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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 Nadia, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Vertiv's fourth quarter and full year 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 for today's conference call, Lynne Maxeiner, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Great. Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, and welcome to Vertiv's fourth quarter and full year 2025 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.

Well, I am extremely pleased with how we executed in the fourth quarter and for the full year of 2025. We delivered strong results across key metrics, and we've got tremendous momentum heading into 2026 and beyond. What you're seeing is the payoff from years of strategic investments and disciplined execution. Our focus on engineering innovation, capacity expansion, and deep customer partnerships is translating directly into results. Gio and his team are doing an outstanding job executing our strategy, and I'm impressed with how they are navigating both opportunities and challenges. The AI-driven infrastructure build-out is accelerating, and data centers are at the center of it all. We're still in the early innings of this secular growth trend. Vertiv's position in this market keeps getting stronger.

Our technology leadership and global scale, along with our service and operational capabilities, aren't easily replicated, and we keep widening that gap. We've established a strong record. We commit to ambitious goals, and we deliver. Now, here's what excites me the most: Vertiv isn't choosing between today and tomorrow. We're winning now and winning later, positioning us to create value both now and well into the future. Said more simply, we ain't done yet. With that, I'll turn it over to Gio, our leader and architect of this most excellent day.

Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Dave, and welcome, everyone. We go to Slide 3, and I'm certainly quite pleased with how we closed 2025. Another very strong quarter and a very strong year. Organically, fourth quarter orders were up 152% year over year and up 117% sequentially. Very strong, all regions, all markets. Trailing twelve-month organic orders growth was 81% and would be even higher if we included our recent acquisitions. Our book-to-bill ratio was 2.9 times. Our backlog stands at $15 billion, more than double last year's. Q4 organic net sales were up 19%, primarily driven by remarkable strength in the Americas, which grew 46% organically. APAC was down 9%, and EMEA down 14%.

Q4 adjusted operating margin was 23.2%, up 170 basis points from Q4 2024. Adjusted operating profit was $668 million and was up 33% from prior year. Our fourth quarter adjusted diluted EPS was $1.36, up 37% from Q4 2024. Adjusted free cash flow for the full year was circa $1.9 billion, with an adjusted free cash flow conversion of 115%. For 2026, we are projecting adjusted diluted EPS of $6.02 on organic sales growth of 28%, with adjusted operating margin of 22.5%. But let me give you some color on what we see regionally, and for that, we go to Slide 4. Let's start with the Americas.

Americas continues to be the primary engine of our growth. Sales in 2025 were strong and broad-based across products and customer segments. The market is accelerating. Even after the large Q4 order intake, our pipeline continues to grow. Our guidance assumes a sales growth in the high 30s%. Americas led acceleration, and that momentum continues. If we go to EMEA, well, we can say that the coiled spring is uncoiling. The market sentiment has significantly improved. Pipeline growth has accelerated. We saw strong orders in Q4, and we expect that to continue in 2026. We expect to return to sales growth in the second half of the year. When it comes to APAC, well, that is accelerating. Despite China remaining muted, we saw strong Q4 orders growth, and we expect China's soft growth rate to persist in 2026.

But India and rest of Asia are robustly accelerating, and we're well positioned to capture that growth. Now, let's go to Slide 5, where I want to start with customer demand on the left of the Slide, and just to say Vertiv's momentum is quite remarkable. Trailing twelve-month organic orders grew 81%, fourth quarter orders were up more than 250%. Book-to-bill almost 3x, a strong performance, and we did see some large orders coming in during the quarter. These large orders reflect our customers' increasing trust in Vertiv's ability to deliver at scale and their confidence in their market. Our $15 billion backlog is more than double last year's and up 57% sequentially. Strong.

Worth noting, the shape of our backlog is not very different from what we saw a year ago, yet it is more elongated into the 12- to 18-month window. This is very consistent with a very strong Q4 order intake. We're seeing robust pipeline growth across all regions and all product technologies. This is testament to the health of demand and of our visibility of the market. We have confidence in capturing a significant portion of this pipeline. Orders are getting bigger. Over time, we have been vocal about the lumpy nature of orders. This lumpiness can generate unnecessary volatility. The dynamics of the market also makes orders very difficult to predict. Consistent with what we said during 2025, we have been reflecting on our orders, disclosure. We believe that currently, the best approach is to no longer report actual orders, orders forecast, or backlog with quarterly earnings.

