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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 Rika, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Vertiv's third quarter 2025 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 today. To begin, Lynne Maxeiner, Vice President of Investor Relations, please go ahead.

Great, thank you, Rika. Good morning and welcome to Vertiv's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Vertiv's Executive Chairman, Dave Cote, Chief Executive Officer, Giordano Albertazzi, and Chief Financial Officer, David Fallon. 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'd like to point out that during the course of the 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 risk 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.

Morning all. This was a very strong quarter by any measure. Although I got to say, by looking at the stock price reaction right now, I wonder what would have happened if we hadn't blown the doors off of every single metric. We've exceeded guidance across all metrics in a very convincing way. I continue to say I'm more excited now than ever, and you're seeing why. We're in the early stages of the digital age, and Vertiv's position today reflects the years of focus on customer relationships, disciplined investment, operational excellence, and R&D expansion. Selecting a good strategy, sticking with it day by day, and reinforcing it with monthly growth days works. Our technology leadership comes from consistently staying ahead of where the industry is going. This digital transformation is just beginning.

The scale and speed of what we're seeing in AI and data centers today is just a preview of what's ahead. Data will continue to increase rapidly, and data centers are essential for storage and processing. We are very well positioned to continue to lead through it. I've seen many business transformations over the years, and what's clear is that our strategy is working as our technology focus grows market share. The investments we've made in R&D and capacity are delivering results today, and more importantly, we believe they're building a sustainable competitive advantage that will serve us well for years to come. I'm more confident than ever that we're in the early stages of what I believe will be a multi-year period of significant growth and value creation, and we couldn't have a better leadership team than Gio and his group to make it happen.

Thank you, Dave, and welcome, everyone. We go to slide three. Our Q3 performance demonstrates the strength of our strategy and execution. Our adjusted diluted EPS of $1.24 was up about 63% year-over-year, driven by higher adjusted operating profit. Q3 organic sales grew 28%, with a strong Americas up 43% and APAC up 21%. EMEA declined 4%, relatively in line with our expectations. Particularly encouraging is the 1.4x book-to-build ratio in Q3. Our trailing 12-month organic orders growth of about 21% demonstrates strong momentum, with Q3 orders up 60% year-over-year and 20% sequentially. The market growth ranges from our November 2024 Investor Day remain valid, though tracking at the higher end. With our colo cloud share expanding as the fastest growing segment, the overall market growth is accelerating. We continue to outgrow the market through superior technology and execution.

Q3 adjusted operating profit reached $596 million, up 43% year-on-year, with a 22.3% margin and exceeding guidance. Adjusted free cash flow of $462 million was up 38%, reflecting our strong operating performance. Our 0.5x net leverage demonstrates our strong balance sheets. Given our momentum heading into Q4, we're raising full-year guidance for adjusted EPS, net sales, adjusted operating profit, and adjusted free cash flow. We go to slide four. Vertiv's order momentum and pipeline continue to outpace the strong market. While orders can be lumpy, our Q3 about 21% at trailing 12-month organic orders growth and the 1.4x book-to-build ratio showcase our competitive advantages. As mentioned in July, starting next year, we'll move to providing full-year orders projections with quarterly updates to better reflect our long-term strategic focus. Our sales grew 29% in a quarter, while building an additional $1 billion in backlog from Q2.

Our total backlog now stands at $9.5 billion, up about 30% year-on-year and 12% sequentially. This clearly gives us a strong visibility into 2026. The phasing of our backlog remains consistent with historical patterns, a healthy backlog in a healthy market. Our application expertise and proven track record have positioned us as a preferred partner for strategic projects. Early involvement in project technology and in project planning further drives our above-market growth. Pricing remains favorable, expected to exceed inflation. EMEA sales continue to be muted as a market, due mainly to power availability and regulatory challenges. Here, we're implementing regional restructuring programs to have the right structure for future strong growth, though acceleration may not come until the second half of 2026. When we talk about tariffs, we view them as another input cost to our business.

