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Vertiv Holdings (VRT): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Vertiv Holdings

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Good morning. My name is Jeannie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Vertiv's Q1 2026 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. 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. Thank you, Jeannie. Good morning and welcome to Vertiv's Q1 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Vertiv's Executive Chairman, Dave Cote, Chief Executive Officer, Gio Albertazzi, and Chief Financial Officer, Craig Chamberlin. We have one hour for the call today. During the Q&A portion of the call, please be mindful of others in the queue and limit yourself to one question. If you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. Before we begin, I would like to point out that 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 forward-looking statements are subject to material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.

We refer you to the cautionary language included in today's earnings release, and you can learn more about these risks in our annual and quarterly reports and other filings made with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that we make today are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we will also present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Our GAAP results and GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations can be found in our earnings press release and in the investor slide deck found on our website at investors.vertiv.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Executive Chairman Dave Cote.

I'm very pleased with how we started the year. The momentum we're seeing across the business is strong, and it's translating into the kind of performance that gives us confidence to raise our outlook for the full year. What we're seeing in customer conversations is different than six months ago. The urgency has increased, the scale of deployments is larger, and the technical complexity is creating opportunities for companies that can solve system-level problems, which is exactly where we excel. We're seeing broad-based strength, and that tells you something about the depth of demand and our ability to capture it. I like what we're seeing in the industry and the continued evolution of Vertiv. We're still in the early stages of the infrastructure build-out for AI. Our competitive advantages are compounding.

If you can deliver products, systems, integrated solutions, and services at scale, you become even more important to your customers' technology roadmaps. We're also managing the challenges well. Tariffs, supply chain complexity, labor constraints. These are real, but they're manageable. Additionally, they raise the bar in ways that favor established players like us. Gio and the team are executing very well in this rapid growth environment, balancing aggressive growth and share gain with operational discipline. We're expecting a strong year ahead and strong years in the future. With that, let me turn it over to Gio to discuss it further. Gio?

Well, thank you very much, Dave. Let us go to slide three. Well, I'm quite pleased with how we started 2026. Q1 was very strong with organic sales up 23% year-over-year. We reported growth of 30% when we include M&A and FX. From a regional perspective, America was the primary engine with 44% organic growth. APAC was up 12% organically, while EMEA was down 29% organically. In the few slides, you will hear us elaborate on some of the encouraging dynamics we're seeing in EMEA. Adjusted operating margin came in at 20.8%, up 430 basis points year-over-year, and 180 basis points above our guidance. Margin performance and strong top-line growth drove adjusted operating profit of $551 million, up 64% year-over-year. Adjusted diluted EPS of $1.17 were up 83% versus Q1 2025 and exceeded our guidance by $0.19.

Adjusted free cash flow of $653 million was up 147% versus the prior year, driven by higher operating profit and continued working capital improvement. We are raising our full year guidance, and we now expect adjusted diluted EPS of $6.35, up 51% from 2025. This is supported by raising our adjusted operating profit guidance to $3.2 billion, up 53% from 2025. Adjusted operating margin is now expected to be 23.3%, 290 basis points higher than 2025. Let's go to slide four. Let's start with the market environment. Our pipeline momentum continues to be strong. Our pipeline generation is robust, and we're still expecting another year of strong orders performance in 2026. We anticipate orders to be up year-over-year, which reflects the sustained demand environment we're seeing across our markets. Americas continues to show remarkable strength. The market momentum is broad-based and robust.

Our pipeline in the region continues to expand as we convert opportunities. In EMEA, the spring continues to uncoil. We're seeing improving market sentiment throughout the quarter with momentum building. I know we do not disclose orders, but we are very pleased with EMEA's Q1 bookings. We feel good about EMEA returning to year-over-year sales growth in the second half, which you see embedded in our guidance. When it comes to APAC, we see positive market dynamics across the region. Rest of Asia and India are showing convincingly strong pipelines and dynamics with robust momentum building. China is also showing encouraging pipeline movement, and this positions us well as we move through the year. On pricing, we continue to see favorable dynamics. We expect positive price cost in 2026, including the impact of tariffs and tariff countermeasures.

