's up $491 million or 83% versus prior year and $169 million above the midpoint of our guidance. Adjusted operating margin of 25.2% expanded 290 basis points year-over-year and came in 70 basis points above guidance. The margin expansion was driven by strong sales volume increase operating leverage and continued productivity. The business teams continue to show the ability to scale operations while expanding margins. As we have mentioned in prior calls, we are continuing to invest in capacity in engineering and R&D to support future business growth. Throughout out the quarter, adjusted free cash flow was $652 million, up $216 million or 50% from prior year. The improvement was driven by higher adjusted operating profit, partially offset by working capital usage and higher net CapEx. Net leverage at quarter end was negative 0.2x providing significant strategic flexibility. Flipping to Slide 7, let's look at segment performance by region. Americas delivered an outstanding quarter. Net sales were approximately $3 billion, up 75% with organic growth of 66%. Organic sales growth remained robust in the quarter. Adjusted operating margin came in at 29.4%, driven by strong operational leverage. Moving to APAC. The region had strong results with net sales of $779 million, up 50% with organic growth of 48%. Full year outlook remains positive, driven by strong end market demand and continued commercial execution. Adjusted operating margin of 17% expanded 380 basis points year-over-year, primarily attributed to operating leverage. In EMEA, net sales were $545 million, up 23% with organic growth of 19%. The market continues to strengthen with accelerating pipeline conversion positioning the region well for continued organic sales growth. Adjusted operating margin of 28% expanded 920 basis points year-over-year, driven by improved operational leverage and commercial execution as very strong performance across all 3 regions in third quarter. Turning to Slide 8. Let's walk through our fourth quarter 2026 guidance. For Q4, we're projecting adjusted diluted EPS of $2.25 at the midpoint. That represents 65% growth versus prior year. The year-over-year improvement is driven by higher after-tax adjusted operating profit primarily from increased revenue and operating profit rate expansion. On net sales, we expect approximately $4.4 billion at the midpoint. That's up approximately $1.5 billion or 53% versus prior year. Organic sales growth is expected to be approximately 50% with an additional 3% from acquisitions. We expect continued strong organic growth across all regions with Americas in the mid-50s, APAC in the mid-50s and EMEA in the low 20s. Adjusted operating profit is expected to be approximately $1.1 billion at the midpoint. That's up approximately $470 million or 70% versus prior year. Adjusted operating margin rate is expected to be 25.8% at the midpoint. That's up 260 basis points year-over-year, and that's driven by strong organic sales growth and operating leverage, which is offsetting some small mix impact. As you can see, we expect another strong quarter, reflecting the ongoing excellent operational performance of our business teams. Now on to Slide 9. Let's talk about updated full year 2026 guidance. We're raising our guidance across all key metrics. Starting with the adjusted diluted EPS, we now expect $7.15 at the midpoint. That's up approximately $2.95 or 70% versus 2025, and an increase of $0.45 versus our prior guidance. The year-over-year improvement is driven by higher after-tax adjusted operating profit, primarily from increased revenue and operating profit rate expansion. For net sales, we now expect $14.65 billion at the midpoint. That's up approximately $4.4 billion or 43% versus 2025 and an increase of $650 million versus our prior guidance. Organic sales growth is expected to be approximately 38% with an additional 4% from acquisitions and 1% from favorable currency. By region, we expect Americas organic growth in the high 40s, APAC in the mid-30s and EMEA in the low to mid-single digits. Moving to adjusted operating profit. We now expect approximately $3.5 billion at the midpoint. That's up approximately $1.4 billion or 68% versus 2025 and an increase of $190 million versus our prior guidance. Adjusted operating margin is expected to be 24% at the midpoint. That's approximately 360 basis points of expansion from 2025 and 20 basis points above our prior guidance. The margin expansion is driven by strong organic sales growth continued operating leverage and ongoing productivity realization. Finally, adjusted free cash flow is expected to be $2.7 billion at the midpoint. That's up $813 million or 43% versus 2025. The year-over-year improvement is driven by higher adjusted operating profit and cash interest favorability, partially offset by higher net CapEx as we continue to invest in capacity expansion and operating capability. We're delivering strong results, raising our outlook and executing with discipline. With that, I'll hand it back to you, Gio.