The situation remains fluid, and we're addressing it with comprehensive mitigation actions and pricing programs. We expect to materially offset current tariffs' impacts as we exit Q1 2026, while optimizing our supply chain and manufacturing footprint. We are progressing well in addressing the operational and supply chain challenges we experienced in Q2. We are accelerating manufacturing and service capacity investments across all regions, particularly in the Americas, while maintaining disciplined fixed cost management. Our engineering and R&D spending continues to accelerate to further strengthen our industry leadership. Speaking of leadership, let's go to slide five, and let me elaborate on our services capabilities. Services turn market complexity into opportunity. From liquid cooling to higher voltages, services are fundamental to our competitive position. We support the complete customer journey, from consultancy through implementation to lifecycle and optimization. Our advanced technology platform combines remote monitoring, predictive analytics, and energy optimization.

Our advanced diagnostics and predictive capability, including thermal mapping and power quality analysis, are helping customers maximize reliability and efficiency with a seamless system integration. What truly sets us apart is combining this technology with our unmatched global scale. The recent Waylay acquisition accelerated this advantage by analyzing real-time machine data, identifying operational trends, and proposing predictive actions from maintenance to energy optimization. As rack densities increase and systems become more complex, this integration of AI-enabled capabilities with our established field service becomes even more advantageous. Technology alone is not enough. Presence and capacity in the field are fundamental. We're scaling our service capacity in parallel with manufacturing, staying ahead of the demand curve. Services, combining advanced technology, global reach, and growing capability, are truly one of Vertiv's superpowers. With that, over to you, David.

Thanks, Gio. Turning to, excuse me, slide six, let me walk you through our strong third quarter financial results, starting with adjusted diluted EPS of $1.24, up approximately 63% from last year's third quarter, with the improvement driven by higher adjusted operating profit and a lower effective tax rate, primarily from progress with tax planning and timing of some discrete items in the quarter. Organic net sales were up 28%, with continued momentum in the Americas up 43%, while APAC was up 21% as we continued to drive top-line expansion across that region. EMEA was down 4%, as Gio mentioned, we continue to see encouraging signs of accelerated growth in that region, likely looking to the back half of 2026. Our adjusted operating profit of $596 million was up 43% from last year and $86 million higher than guidance.

Adjusted operating margin of 22.3% exceeded prior year by more than 200 basis points, primarily driven by operational leverage on the higher sales, positive price cost, and productivity, but partially offset by the negative tariff impact. As we summarized last quarter, operational inefficiencies were driven by supply chain actions to mitigate tariffs. This 22.3% adjusted operating margin was 230 basis points higher than guidance, aided by operational leverage on the higher sales, but also by strong operational execution, including addressing supply chain inefficiencies more quickly than expected just three months ago. There is still work to do, but we are encouraged as we move into the fourth quarter and 2026. Importantly, our year-over-year incremental margin in the third quarter was approximately 30%, a good indication that we continue the path towards full-year adjusted operating margin target of 25% in 2029.

Finally, on this page, we generated $462 million of adjusted free cash flow. That's up 38% from last year, and that translates into approximately 95% free cash flow conversion, and that is consistent with our long-term expectations. Net leverage was 0.5x at quarter end, and we expect to exit the year at 0.2x, providing significant flexibility with future capital deployment. Moving to slide seven, this page illustrates our segment results. As mentioned, the Americas delivered strong organic top-line growth of 43%, driven by accelerated AI demand across product lines and customer segments, and margin expanded 400 basis points despite the tariff headwinds as we continue to drive operating leverage, productivity, and positive price cost. Moving to the right, operating leverage was critical for margin expansion in APAC, which saw 21% organic growth as AI infrastructure continues to drive current and future expected growth across that region.