From a manufacturing and supply chain perspective, we're expanding while continuing to strengthen our resilience. Our regionalized footprint and multi-sourcing strategies are maintaining stability despite evolving trade dynamics and tensions in the Middle East. We are accelerating our strategic capacity investments to meet the demand we're seeing. We're expanding our global manufacturing service footprint while unlocking latent capacity with VOS-driven productivity gains. Our cost management remains disciplined. We expect these investments to position us very well for the current and future demand environment. We manage commodities and components proactively. This, combined with our multi-source model and supplier diversification, provides a critical buffer in what remains an inflationary environment. Through various countermeasures, we are actively working to mitigate tariff exposures, including recent changes under Section 122 and 232.

In this very dynamic environment, growth-wise, geopolitically, et cetera, we stay focused on supply chain resilience, growth, capacity expansion, and navigating the tariff environment. A lot going on, but we are focused on execution. Let's go now to slide five. We continue to see very robust growth in demand for data centers, and as a result, we are focusing investments on capacity expansion, supply chain, and engineering capabilities. We are committed to continue to grow capacity, supporting our customer demands, and we continue to deliver above-market growth. Our CapEx in Q1, sustainably higher than in the same quarter last year, is testament to that commitment. We are making significant investments in capacity expansion across both manufacturing and services. On the manufacturing side, we're expanding capacity organically across multiple sites globally, and particularly across the Americas, of which you see some details here.

These investments are strategic and position us to meet the accelerating demand. We do this for growth, but also to bolster our overall operational resiliency. This capacity expansion is broad-based, power management, thermal management, infrastructure solutions, and IT systems across all technologies. We're doing the same with our services capability. Specifically, we are scaling our people and service capacity vigorously and convincingly across all service technologies and regions. In particular, the acquisition of PurgeRite significantly strengthens our fluid management and liquid cooling capabilities, enhancing our system-level services offering. This is one of the most technically demanding and financially consequential aspects of modern data center operations. With respect to our supply chain, we have prioritized multi-sourcing strategies to mitigate supplier risk. Strategic acquisitions are further strengthening our supply chain capabilities. Finally, we continue to prioritize investment in our engineering capabilities in multiple directions.

Clearly, one is engineering labs central to development of our technology portfolio. Customer witness test capabilities are another important area of investment. The complexity of data center technologies requires extensive test capacity at the beginning of a delivery. Growing customer test capacity with volume is a growth enabler. We will have an opportunity to continue to elaborate on what capacity expansion means during our upcoming Investor Day. With that, it's over to you, Craig.

Thanks, Gio. Let's start with the Q1 results on slide six. As you can see, we had an excellent start to the year. Adjusted diluted EPS was $1.17, up 83% year-over-year and $0.19 above our prior guidance. On the top line, net sales were $2.65 billion, up 30% versus prior year, with organic net sales up 23%, with acquisitions contributing 4% and favorable FX adding 3%. This organic growth was driven by Americas up 44% and APAC up 12%, partially offset by EMEA down 29% organically. Adjusted operating profit of $551 million increased 64% versus the prior year and came in $56 million higher than our guidance. Our adjusted operating margin of 20.8% expanded by 430 basis points versus last year, showing a great operating performance from the team.

The main drivers were strong operational leverage on higher volumes, productivity gains, and favorable price cost execution, which was partially offset by ongoing tariff headwinds. On the cash side, we delivered $653 million of adjusted free cash flow. That's up 147% from the prior year Q1. This was supported by higher operating profit and working capital efficiency, partially offset by higher cash tax and increased net CapEx as we continue investing in capacity and ER&D to support business growth. We exited the quarter with net leverage of 0.2x, providing us with significant strategic flexibility. Flipping to slide seven, let's look at segment performances by region. Americas delivered another outstanding quarter. Net sales were $1.81 billion, up 53%, with 44% organic growth, reflecting strong broad-based momentum across nearly all product lines. Adjusted operating profit was $490 million, with margins benefiting from operational leverage, disciplined execution, and commercial intensity.