It just seems to lead to excessive volatility that is not representative of the sustained performance of the company and is not beneficial to our investors. We will continue to provide our full-year historical disclosure regarding sales and backlog in our Form 10-K. We will provide our view of the market in our quarterly earnings call. We feel very good about the strength of our pipelines, our ability to win, and our prospects for growth and to lead the industry. We had an extremely strong year in orders, and we do believe we will grow further in 2026. Pricing continues to be favorable. 2025 pricing exceeded inflation, and we expect the same in 2026. The right side of the Slide now to talk about how we're managing the current environment and positioning for growth.

We're mitigating material inflation pressure through our pricing mechanisms and focused cooperation with our suppliers. On capital, we're stepping up to 3-4% of sales in 2026 from our historical 2%-3%. We continue to adopt a very disciplined and forward-looking approach to enabling our growth trajectory. Our suppliers are extensions of our operations, and we're working hand in hand to ensure they're scaling with us. This combination positions us very well to capture the growth ahead while protecting our margins, which you see embedded in our guidance. Let's now go to Slide 6. You know how passionate we are about driving rapid technological evolution. This is where Vertiv's strengths really come into play. Our traditional expertise in gray space is seamlessly being augmented by and interwoven with white space infrastructure expertise.

With hundreds of kilowatts per rack, the mechanical, the electrical infrastructure, and the IT stack are so intimately connected that they need to be thought of as one system. Here are two of our converged prefabricated solutions that perfectly align to this vision. Let's start with OneCore, an end-to-end full data center solution that dramatically simplifies and accelerates the customer journey, significantly reducing time to token. Vertiv OneCore can scale to gigawatts in 12.5 megawatts building blocks. OneCore is a complete, converged, entire data center infrastructure. It's engineered and scaled to deliver for the industry with speed, simplicity, and repeatability. It's engineered and scaled by an industry leader with a complete portfolio. Our collaboration with Hut 8 demonstrates this perfectly. Let's now continue with the Vertiv SmartRow, a converged and prefabricated white space infrastructure solution that massively accelerates data hall fit out and readiness.

Also here, it delivers simplicity and time to token for our customers. SmartRow is flexible and scalable across multiple generations of silicon. It is being deployed across several large customers at scale and now work with Compass Datacenters perfectly shows those capabilities. Vertiv SmartRow can be standalone or part of OneCore. We continue to actively define the market with solutions like OneCore and SmartRow. Let's go now to Slide 7. Our service portfolio is a critical competitive advantage and a robust source of recurring revenue. Our lifecycle services orders growth was north of 25% year-on-year. I'm very pleased to see that. I'm not satisfied, as you may imagine. The increasing complexity and technical challenges that characterize the market are an opportunity to demonstrate our unique service capabilities and to deepen our customer relationships.

Our service business is designed to deliver customer value across every phase of the infrastructure journey. The PurgeRite acquisition fits exactly within Vertiv's service paradigm. It significantly strengthens our fluid management capabilities, end-to-end, both the primary and the secondary fluid networks. These are very critical systems in chilled water and liquid-cooled AI data centers. Fluid management is one of the most technically demanding and financially consequential aspects of running a modern data center and AI factory. With PurgeRite, Vertiv now offers one of the most comprehensive fluid management capabilities in the industry, from initial design to commissioning, and then throughout decades of operational life of the data center. We optimize flow at the top and maintain balance, ultra-cleanliness, fluid performance across the lifecycle of the site.

Every rack gets exactly the cooling it needs, with the highest levels of reliability and resilience as the environment evolves. For customers, this means fewer thermal throttles, higher compute throughput, efficiency improvement, and a dramatically reduced downtime risk on hardware worth millions of dollars per rack. We expect PurgeRite's specialized expertise to scale globally through our existing services network, creating a differentiated capability that addresses a growing critical customer need. With that, over to you, Craig. But first, yeah, I'm very glad to introduce our new CFO, Craig Chamberlin, to the earnings audience. Craig, calling you new sounds quite strange, actually. I'm extremely pleased with the speed at which you're getting a strong handle on the business. We work really well together.