In EMEA, organic sales were down 4% due to continued industry challenges. However, sales were higher than expectations heading into the quarter, reason for optimism as we expect EMEA to reaccelerate in the back half of 2026, driven by the latent, although inevitable, AI infrastructure demand there. Third quarter adjusted operating margin was significantly below prior year, and we think at a low point, driven by deleverage on lower sales and higher fixed costs as we continue to invest in regional capacity to ensure readiness for the anticipated market recovery. As Gio mentioned, we are implementing a restructuring program primarily in EMEA, but also impacting other regions. This global program, which commenced in the third quarter, costs approximately $30 million, and we expect an annualized benefit of approximately $20 million commencing in 2026.

Now let's move to guidance, where we will address the midpoint of our guidance ranges for both fourth quarter and full year in slides eight and nine. Turning to slide eight, our fourth quarter guidance, we expect adjusted diluted EPS of $1.26, up approximately 27% from prior year, and primarily driven by higher adjusted operating profit. We project net sales at $2.85 billion, with organic growth of approximately 20%. Looking at regional growth rates, we expect momentum to continue in the Americas, up high 30s, with APAC up mid-single digits and EMEA down high single digits, but up mid-teens sequentially from the third quarter.

Adjusted operating profit is expected to be $639 million, up approximately 27% year-over-year, with adjusted operating margin of 22.4%, 10 basis points higher than the third quarter despite higher sales due to headwinds from new tariffs announced since our last earnings release, including those implemented under Section 232, and also a sequential quarterly increase in growth investment as we ready for future strong customer demand. Next, turning to slide nine, our full-year guidance, we are raising our projection for adjusted diluted EPS to $4.10, 44% higher than 2024. This improvement is primarily driven by higher adjusted operating profit, with benefit from lower interest expense and a lower effective tax rate. We are raising our expectations for net sales to $10.2 billion, translating into 27% organic growth for the full year.

We expect adjusted operating profit of $2.06 billion, up 33% from last year, and full-year adjusted operating margin of 20.2%, approximately 80 basis points higher than 2024, demonstrating strong expansion despite the negative impact from tariffs. We are raising our adjusted free cash flow guidance to $1.5 billion, with free cash flow conversion at approximately 95%. Before turning it back to Gio, I do note that this guidance assumes tariff rates active on October 20th are maintained for the remainder of the year. Now with that said, back to Gio.

Thank you very much, Dave. We go to slide 10 to hear some thoughts on 2026. The data center market continues to show remarkable strength, driven by accelerating AI adoption globally. Our order pipeline and market indicators give us confidence in this trajectory, though we may remain softer, and we expect it to rebound in the second half of 2026. Based on our substantial backlog and clear visibility of the pipeline, we anticipate continued significant organic sales growth in 2026. To anticipate and stay ahead of our customers' evolving needs and timelines, we expect to accelerate our investments in supply chain and services capabilities and capacity. Tariffs remain dynamic, but we have a clear action plan and strong execution. Our mitigation strategies are progressing well, and under current conditions, we expect to materially offset their impacts as we exit Q1.

On profitability, multiple drivers support continued margin expansion, strong operating leverage, certainly at these growth levels, ongoing productivity initiatives, and effective price cost management. We remain fully committed to our November 2024 investor day margin targets. Our robust free cash flow provides significant strategic flexibility. Let me elaborate on this a little bit more on page 11. Let's go to slide 11. We are accelerating our investments for growth along three dimensions: capacity. We are investing globally with a significant focus on Americas across multiple technologies. Some examples: our infrastructure solutions capabilities are growing with prefabricated solutions for both gray and white space and entire data center. Vertiv infrastructure solutions enable faster deployment, shorter time to revenue, and alleviate skilled labor constraints on site. SmartRun, our innovative prefabricated white space system shared with you in July, exemplifies this acceleration capability.