Looking at APAC, net sales were $514 million, up 15%, 12% organically. Organic growth came in below quarterly guidance, primarily due to timing. Adjusted operating profit of $67 million was up approximately 48% year-over-year, mainly driven by volume leverage and operating discipline. Turning to EMEA, net sales were $321 million, down 29% organically. We believe this is a temporary reflection of softer orders that we saw in Q2 and Q3 of 2025. However, we're seeing opportunity generation accelerating, reflecting improved customer demand and supporting a return to sales growth in the back half of 2026. We saw a step down in margins here year-over-year due to operating deleverage. However, our conviction has gotten stronger for a second half recovery in EMEA, which you see embedded in our EMEA full year guidance. On slide eight, let's discuss our Q2 guidance.

We're projecting adjusted diluted EPS at the midpoint of $1.40, which is 47% higher than our Q2 2025. Net sales at the midpoint are $3.35 billion, which reflects 27% net sales growth versus prior year. Adjusted operating profit at the midpoint of $710 million represents 45% growth versus Q2 2025. This strong profit growth is supported by robust organic sales growth and continued operating leverage. Adjusted operating margins at the midpoint of 21.2% is up 270 basis points, supported by strong organic sales growth and fixed cost leverage. Additionally, we expect to materially offset unfavorable margin impact from tariffs. This guidance reflects our confidence in the strength of our market position and our ability to execute on the significant opportunities ahead of us. Now on to slide nine. Let's talk about our full year 2026 guidance.

We continue to expect another strong year of strong performance across all key metrics. We are raising adjusted diluted EPS guidance by $0.33 to a midpoint of $6.35, which represents 51% growth versus prior year. For net sales, we're updating our guide to $13.75 billion at the midpoint, reflecting 34% net sales growth versus prior year. By region, we expect organic growth rates of high 30s% in Americas, mid-20s% in APAC, and flat in EMEA. The updated adjusted operating profit is now at a midpoint of $3.2 billion, representing 53% growth versus prior year and $160 million higher than our prior guidance. This strong profit growth is driven by a combination of robust organic sales growth and continued operational leverage.

Finally, on margins, we're guiding to 23.3% adjusted operating margin at the midpoint, an expansion of 290 basis points from 2025 and 80 basis points higher than our prior guidance. This expansion is supported by 30% organic sales growth and continued operational leverage. We expect to be price cost positive for the year, inclusive of tariff impact and the countermeasures with fixed cost leverage, still investing in growth, ER&D, and capacity. For adjusted free cash flow, we're maintaining our guidance of $2.2 billion at the midpoint, up 17% versus prior year, primarily due to higher operating profit, partially offset by higher cash tax and net CapEx investments. With that, I'll hand it back to you, Gio.

Well, thank you, Craig, and let us go to slide 10. Before I wrap up, I once again want to invite all of you to tune in to our 2026 investor conference that will be held on the 19th and 20th of May in Greenville, South Carolina. This will be an excellent opportunity to gain first-hand insight into Vertiv's visions and strategy from our leadership team. On the first day, the agenda includes a comprehensive market update, a detailed financial overview, and our updated multi-year outlook, and Q&A sessions, of course, with the leadership team. The following day, we will have a technology session where you'll hear about how we continue to innovate and drive the industry. This will be followed by a tour of our Pelzer Infrastructure Solutions facility for those who will be joining us in person.

It's going to be a great opportunity to see what we're building and where we are headed. Now let's go to slide 11. Our Q1 results were a strong testament to Vertiv's execution capabilities and the momentum continuing to build in our markets. The demand environment is robust, and we are very well positioned to carry that forward. We have recently announced two strategic acquisitions that are expected to strengthen our competitive position. ThermoKey, which is anticipated to close in a few months, will expand our thermal management portfolio with great heat exchange know-how and a leading range of dry coolers, a capability for the globe, starting in EMEA. Heat rejection is becoming more complex for AI data centers, and a portfolio comprising chillers, dry coolers, trim coolers, offers great flexibility and efficiency opportunities for our customers.

BMarko Structures, which brings custom-engineered structural fabrication capabilities that accelerate our ability to deliver manufactured and converged infrastructure solutions at scale. Both are expected to provide capacity and capabilities to better serve our customers while expanding our technology base. We have raised our 2026 guidance, reflecting our confidence in the trajectory of the business and opportunities ahead. EMEA is absolutely part of the AI story, and we're seeing that play out with customer projects like EcoDataCenter in Sweden, designed to support the most demanding AI workloads with NVIDIA's latest generation Vera Rubin GPUs. Vertiv OneCore was selected to deliver the full data center solution here, encompassing power, thermal, IT white space, and services. We are excited about our collaboration with CPower Energy.