Well, thank you, Craig. And let's go to Slide 10 for some initial thoughts on 2027. Data center demand is accelerating. This despite pacing items like power availability, permitting some data centers, sentiment headwinds, shortage of skilled labor for site activity. Many of these pacing items are not headwinds for us. They play directly to voters strengths as we help the industry solve them. We've a robust backlog and strong pipeline visibility, we expect continued significant above-market organic sales growth in 2027. We will continue investing in engineering and R&D for the next-generation technology, expanding capacity and scaling our supply chain and services to widen our competitive lead and stay ahead of our customers' evolving needs and time lines. Growing at this pace is a lot of work. has not always orderly, but we are clearly demonstrating the operational strength to deliver on this challenge. Despite an ongoing inflationary environment, we expect continued margin expansion powered by productivity, strong commercial execution, operational rigor and increasingly deep vertical operating system adoption. We expect to continue generating significant adjusted free cash flow, enabling strategic investments in engineering and R&D, while expanding capacity and pursuing targeted acquisitions that drive shareholder value. The demand environment remains strong heading into 2027, and we believe we are well positioned to capture it and gain market share. We expect strong growth across all financial metrics. And let us go to Slide 11 and wrap up. A strong Q3 performance, we exceeded guidance. The team continues to raise the bar. We raised our 2026 guidance across all key metrics and feel good about how we will end the year and the momentum we carry into 2027. We closed the acquisition of UtilityInnovation Group, adding microgrid solution, advanced power controls and behind the meter power design capabilities. We also closed the acquisition of King Environmental Services, expanding our fluid management and load testing services in Europe. I also want to provide further evidence of the strength of our execution through a couple of examples. First, our long-tenured partnership with EdgeConneX and the design engineering and construction management firm, BCEI. They continue to expand globally with Vertiv as their preferred end-to-end powertrain thermal chain and services partner. Vertiv's innovation, quality, scale and reliability are enabling the deployment of gigawatt scale facilities across multiple locations. We are proud of the trust this customer has Vertiv to deliver at scale. Next our collaboration with SGC Energy and KT Cloud on the Gunsan AI data center project in South Korea, designed to enable scalable high-density AI data centers. The project is utilizing our converged infrastructure to accelerate time to token and deliver at scale. Global reach, technical depth, quality and reliability, scale and industrial leading services defined Vertiv's value proposition. And with that, I think it's time to go to the Q&A part.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Amit Daryanani with Evercore.

Gio, extremely impressive set of numbers for September quarter, and you're seeing 100% plus order growth right now, which I think is well in excess of the underlying gigawatts of capacity addition, the AI ecosystem would do going forward. This would almost imply that Vertiv is actually picking up market share at this point, which I think is very different from the investor concerns around for other quarter around product quality and potential share loss. Perhaps if you think about the strength in September, the 100% plus order growth, can you just talk about how much of this was catch-up versus underlying demand getting better? And to the extent you can focus in on your share within these AI deployments and how that's evolving, that would be really helpful.

As you're saying, we strongly believe that this growth is above the market growth. If you go back to the market model that we shared with you in May, and we believe that's pretty intact in terms of outlook of the market, that is squarely there. So if we continue to talk about about orders and our orders trajectory and I specifically talk about Q3 here. But as you heard, we're pretty positive about kind of orders more broadly speaking. But it is, I think, a way to demonstrate that the industry believes in Vertiv and that our technology, our execution, our customer -- strength of our customer relationships and our ability to deliver are certainly serving our customers customers very, very well. Is it a catch-up? I am not talking about cash up here. We're talking about orders. So orders are a reflection of our strength in the market.

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Davis with Melius Research.

Congrats on the very strong snapback in numbers here. Gio, I want to just follow on a little bit on Amit's question there. As it relates to some of the chatter out there of supply chain issues and such and also product quality issues. There's been chatter of compressors that have been burning out and heat levels and UPS machines or UPS systems that are overheating, and would you character -- I mean, could you give us a little bit of color? I mean one could characterize as kind of normal product development challenges and one could characterize it as a door opening for competitors. So how do you guys think about it? And should we have confidence given the numbers you just provided that these issues are all seemingly overblown and we should just look onward. And I'll pass it on after that.