The Great Lakes acquisition strengthens our IT systems offering and deepens our white space presence. We are scaling these capabilities as we have done with previous acquisitions, a playbook that we know quite well. In general, our capacity expansion strategy keeps us six to 12 months ahead of demand curves, maintaining technology leadership while driving operational efficiency. The other axis, of course, is technology, and our engineering and R&D spending will grow 20%+ in 2026 with flexibility to accelerate further. Through aggressive R&D investment, we're committed to staying multiple GPU generations ahead. We are accelerating our funding for the system layer, connecting all critical infrastructure elements, and this is a crucial advantage as data centers are becoming increasingly complex. When it comes to M&A, our strong balance sheet enables us both opportunistic bolt-ons and larger strategic acquisitions, all according and in line with our value creation framework.

We maintain a vibrant pipeline across technologies, regions, and deal sizes. As the industry accelerates, we need to stay ahead, whether through smaller technology acquisitions or larger scale opportunities. This strategy strengthens our complete system solution offering, expands our TAM, and enhances our global reach. We will continue investing to extend our technology leadership and deepen our capabilities to serve customers in ways no one else can. Let's now go to slide 12, our last slide. We're certainly pleased with our performance this quarter. Confidence with what we see leads us to raise our full-year guidance. Our 2025 execution demonstrates the strength of our strategy, and it positions us well for 2026. Our strategic acquisitions and increased investment in CapEx and engineering R&D reflect our sense of urgency in capturing opportunities ahead. While the global landscape presents complexities, from tariffs to geopolitical shifts, our approach remains unwavering.

Develop robust mitigating strategies, assign clear accountability, and execute with precision. We're pleased with our progress, but there is more work to do. As you know, we're never satisfied. Looking ahead, our 800 V DC portfolio, planned for release in the second half of 2026, aligns directly with NVIDIA's 2027 rollout of their Robin Ultra platforms. We're collaborating closely with NVIDIA to advance these platform designs. This is about staying ahead of where the industry is going, not just where it is today. What sets Vertiv apart is our system-level expertise across AC and DC power, combined with our thermal management and service capabilities, delivering solutions that address the complete power and cooling infrastructure. Our team understands that leadership means constantly raising the bar for tomorrow, and that's exactly what we will continue to do. With that, I'll turn it over to Rika for our question.

Thank you, Gio. We'll now begin the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question, and if you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A. Your first question comes from Amit Dharani with Evercore. Your line is open.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Impressive set of results here despite the stock reaction today. Gio, I'm hoping you could maybe help us understand the order uptake you're seeing that you're talking about today, up 60%. What is driving this? The part I would love to understand is, when we see Oracle report a $300 billion+ RPO number or OpenAI announce a 10-gigawatt deal with NVIDIA, what's the cadence for these big announcements to flow into orders and revenues for Vertiv? I suspect none of these multiple recent announcements have really made it to orders for the ecosystem yet. I'd love to understand just a little bit on what's driving this order growth in September and the timeframe for when these big headlines we're seeing start to become orders for the company. Thank you.

Good morning, first of all, Amit. Thank you for your question. Certainly, the drivers are a combination of things. A very good market. Certainly, technology evolution in the market that goes in our direction. Certainly, an industry that trusts the ability to scale that Vertiv is displaying. You know what we have multiple times been vocal about are our competitive advantages, our service, our technology, et cetera. All things that certainly drive that demand combined with a reliable execution. On the Oracle side, as an example, I don't want to go too specific, but in general, we see some of the players, many of the players, the large players in this space that talk about backlog expansion that really has to do with their service agreements. I don't want to go into details of what these customers and how they look and measure their backlog.

Typically, those are a different type of backlog, a different type of agreements. On the back of this, in the back of these plans and facts and commercial situations, we have an infrastructure that has been built. You know that build-out is rapid but gradual, nonetheless. The dynamics of the orders to Vertiv or to the likes of us, relative to the dynamics of the order intake and the backlog of our customers, can be very different. They're two sides of the same very positive coin, if you will. They beat to a slightly different drum, if you see what I mean.