Together, we are enabling U.S. data centers to turn their on-site energy assets into grid resources, accelerating speed to power, improving resilience, and reducing cost for data centers and their communities. This is the kind of end-to-end thinking that sets Vertiv apart. Our long-standing customer relationships, combined with our deep partnerships, create a significant competitive advantage that is very difficult to replicate. We continue to move further, and the market is recognizing it. Achieving investment-grade credit ratings and inclusion in the S&P 500 are meaningful milestones. They reflect the strength of this business, the execution prowess of this team, and the confidence the market has placed in our trajectory. I do not take that lightly. Neither does the rest of the Vertiv team. We hold ourselves to a high standard and will continue to raise the bar.

We had a strong quarter, we expect to build on it, and we will. With that, we can begin the Q&A.

We will now begin the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question. If you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Then your first question comes from the line of Scott Davis with Melius Research. Please go ahead.

Can you talk about the prefab market, like how important this market is, or is there any way to think about a TAM? You seem to have a lot of content in prefab, and just trying to get a sense of how the customers view the importance of that content?

Thank you for the question, Scott. Multiple dimensions to this. One is we know that speed or time to token is absolutely essential in the market. Clearly, prefabrication alleviates challenges on-site. A construction site is always a complex system to manage. There is a scarcity of talent, trade, resources. We see, and we certainly are stimulating, if you will, an increasing adoption of prefabrication. But there is way more to it than that. For us, prefabrication is not just prefabrication. It's convergence of our solution into a system like OneCore, not only OneCore, but OneCore, SmartRun, et cetera, systems that are designed, converged, and optimized already from the beginning on a given set of loads and silicon. It is also a way to make the whole system more efficient and more dense in many respects.

There are multiple reasons why this is being adopted, and there are multiple reasons why we believe we are ahead of the pack here, because we're not just an integrator. We provide technology. You were also asking about the TAM for us. Clearly, that is a concentrator of opportunity for us because prefabrication is, for us, an operative technology solution. That helps us to capture more of the TAM.

That's helpful, Gio. Excuse my voice, the allergies are killing me the last couple of days.

You mentioned capacity as with productivity, and I'm kind of intrigued. What kind of productivity levels can you run when you're adding capacity, obviously quickly, you're trying to get a lot of stuff out the door. What kind of levels of productivity can you actually run at? I'll just leave it at that. Thanks.

Well, my productivity comment was really the manufacturing systems in a factory, vis-à-vis having a piece-by-piece assembly going on-site. That is the traditional way in which the data center business is run. I wouldn't go down the path of exactly comparing. When we prefabricate, and certainly we will have an opportunity to have a direct conversation when we walk the floor in Pelzer. We definitely achieve manufacturing productivity levels when we manufacture the systems.

Okay. Very helpful. I'll pass it on. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Best of luck this year.

Your next question comes from the line of Amit Daryanani with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Perfect. Thanks. I'll try to stick to Lynn's ask for one question. Maybe it's multi-part, though. Gio, the calendar 2026 guide that you folks have right now sort of implies 30% organic growth for the full year, versus I think we've done like 22%, 23% growth in the H1 of the year. Can you just help us understand what are the levers that you're seeing, and maybe you can quantify some of these levers that you're seeing that enable the step-up in growth in the back half versus the H1? I assume EMEA and maybe more capacity and Rubin are all parts of the story, but I would love to just understand, what do you see that gives you confidence that growth can accelerate organically in H2 versus H1? Thank you.

Okay. I will start. Certainly, Craig will also comment here. I'd say that it's really two things if you really think about it at a high level. One is capacity. We are adding capacity. We're constantly adding capacity. As you could see from our CapEx profile and what we mentioned about Q1, we're very focused on adding capacity, and a lot of that capacity starts to hit us in the second half. The other thing is, if you think about our Q4 orders, there certainly is a good load of backlog in that part of the year. If you think about the customer requested lead times that we've been talking about quite extensively, there's more to it, but I would say those are two important elements to the equation.