Well, again, best answer is our performance. Certainly, we operate at high levels of growth and a very vibrant environment when it comes to new products being launched. Many of these new products are new to the industry, if you will. So this growth and this new product situation is always -- is always creating acceleration across the portfolio. But when we see -- we look at the quality data we are optimistic about what we see. We are -- we feel good about the trajectory. We feel good about the direction. When it comes to new products, it's true that if the new product mix is higher, then there is a kind of a higher, let's say, statistically distributed curve in the initial phase of new product. So there might be a mix there. But when we look at the way the infant phase of a new product quality of goals, how it evolves, we see improvement -- constant improvements. So we feel good about that. And it is a complicated industry. It is a complicated set of products. And that's true across the entire industry is not just an aversive thing. So I feel pretty good at where we are. We are not perfect. Absolutely, we're not perfect, but we believe that we continue to reinforce and focus on quality and reliability as one of the competitive advantages for us.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Tusa with Wells Fargo.

Can we just get an update on the supply chain issues from the second quarter, how those played out and whether you we're actually, kind of, like capturing that revenue into this year? And then just a CapEx, maybe a preview of CapEx for 2027?

Yes. So I'd say -- thanks, Steve. On the kind of a recap of the 2Q. Some of that revenue, the delayed revenue did filter into the third quarter numbers. So I think we capped it somewhere around $100 million to $150 million. I think that was some of the recovery we felt in the third quarter. In terms of our feeling of where we sit right now, again, we're continuing to build up those resiliencies in those factories and ensuring that they can deliver the project level outcomes that we expect to. So we said before that is going to be an ongoing thing that we're continuing to improve that. We saw some definite improvements in third quarter. So that was what you felt come through, and we saw some recovery of that in the revenue basis. But we're going to continue to work on making sure that we can deliver at a steady pace and an ongoing pace around those project level outcomes. So I think for us, it's continued effort there. And we did put the capacity in place, as you saw a little bit of that capacity does drive some of the margin things that we've talked about, but definitely put the capacity in place. And your question, we won't highlight 2027 now from an outlook on what our percentage of CapEx would be. Again, we've given a guide for that in the long-term guidance, so we'd update any of that as we come through fourth quarter.

Your next question comes from Joe O'Dea with Vertical Research.

Can you just talk about the mix dynamics in Americas and some of the margin spread there, even if not quantified, just trying to think through the opportunities moving forward as you sort of gain some efficiencies on new products. I'm thinking about what that could mean for margin expansion as you see a narrowing spread between some of these buckets.

Yes, I would say you're exactly right. So some of the margin you're seeing in Americas, again, the incrementals are a little bit lower in the second half than they were in the first half because of some favorable comps. But you also see there, Joe, in the second half that Americas had a large ramp in capacity, which would drive some inefficiency there. So -- and then on the point of the mix, the mix would be that the product side of that had more output than normal in terms of services. So you got a little bit of a mix factor there. So that balances back out you might have a little bit of a pickup on a mix there. And as we got better in terms of bringing our capacity online and getting through that learning curve, you have some potential there as well to continue to work through your margins. I would say as we think about growing this business and the level we're growing it and bringing on capacity, we're always being prudent about how we do that and creating capabilities. So we'll continue to do that. And I think the 30% to 35% that we put out there is the right way to think about it, 30% always being when we're kind of in the ramp mode and trying to make sure we stay there and the high end of that being 35%.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Obin with Bank of America.

Just maybe can we talk about your service organization. It seems like a big differentiator in the market. Can you share some KPIs and particularly getting quite a few questions about any difference in attachment rates on electrical and thermal and how should we think about the opportunity there going forward?

Well, thank you for your question. Of course, services is a very important differentiator for us. We've been vocal, and we continue to believe and we have proof of the fact that it is making a difference. And it's making a difference, especially when the industry is complex. There are a lot of new technology being deployed. So -- particularly in these times. We will not go into details of attach rates, but let's talk directionally. We're pleased by the direction in which our attach rates are evolving. That's a metric that we send obsessively and very granularly measure regionally product line, everything. I would say that the -- they're not necessarily a dramatic difference between the electrical and mechanical pie is more specific maybe to some product lines within the larger groups of technologies. But again, you heard us talk about converged infrastructure. We talked about a system level all things that create even further opportunities for attachment on a broader installed base. So pleased with where we're going.