We now have the next question from Scott Davis with Melius Research. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, guys, and congrats on having a great year so far.

Gio, since you emphasized it on slide five, kind of the services opportunity here, could you give us a little bit more color on perhaps the margin structure of services versus equipment, the growth rate? You know, is it outgrowing equipment, or you know, since we're in such a hypergrowth period for equipment, perhaps it's not, but it comes in later? Just a little bit more color about how that service opportunity kind of flows through the P&L over the next few years. Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Scott. Clearly, we love our service business a lot. We believe it's a unique competitive advantage, uniquely strong competitive advantage. Certainly accretive. If you go to page five, you see there are various components to our services portfolio. Of course, there are slightly different dynamics in the various components, but certainly overall accretive to our business and certainly generating a lot of recurring revenue in everything that is linked to everything: lifecycle, services, optimization. It's a very robust business. In times where the product system side of the business is growing at this pace typically, it's very normal that the service business lags. Again, it's a very strong flywheel that is catching up speed. It's almost bound to happen. It's going to happen. We see it accelerating. We like the direction in which it is going.

Quite frankly, I'm really, let's say, excited about the technology that we're bringing about. It's really the combination of technology and capacity and presence and customer experience. Expand that to continue to accelerate. That flywheel continues to accelerate. I think an important element is that the type of equipment that is being deployed, the density of technology that is being deployed nowadays in new and newer data centers is certainly conducive to more business service penetration.

Your next question comes from Steve Tusa with JPMorgan. You may proceed.

You guys had said, I think in the release or maybe in the presentation, that you're on track for, I think it was the margins that are embedded in kind of the long-term outlook. I would assume that that means that's more of an, that's kind of more of an absolute margin comment. If revenues are looking better, we should assume that those margins are good, but that would obviously imply a bit lower decremental margin. I'm just curious as to the outlook for, or sorry, incremental margin, the outlook for incrementals. Once you get through these tariffs, can we kind of get back on the horse at 35%?

Are we now at a point where, with the types of projects you're doing and all the modular work and things like that, that maybe a little bit less than more revenue, same margins, which is still very good, but not quite the incremental, same incremental?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, understand your question, Steve. This is David. I would say our path to the 25% long-term margin target in 2029 stays intact. I think we certainly had some noise this year, specifically as it relates to tariffs, not only with the tariffs themselves, but also some of the supply chain countermeasures to address those. Our long-term model assumes incrementals in that 30%-35% range. I think low 30s gets us to that 25% in 2029. If we're at the upper end of that range, we could do it sooner. I would say everything that we see, certainly based on Q3 and what we see shaping up for Q4, certainly keeps us on that path. The one variable, and we were very clear with this in both investor days, is going to be the timing of growth investments and their investments.

You invest upfront, you get the return over time. Even with that, we would believe going into any given year, our expectation is to be in that 30 to 35% range. Maybe the one dynamic for next year is, we certainly wouldn't anticipate a headwind from tariffs. They continue to remain volatile and uncertain, but that was probably the most significant headwind that got us below that 30%-35% range in 2025.

Thank you. We now have Chris Snyder with Morgan Stanley on the line.

Thank you. I wanted to follow up on the prior margin commentary. The one thing that really stood out to me Q2 to Q3 was the sequential margins, you know, operating profit up more than revenue sequentially. I know margins are swinging around a lot with tariffs and how that's being phased in. I guess kind of the question is, if we step back, do you think the price conversations or negotiations versus the customers have changed versus a year ago? Specifically, do you think they've gotten any harder, or is this, you know, kind of still the same environment where they're paying for, you know, speed of supply and innovation of the technology? Thank you.

Thank you for the question, Chris. I'd say that first and foremost, we continue to be focused on and deliver on a price-cost positive type of performance. When it comes to the conversation with the customer, I think we have to be all very, very, very careful in the sense that I don't think we should think about price conversations ever being easy. We have very, very professional, knowledgeable, savvy customers, and they correctly behave as such. The price that one can achieve is really on the back of the value that is being delivered to our customers. Very commercially savvy, technically savvy customers, I don't see a dramatic change in that respect. What is absolutely critical is really the innovation, but the innovation not in and of itself, the innovation that enables additional value creation for them, for our customers. It is a service level.