It feels like we've been working together for way more than hardly three months, so I'm very thrilled. Now, truly, truly over to you.

Thanks, Gio. Just to start, I'd like to say I'm very excited to be here as Vertiv's new CFO. In my 2+ decades in the industrial industry, I've worked with many great companies. However, what's happening here at Vertiv really stands out to me. The strength of our market position, the quality of our technology, and the caliber of this team makes me very excited about where we're headed. What Vertiv has built, the competitive advantage, customer relationships, and operational capabilities, is a result of disciplined execution and strategic vision. I'm honored to join at this inflection point, and I look forward to working with all of you as we continue to drive shareholder value. Now, let's walk through our financial results. Turning to Slide 8, we can walk through our strong fourth quarter performance.

Starting with adjusted diluted EPS of $1.36, up 37% year-over-year, and $0.10 above our prior guidance. The primary driver is strong operational performance, particularly in Americas, where we saw exceptional volume growth. Organic net sales were up 19%, with strong momentum continuing in Americas, up 46%, offset by APAC down 9% and EMEA down 14%. Our adjusted operating profit of $668 million was up 33% versus the prior quarter and $29 million higher than prior guidance. Adjusted operating margin of 23.2% grew by 170 basis points versus last year. This margin expansion was driven by strong operational leverage on higher volumes, productivity gains, and favorable price cost execution.

As well, we saw our incremental margins year-over-year continue on a positive trend, as they came in at 31% for the quarter. To wrap up the fourth quarter discussion, let's hit on cash. We delivered $910 million of adjusted free cash flow, up 151% from prior year fourth quarter, driven by higher operating profit and working capital efficiency, which was partially offset by an increase in higher cash tax. The larger orders in the quarter came with corresponding larger advanced payments, which benefited our Q4 cash flow. We exited the quarter with net leverage of 0.5x, giving us significant strategic flexibility. Moving on to Slide 9. Let's take a look at segment performance, which further highlights some of the dynamics Gio mentioned earlier in the pitch. In Americas, the team delivered another strong performance.

Sales were up 50%, with 46% organic growth. This growth was driven by broad-based strength across products and customer segments, strong end-market demand, combined with our ability to deliver. Adjusted operating profit was $568 million, up 77%, and margin rate expanded by 450 basis points. The results were the outcome of strong operational leverage, positive price cost, and continued productivity. Moving to the right, APAC sales were down 10%, 9% organically, primarily due to macroeconomic conditions in China. However, the rest of APAC remains strong. Adjusted operating profit of $49 million resulted in an adjusted operating margin of 9.9%, which was down 270 basis points versus prior year, pressured primarily by volume deleverage. In EMEA, sales were down 8%, 14% organically due to continued softness in the market.

However, as Gio highlighted, we are seeing signs of recovery from strong fourth quarter orders performance. We continue to expect EMEA to return to sales growth in the second half of 2026. Fourth quarter adjusted operating profit of $111 million, with adjusted operating margin of 22.1%. This is a decline from prior year's 26.6%, which was expected, given the 14% organic sales decline. The margin pressure reflects lower operating leverage, and we expect this margin trend to continue into 1Q. Flipping to Slide 10. Here, we're highlighting our full year 2025 results, in which the team delivered another outstanding performance. We saw improvements across all key financial metrics. Adjusted diluted EPS of $4.20 was up 47% and exceeded guidance by $0.10.

Net sales of $10.2 billion delivered 26% organic growth and exceeded guidance by $30 million. We saw a strong growth in Americas, up 41%, and APAC up 18%, with a partial offset of EMEA being down 2%. Adjusted operating profit of $2.1 billion was up 35% and $30 million above guidance. Operating margin expanded 100 basis points to 20.4%. The full year margin expansion was driven primarily by productivity and positive price cost. To close out the margin discussion, I'd like to highlight that we are delivering margin expansion while investing in growth and managing inflationary headwinds. Adjusted free cash flow was another strong performance.