Your next question comes from the line of Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup.

Gio, maybe you could further characterize the order pipeline for us. I think you suggest it continues to grow, but does it continue to maybe widen out by geography as you go into '27. Obviously, the biggest opportunity seems to continue to be in the U.S. But how big of an opportunity is Europe these days or interestingly India as you go into '27 and beyond?

I go back to what I was saying in terms of pipeline, it's strength, the broad base of strength. Of course, we start from the Americas for us, which of course, the central gravity of the Americas for us is -- and for the market is the U.S. that is intrinsically that absolutely unequivocally the largest market in the world. So I was very explicit about the fact that we are very pleased about pipeline growth in in the Americas. Very pleased in terms of an absolute acceleration of pipeline in the Americas in the third quarter. But the situation is certainly very, very convincing also outside. So I think it's very widespread geographically. Though, of course, some markets starting point is smaller, sometimes very much smaller than the Americas. But that's okay. It's a relative growth that matters. We were talking about the strength in EMEA and the acceleration in EMEA [indiscernible] comes specifically to India, as you were asking, an extremely convincing landscape, an extremely convincing landscape in terms of the combination of the pipeline and our strength in the market. So please don't think that it's only the Americas, but please be convinced with us that the Americas is an absolutely strong market for us.

Your next question comes from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

Yes. Congratulations on the strong results. Gio, I was hoping you could give us a bit more of an update on the 800-volt momentum? I know a number of different products that Vertiv is bringing to market with respect to 800 volt. Can you share a bit more around how that customer momentum is progressing and how impactful 800-volt products may be for revenue in 2027?

Well, we were -- well, thank you for the question. Certainly, a very important one. We were pretty explicit about our road map and what we see in the markets when in July, we dedicated 1 page of our earnings deck to the evolution of power infrastructure, including the 800-volt see. Remember, we talked about 3 model configurations. It's probably more complex than that, but from the current infrastructure to the 800-volt DC to the rack and the row all the way to an end-to-end 800-volt DC. I'd say that the situation continues to be consistent with that. We are pleased with the direction of travel as Vertiv and the demand in the market is evolving in the same direction that we described pretty much 3 months ago with, let's say, initial 800 volts to the rack with medium voltage AC or low voltage AC with BESS as an intermediate, if you will, configuration when going to the full 800 volts [indiscernible] being in the validation part as we speak and started to be revenue generated during 2027 and 2027 being the validation customer validation phase of the full native Andrew and then the deployment into the market in '28. So pretty much the same picture we saw back then, pretty pleased about our trajectory and very consistent with what we shared in May and in July.

Your next question comes from Amit Mehrotra with UBS.

I guess I wanted to ask about maybe just overly tactical first. Usually, you see a pretty nice step-up in revenue 3Q to 4Q. The guidance implies sort of more sequentially flat. Obviously, 3Q was much better. So maybe you can just address that. And then as all this capacity is coming online and the pipeline is great and orders are great, is that jump-off point in 4Q in terms of organic growth sort of the right way to think about growth in '27. And maybe if you don't want to answer it that precisely. Is there any reason why organic growth doesn't accelerate in '27 in light of capacity and order momentum sort of moving in the right direction?

I'll start with the second quarter to third quarter kind of delay that kind of raised up third quarter a little bit there. So we had that delay in second quarter revenue recognition came in third quarter. So brought third quarter up a little bit more than would have historically been there. So if you adjust for that $100 million to $150 million, you're more in a sequential nature than we've seen in the past from the third quarter to fourth quarter number, if you look at that part of the guide. So I think that's a little bit of a normalization there. And again, as Gio and I have said, as we walk through these things, there's always some prudence in the way that we look at our guide. So our fourth quarter guide would be assessing for that as well. In terms of kind of where does it sit is going into 2027. Again, we feel good about where we are right now and exiting the year. We won't comment on 2027 where it's going to go. But just to point back to the fact of pipelines look good. As Gio mentioned, the order book looks good and we feel confident about our ability to execute given the third quarter and what we have in front of us here in fourth quarter.

By the way, Amit, I loved your headline today, too. Well done.

Your next question comes from Toby Okwara with Morgan Stanley.