It is the quality you bring to the party. We think we're doing a very good job in that respect across all axes. Our customers, more or less price-sensitive, they're very business-sensitive. They've always been very business-sensitive. It's up to us to deliver value to them that enables price to be achieved for us.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research. You may proceed.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions on my mind. I guess I'll ask one, actually. Just curious on Europe, actually, your apparent confidence that it does, in fact, get better. The second half of 2026 sounds like a long way away. I mean, watching France, I think, is on their fourth government here in 12 months. Just, you know, your confidence that they get their act together, do you actually see a product pipeline coming together there? Maybe just address a little bit, I guess, the restructuring you're doing to prepare for that eventual growth that you're expecting?

Sure. Jeff, thanks a lot. I probably have been more sanguine about the Europe reacceleration in the past than I've been now. Saying it is going to be a year from now, a year from now when we sit around the same table and phone summarizing our Q3 2026 performance, that means that we are building some wiggle room there for things to really come back. I truly believe that they will come back because the market is in a bad need for AI capacity. There are very stringent data sovereignty reasons why that capacity for inference needs to be in country, in region, in the EU, or in the U.K., etc. Vacancy rates are extremely, extremely low. Oh, by the way, new technology data center design needs to be built. Pipelines are encouraging in terms of the total size of the pipeline.

What I see different is there is a certain vibrancy in the conversation with customers that was not there to the same extent. One of the things I said in the past, I say, "Hey, the people, our customers have many open fronts, and the American front is so demanding that it's absorbing them a lot." While that continues to be the case, I think that they're making headroom, if you will, or let's say they're dedicating a few more brain cycles to the rest of the world, and Europe is certainly one of those. We are positive also about the Middle East landscape from a market standpoint. We will not go into the details of the restructuring for obvious reasons.

Rest assured that it means making sure that as the markets accelerate in the direction of AI infrastructure build-out, we want to have an organization from a delivery and execution and also go-to-market standpoint that is exactly tailored to that. I want to make sure that we do not miss any opportunity and certainly are agile enough for the acceleration. I will not go too much into details.

All right. Thank you for that. Appreciate it.

Thank you. We now have Andrew Obin with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Yeah, just a question on services, assumed services as part of your mode, being the industry leader. As you're getting these strong equipment orders, could you just comment on your investment in services and specifically any KPIs you can give us on headcount? You know, how are you scaling up your support function to keep up with the top line? Thank you.

Yeah, certainly, those big orders and any orders in general infrastructure require a service for sometimes installation, not always. Certainly, very often project management and commissioning and startups are very, very important. I agree with you. That is a mode or, as we like to call it, superpower. When it comes to the headcount, we were talking about north of 4,000 engineers globally. I think we were on north of 4,400. There we go. We are certainly accelerating and continue to invest. The way we approach that is really when we do our SIOP for product demand. On the back of that, there is a SIOP for services. SIOP for services has also a geographic dimension by which we have to understand where our backlog will land and where we will need to increase capacity.

It is, of course, much more dispersed than a manufacturing capacity for obvious reasons, but there are all dimensions that we are taking into consideration. If you think about that, call it about 4,400, 4,500 field engineers, expect that to continue to expand. By the way, just like we talk about productivity in the manufacturing environment, there is productivity in the service environment. We really look at services from a way we run it in terms of a distributed supply chain, distributed factory. We are very rigorous in terms of how we measure the performance in terms of the service level, in terms of time it takes to be on site relative to our contractual commitments, etc. Very, very, very experienced, mature, and paranoid about our service level in the field.

Thank you. We now have Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup.