We generated approximately $1.9 billion in adjusted free cash flow, up 66%, mainly driven by higher operating profit and positive working capital, including increased advanced payments from the significant order delivery in the quarter. Our cash performance gives us flexibility to invest, to invest in growth, pursue strategic M&A, and return capital to shareholders. These results demonstrate both our excellent execution and industry leadership. Now, let's turn to page 11 and go through our full year 2026 guidance. We believe this outlook underscores our confidence in the market growth and our ability to continue to drive excellent performance. We're projecting adjusted diluted EPS of $6.02, representing 43% growth at the midpoint. This improvement continues to show strong profit growth from prior year.

As we move to net sales guidance, we're projecting $13.5 billion at the midpoint, which represents 28% organic growth, with projected sales growth to be driven by continued strength in Americas at high 30% growth, with APAC at mid-20% growth and EMEA flat to down mid-single digits. On EMEA, as we mentioned earlier in the presentation, we expect a re-acceleration in the market in the second half of 2026. Moving on, we expect adjusted operating profit of $3.04 billion and 22.5% margin at the midpoint, which translates to 210 basis points of expansion. This margin expansion is expected to largely driven by continued operating leverage and positive price cost, while we also expect to continue to invest in capacity and technology advancement.

Finally, for the year, adjusted free cash flow is expected to be $2.2 billion, representing 17% growth, reflecting anticipated strong profit growth and working capital improvements, offset by higher tax and increased CapEx to support growth. As you can see from the metrics on the page, we're confident in our ability to deliver another strong year in 2026. Flipping to Slide 12, we can round out with a look at 1Q 2026. For 1Q 2026, we're projecting adjusted diluted EPS of $0.98, which represents 53% growth at the midpoint. For net sales, we expect to deliver $2.6 billion or 22% organic growth at the midpoint. This guide anticipates growth in Americas of high 30s% and growth in APAC of low 20s%, with anticipated offset of EMEA being down in the mid-20s% range.

We expect an adjusted operating profit of $495 million, up 47% at the midpoint, and margin rate of 19% translates to 250 basis points of expansion at the midpoint. Just as a note on tariffs, we expect on an exit rate basis to have materially offset unfavorable margin impact from tariffs as of the first quarter of this year. As you can see from the metrics, we're expecting to deliver a strong start in 2026. With that, I'll send it back to you, Gio.

Well, thank you, Craig, and, let's wrap up, and for that, we go to Slide 13. Again, Q4 and full year 2025 exceeded guidance across all metrics. Orders backlog, very robust, evidenced by impressive book-to-bill, circa 3x. The momentum is certainly very strong. We continue to strengthen our position as an industry thought leader, and this is highlighted by our product technology offering, full system approach, and our services strength. At this, and all this is strengthened by our acquisitions, of which PurgeRite is a great example. Our 2026 guidance shows a step up in all key metrics. I've never been more excited about Vertiv's future. We're leading the industry in orders. We're scaling. We are very well, positioned to expand our market leadership and drive the industry forward.

I'm very much looking forward to see as many of you as possible at our investor conference in, in May. And, and with that, back to you, Nadia, and let's start the Q&A.

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, please press star, then 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. The first question goes to Steve Tusa of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah, your ERP must have been busy this quarter. Probably requires a few more data centers just to handle that. So, just on the dollar value of the orders, is there— You know, you guys have talked about the $3 million-$3.5 million per megawatt. There's obviously a lot of, like, megawatts coming on and being ordered. But is there any, you know, creep in that content to the upside that's bolstering these orders? Or should we still think about that as the right framework for the dollar per megawatt, Tim?

I would say that currently you can just use that as a framework. Clearly, we've been vocal in other occasions, and certainly is all the more reason true as the technology evolves, that the complexity of the technology and the technology trajectory, if anything, is good from a ton per megawatt standpoint. So they would be a little premature at this stage. We like what we see. I think the best is, you know, three months from now, we'll be together, and certainly, this will be an important theme.