Yeah. Amit, I'll double-click on that a little bit. You're right in terms of APAC and EMEA. When you think of them in terms of the H1 versus the H2, there is an accelerated growth in the second half in both of those regions. We've talked extensively about that in terms of what we look like, and what we expect the uncoiling of EMEA to happen, and how we're seeing that come through, and that's the way it is in the guide as well.

Perfect. Thanks a lot. I'll step back in the queue. 

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research Partners. Please go ahead.

Hey, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Hey, I wanted to come around to service. Obviously a very clear acceleration in the last several quarters, and actually service growth kind of coupling to product growth in the Americas. We've been waiting for this backlog growth to really come through strongly. It looks like it's happening at this point. Could you maybe just address kind of the field organization, the ability for service to grow at this pace, how the margin complexion of service may or may not be changing, and just how to think about that outlook over the balance of the year?

Yeah. There's certainly multiple angles here, Jeff, and again, I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to further elaborate in May. At a high level, of course, we're satisfied with the trajectory of service, and that's true for both the project services and the life cycle services. To your question about what is our service organization, we're very present in the territory. Very local. At the same time, we understand that the big projects that are out today are also sometimes concentrated. We have developed the ability to move people and have teams of people that are dedicated to addressing the big data center deployment when it comes to project services. We remain, and we continue to nurture and strengthen and grow a very local, on the territory type of services presence. We mentioned a couple of times that we are investing heavily.

I mentioned it in my script. We are growing our services population, and we will have details in May. Of course here, our strength and tradition and experience in training newcomers is absolutely essential, combined with increasingly strong tools that are at the fingertips of our engineers. Absolutely multifaceted. What we like when we talk in general about services is the fact that the installed base that is being created is very conducive to our lifecycle capture and business over time.

Yep. Jeff, I'll just double-click on that a little bit too. In terms of on a reported basis, yes, products and services are equal. If you look at organic, you're seeing the feeling or you're feeling the impact of PurgeRite there as well.

I just wanted you to be sure that you kind of understood that. PurgeRite is a big impact for us, but so we like that.

Yeah, I did see that. I wonder, though, if you could also just maybe a little bit more color on how to think about margins? I guess that the nature of my question is labor-related services, we don't think about operating leverage. It's man-hours or people hours, but there's kind of other more sophisticated services that come into play. Just how should we think about operating leverage in that business as it grows?

No, I think you would probably point to the fact of what we're seeing from our own overall incremental margins when you think about that. Overall incremental margins were always in the neighborhood of 30%-35%. I would say that would kind of be similar in terms of the way that we would expect services to pull through as well.

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

Just maybe we can talk about the evolution of behind the meter. It just has become a lot more prominent over the past four, six months. What technology avenues does it open to Vertiv? I'm sort of thinking controls, desk controls, sort of UPS transition as part of direct current architecture, but also maybe different chiller technology, things like absorption chillers. I'm sure you've thought about the roadmap over the next two, three years, and I know you'll talk about it at the Analyst Day, but it seems to be evolving fairly rapidly. How are you positioned?

Well, I think you've got it pretty much right, Andrew, in terms of certainly bring your own power is something that is here to stay, and we see it very clearly. We talked about partnerships today. Remember the partnership we have with Caterpillar, with Oklo. In various shapes and forms, bring your own power is a very important part of the data center equation, especially in the U.S. Certainly, we play a role in everything from microgrids, battery energy storage systems, interfacing and making sure that the entire powertrain, be it direct or alternate, are consistent and designed for a bring your own power solution. As we've said multiple times, and we keep saying, the data center needs to be looked at as one system.

You're right when you say, "Hey, this has implications, might have implications also on the thermal side of things." Exactly, absorption is one of the things that naturally people and we think about. We will have more details in May, but rest assured that we see bring your own power being an integral part of how we design and think a data center. It is an opportunity for us ultimately because it makes the system more complex and possibly with more content for us.

Your next question comes from the line of Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Can we just double-click a little bit on what you're seeing in EMEA? It seems like from the commentary at the beginning of the call that you're gaining conviction in the second half ramp. Could you just talk a little bit more about what you're seeing and hearing from customers there that's driving that higher confidence? Thanks.