Gio, can you give us a little more color into your capacity investments that you talked about that you're making, particularly North America? You mentioned you're increasing R&D about 20%+, but how do we think about CapEx growth in 2026? Will we have enough capacity to keep up with your current backlog growth of 30% with the assumption that your revenue growth may not slow much, if at all, from, I think, high 20s this year?

We will not be explicit when it comes to CapEx in 2026, Andy. Clearly, as usual, there are two things at play. One is more footprints and CapEx. The other is productivity and vertical operating systems. Let's not forget the second part because to us, it's very, very, very important. You're right.

Clearly, with the backlog expanding, with the comments that I made, very encouraging comments on the pipelines, we clearly are expanding our capacity. That's particularly true in North America. The expansion, as we have said on other occasions, is predominantly expansion of existing sites. That's something that we like a lot in terms of the speed that it enables from the decision to having that capacity available and the ability to scale very experienced teams that are already running Vertiv plans. That will continue. That is our philosophy. I don't rule out, of course, brand new locations. In general, what we do and what we do well is grow the footprint six to 12 months ahead of when the footprint is needed. I think we do a very, very good job. Never perfect. It's never perfect.

There's always, you know, multiple product lines, multiple regions, but we're pretty satisfied with the direction of travel. We believe it will well sustain our future trajectory. That's really all. If there's anything else, Andy, that I can add.

We now have Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research on the line.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I want to go back to margins. Obviously, a very impressive outcome in 3Q. Maybe, David, give us an update on sort of where we are on this plank reconfiguration, which I think was meant to be completed by the end of the year. Just on the 4Q margins specifically, you did, I think, take it down by maybe a point versus the original, you know, what was embedded in the 4Q plan. Just wondering if that's tariff inflation, you know, some of these secondary tariffs, or whether there's an EMEA mix there. I know I'm rambling a bit here. Can I just clarify the points about 2026 incrementals? Because, you know, with the tariff mitigation, maybe, yeah.

Do we think 2026 can be above the bar in terms of that incremental margin guidance?

Yeah. I would say you weren't rambling until the last five to 10 seconds. No, I think all your questions are very much, very much linked together. Looking at Q4 margins, we did take those down versus prior guidance about 100 basis points, as you mentioned. I would say half of that on the contribution margin side and certainly driven by the incremental tariffs that we saw post-earnings last time. In addition, we're very proud of our operating leverage, but we're not afraid to invest in fixed costs. We are planning to accelerate fixed cost investment into Q4 that were previously planned in the first half of next year. If you put those two together, it's probably half related to contribution margin with tariffs and the other half related to operating leverage. If you look at margins sequentially, relatively flat Q3 to Q4.

Once again, we see benefit as it relates to addressing the operational challenges, but we do have the additional tariff headwinds. Your question related to incrementals for 2026, probably premature to provide any specific numbers. Once again, we'll reiterate, we expect to be in that 30%-35% range in any given year over the next, you know, three to five years that the 25% target is pertinent. We're still evaluating the impact of tariffs, but we do anticipate to materially offset the tariffs that we have line of sight to today with countermeasures we're enacting with both pricing and also transitioning the supply chain. We expect to be, you know, materially offset exiting Q1, which would imply, you know, certainly tariffs not being a headwind year-over-year. Despite uncertainty, we would expect that actually to be somewhat of a tailwind.

Once again, too soon to give any specific numbers as it relates to incrementals. If you backtrack a year, there's nothing in particular that we're looking at at 2026 that would be different than any other year as it pertains to incrementals.

We now have a question from Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

I just wanted to ask on EMEA margins. I think, David, in the opening remarks, you kind of shared confidence that 3Q was kind of the low watermark for EMEA margins. What is the path back to mid-20s? Can we get there without volume growth driven by what you're doing on restructuring, or do we really need volumes to come back to kind of get back to where margins were within EMEA? Thanks.

I would say a combination of both. We did mention that we do anticipate, number one, a sales acceleration in EMEA in Q4. I think I mentioned in my comments up mid-teens. That certainly facilitates improved operating leverage versus Q3. I would say overall that we do anticipate margins in Q4 in EMEA to be significantly higher than what we saw in Q3, including addressing operational inefficiencies. When we talk about the operational inefficiencies as we put in place to address some of the tariffs, we have a global supply chain. A lot of those actions have been put in place to address those inefficiencies in EMEA. We would start to certainly see some definitive impact in Q4.

We now have a question from Mark Denaley with Goldman Sachs. You may proceed.

Yes, thank you very much for taking my question. I was hoping to circle back to the order and pipeline topic. Gio, I think you said in your remarks that the backlog phasing is within typical levels for Vertiv at this point. I think that implies backlog that is project-related would typically be for shipments that are up to 12-18 months forward. When I take that comment on the phasing of your backlog, it would seem to imply that most of these bigger data center announcements that have come out in recent months and are often for projects that are over the next many years have not yet been fully booked by Vertiv. One, is that right? Two, is that what's underpinning some of your comments about the pipeline being healthy?

Let me elaborate a little bit on this, Mark. Thank you for the question. When we talk about the phasing of the backlog, if you take a snapshot now of the $9.5 billion backlog and you look at what is in the 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, whatever, and you look at the same picture for the backlog a year ago, you will see pretty much a similar shape, clearly bigger, 30% bigger, but similar shape. That means that our backlog has not grown by virtue of, let's say, elongation or overstretching. That is good for us. We believe that that is good because that represents the way the industry works. Now, we have seen a lot of very strong, very credible announcements and projects. One would expect Vertiv to be involved in many of those. That would probably be a very reasonable expectation. Let's put it this way.

Those projects are then deployed in phases. If we go back to our pretty maniacal, let's say, sticking to maniacally sticking to the rule of only a PO is legally binding PO constitutes backlog, then you'll see that that backlog pretty much mimics the way and the speed at which deployments occur. In that respect, there's certainly a lot of the more that will be done to fulfill those announcements in our pipeline. As those projects mature, as those projects mature in terms they are ready for deployment, maybe the next 250 MW in a 1 GW deployment, that's the time when orders start to flow in for the likes of us and hopefully for us. Hopefully, that addresses your question, Mark.

We now have Michael Elias with TD Securities. Please go ahead when you're ready.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Gio, on the ground, I'm seeing a massive acceleration in data center demand. I think in the third quarter, data run rate data center demand is up close to 4x. It's great to see you guys investing in production capacity. My question for you is that as you think about adding production capacity, could you help us understand from when you make the decision to expand capacity, how long does it take to have the first unit come off the lot in that new production capacity? As part of that, what's the earliest that you could book into that new production capacity? I only ask because I think you're going to need the equipment in a hurry.

Mike, first of all, thank you for the question. We like the reinforcement about the market trajectory. We wholeheartedly agree on a very, very strong market to the point of capacity. I wouldn't say that there is one answer to that. A lot of our capacity expansion is used more, use that 25%, 30% of capacity that we have latent in the way we build things. If you think about our capacity build-out, do not please think of it in aggregate as one discrete step happening sometimes. That's been going on forever. We continue to expand. What we're saying, expansion rate will accelerate, but expansion has always been going on.

It depends, again, the time to first unit, let's say, the time to revenue for new capacity can vary from a few months for line reconfiguration, like three, four, five months, to maybe 12 months for larger expansion that requires building from scratch. One thing that we like a lot, and that's why we like a lot, is that if we just expand existing facilities, that is really just a technical time to have the new equipment available. You know we have the systems, the people, the leadership, all ready to go and really expanding their volume of business, a lot of scale, and a lot of speed. Think about something that can go from a few months to maybe a 9-15 months window. We, of course, build on our backlog, but also on the visibility that we have in a pipeline. Hopefully, addressing your question.

Vertiv Holdings (VRT) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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