Well, you're right, exactly. As I said, we're very pleased with Q4 orders. We're very pleased with the Q1 orders and pleased by what we see in the pipeline. We see the market moving. We see pipeline acceleration increasing. That is really a signal and the proof of a service pervasive market and a demand that is there, which was natural. That's why we were talking about a coiled spring, because there is a shortage of data center capacity, significant shortage of data center capacity, and even more profound shortage of AI-capable data centers in EMEA and in Europe in particular. Hence the dynamics that you see. Of course, we're very well-positioned in Europe because of historically our strong presence, but also because a lot of the players are players here and are players in Europe. There is a very encouraging opportunity there.

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Baumann with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Oh, good morning. Just had a quick one on margins. Just wanted to see if you could give some color on the sequential expectations. From Q1 reported to the Q2 guidance, looks like the incremental margin is in the low 20s%, and I'm just wondering if you could unpack the moving parts on that. Whether it's capacity investments or tariffs or whatever, just any color you can give on that.

Yeah. Patrick, I would say again, when we look at it sequentially or year-over-year, it's in the low 30s, which was what we are expecting in terms of our guide. Quarter-over-quarter, there is a little bit of headwinds as we bring on capacity. This is probably one of our bigger ramps in terms of capacity in the Q2. There would be a little bit of a, I'd say, a change in that when you look at it from Q1-Q2. If you look across the full year, we're still guiding to that between that 30%-35% for the overall sequential margin.

I'd say it's a bit of a bump from 1Q-2Q in terms of when we're bringing on capacity and working through all the different various actions that we have to do, offsetting all the tariffs and working through that. The 232s have now changed. I think there's a little bit of a dip there, but I'd say overall, still feel very strong about the year being in the 30-35 range that we've given.

Just a quick follow-up on that. The tariffs, I think you said to materially offset it, you thought that would be at end of Q1. Has that kind of slipped out to Q2 now because of the changes, or are you kind of already there at the end of the Q1?

I'd say we're already there at the end of the Q1. As 232s have changed, we're continuing to do, I'd say, actions and countermeasures around those. If you look at it for the full year, we feel confident that we'll continue to materially offset those.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Kaplowitz with Citi. Please go ahead.

Gio, obviously, you've talked about the Americas continuing to be strong, but maybe you could talk about how much of the business is still being driven by hyperscalers in colo versus enterprise. I assume it's still heavily weighted toward the former, but enterprise markets seem to be picking up a bit, given AI needs and usage. When could that impact Vertiv? Is it something you see accelerating in 2027 or not sort of yet?

Obviously, clearly, we continue to see hyperscale, colo, neocloud being the biggest driver. Certainly it's true in the Americas, but globally pretty much. Certainly there is an element of enterprise here. A lot of enterprise will continue to happen through cloud, so not always easy to separate. We see enterprise starting to adopt AI. When that will be visible in terms of growth above the levels that we shared with you in the past, that's something that we will certainly elaborate in May, but is probably a little bit still far away as independent. There is a lot happening at colo level, if that helps.

Your next question comes from the line of Christopher Snyder with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I wanted to ask about the transition to 800-volt architecture. There's a lot of moving parts, but just wondering what does this mean for Vertiv content, and when does the company expect to start shipping to these 800-volt design facilities? Just specifically interested in liquid cooling, and wondering if there could be some TAM expansion with applications beyond just cooling the chips as there is now a higher level of heat presumably running through the facility. Thank you.

Chris, thank you for your question. Clearly, we wouldn't see necessarily as a transition, a wholesale transition to 800 volt. Clearly, 800 volt is going to be an important portion of the total market as we go into 2027 and beyond. We are on time with our programs. We were talking about second half this year launches of our portfolio. We are pleased with where we are in terms of the customer feedbacks with the prototypes and validation activities that we have ongoing. Shipping will be a little bit further away, but I think it's a little bit premature to elaborate too much, but we see it as a 2027 thing, this one.

When it comes to liquid cooling and the influence of 800-volt, I would say that there will be a correlation, not a causation necessarily, simply because 800-volt DC is applied for very high-density compute. That very high-density compute will see not just liquid cooling for the chip, but for a much bigger array of electronics across the entire IT stack. Of course, that has then influenced the entire power train, thermal chain. We see that as an opportunity for us. We're very excited, very pleased with where we are with the 800-volt DC programs, and we're getting ready for it.

Your next question comes from the line of Amit Mehrotra with UBS. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I just wanted to ask a question about the pipeline. I think what was so interesting last quarter is obviously you had a big order number, but I believe the pipeline also grew double digits sequentially. Maybe you can just talk about the pipeline as it kind of evolved in the Q1, momentum and quoting activity funnel. Anything you can give within the confines of not talking about orders. Thank you.

Yes. Well, thank you for the question. Clearly, we were very vocal about the strength of the pipeline Q4, and we are as vocal about the strength of the pipeline at the end of Q1. With that, the pipeline generation, that to us is exactly what you defined as the activity volume of commercial activity. This growth and this dynamism is broad-based. It's broad-based across our technology range, and it's broad-based across our regions. Very pleased and very encouraged. This enhances our comment about our overall year orders.

Anything to call out in duration? I know you said most of this is within 12 months, maybe some bleeding into 18 months. Any change in complexion on the orders as you come into the Q1 or Q2 in terms of duration or no?

You're talking pipeline or you're talking orders, just to be clear? I can elaborate both.

I'm talking about orders. I'm talking about what's in the backlog right now, the growth.

What's in the backlog? Could you just think about a backlog shape that is, if anything, a little bit more elongated, but not something dramatic to the point that the shape of the backlog is totally different. There is no distortion of the backlog. If anything, it's a backlog that is a little bit more elongated. That, of course, gives us good visibility in 2027. As we said, a lot of the projects in the industry are large projects where customers ask for call it 12-15, sorry, 12-18 months delivery windows. We have seen some occasions the requested delivery window shorten a little bit. We, of course, maybe on that nine-12 months window, our average delivery time, of which we're capable, are shorter than that. Again, you can't really say. Different product lines, different dynamics, supply and demand.

In general, despite the fact that of course everything is very dynamic, pretty much I go back to what I was saying, a backlog that is not dramatically different. If anything, a little bit more elongated.

Very good. Thank you, Gio. Appreciate it.

Your next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Maybe just to switch tack a little bit to the sort of cash flow and balance sheet. I suppose just trying to understand the free cash flow dollar guide is unchanged, and I can see the sort of bigger working cap outflow dialed in, but I would think you'd get good customer advances from orders, and your working cap was a nice tailwind in Q1. Maybe just talk us through sort of the thinking there, and the balance sheet, allied to that, extremely unlevered as a result of that good Q1 cash flow. Any highlights you'd give us on sort of capital deployment from here?

I'll start off, and then I can pass it to Gio. I would say in terms of just looking at the working capital over the course of the year, kind of two points on that. One is, yeah, we are investing in terms of the ramp, so you do see a little bit of a drag from that from an inventory perspective. When we look at our order book and forecast out the way that we look at customer down payments or customer advancements, we are a little bit prudent in the way that we look at that and the way that we forecast that. Both of those come into consideration when we look at the guide, Julian.

Again, you're feeling a little bit of that, and we basically would say the same thing is, one, there's a little bit of a ramp in terms of inventory, and two, just some prudence in the way that we look at our order book and the down payments we expect. On number two, on the capital deployment, when you think of the point two leverage, I think we go back to what we've said all along is there's two spaces where we love to invest in on a regular basis, and that's the R&D book and the capacity book. You can see on the flow through of our cash flow statement that we're following with that drumbeat, that's what we like to do, and that's where you see us continue to invest heavily.

The other portions of that are capital deployment in terms of M&A or stock buyback or increased dividends. I think the biggest area that we'd use cash there and that we always look to have some dry powder would be the M&A space. We've done some this quarter, as you saw. I think we'd continue to keep that open and that optionality available for us. I don't know if you want to.

Yeah. No, absolutely. Maybe a short comment on the M&A side. You see us having a very dynamic posture in that respect. When we say we've said and continue to say that our M&A pipeline is very active. You have seen us do acquisitions that are bolt-ons, predominantly technology-based. We love technology. Our pipeline is well-structured and quite convincing. We'll continue to be focused on this area of capital deployment too.

Your next question comes from the line of Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Vertiv Holdings (VRT) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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