And then just quickly following up on the CapEx number. How should we think about for every, like, $100 million of incremental CapEx? You know, from what we've seen, whether it's, you know, Eaton or some of your other peers, it's a pretty high multiple of sales growth on, you know, on that CapEx, like, what a $100 million can - what the output of that could mean. Is there some sort of multiple like, I don't know, 15, 20 times on that extra $100 million that we can think about as being able to support a, you know, a revenue run rate for the future? Just trying to understand how you can deliver on this, you know and what it will take to execute on, on this backlog.

I will give it a go and, Craig, if you want kind of a chip in, but I'd say that I think the best way of looking at it is to look at 2%-3% CapEx percent of sales moving to 3%-4%, call it 3.5%. That is, you can certainly correlate that to our growth and our trajectory. And yeah, going back to how we make it happen, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, it's about being gradual, it's about being ahead. But again, CapEx expansion, capacity expansion doesn't happen in big steps, at least not the way we do it.

We like many steps that are meaningful, but, but, again, I think correlation between growth and our percent CapEx is an interesting and important element.

The next question goes to Scott Davis of Melius Research. Scott, please go ahead.

Good morning, Lynne, and welcome, Craig. Congrats on a unbelievable year. Guys, I'm just kind of curious. You know, I'm just trying to picture these orders coming in in Q4 are just massive, and I know that was the crux of Steve's question as well. But is there any-- You know, you talked about lumpiness, but were there any particularly large projects or anything unusual in the quarter? Was there any-- Is there any incentive, perhaps, for folks to make an order before the end of the year in 2025, or price or otherwise, or getting ahead in the queue? I'm just trying to get my arms around these; these numbers are just absolutely massive.

Well, the answer in terms of something that is unusual, let's say from the normal course of business in terms of price and whatever else, the answer is no, very, very, very simply. I'd say that certainly is a reflection of the demand that we see in the market. Certainly, as I said, is a reflection of the belief and demonstrated ability to scale combined with our awesome technology. But the fact is, yes, there were quite a few large orders, but again, quite a few. We shouldn't look at this as something dramatically strange. This is something been happening in the market, and orders are becoming larger and larger and larger.

So this is really orders where customers know that they need our kit, our systems, our solutions, and they know where and when. So it's, it's not kind of a—there's no big anomalies here, but orders can be lumpy, and sometimes they happen all in one quarter. You know, more in one quarter and the other, et cetera. So the sequencing is something that is, you know, lumpy, and that's what we've been saying for, for quite some time. And that's why, you know, the decisions that we have made on, on orders, guidance and actuals. But, no, nothing, nothing unnatural.

And I would think it continues to underscore what we-

I need one question. Sorry, go ahead, Craig.

No, I said it continues to underscore what we've talked about before, which is the system-level thinking. And I think the system-level thinking is starting to play out on a larger scale, Scott, which is making these orders bigger than what they have been in the past... Fair enough. Best of luck, guys. I appreciate the color.

The next question goes to Amit Daryanani of Evercore. Amit, please go ahead.

Yep, thanks a lot, and, congrats on my side as well for some very impressive orders over here. You know, if I look at the order and the backlog number that you folks have, you're clearly set up for some very strong performance, I imagine not just in 2026, but even in 2027 and beyond. So I'm wondering, Gio, if you can just kinda walk through, you know, what are the key operational steps, the key bottlenecks you think you have to solve for to convert this backlog into, you know, revenues and EPS over time? You know, just maybe help us understand, like, what are you focused on? What needs to go right to convert these orders into sales and EPS in 2026 and 2027? Thank you.

Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you, Amit. The-- we're really working, and we have been working, so it's not like, something new. We have been working, and we continue to work, and we're accelerating our capacity expansion. Capacity expansion always happens in two ways. One is, CapEx, so call it footprint. Generally speaking, not only there is also increase of, productivity, but the other is really, obtaining more output from the existing, footprint. So the two-prong approach that we talked about several times is what continues to happen. But as we speak, you know, we are factories being expanded. We have, a couple of new locations coming live, and, you know, we're working very, very actively with our supply chain.

So, it is really diligently and in a very focused manner execute on this backlog. I think we're in a good shape. We've been diligent about making capacity available gradually, but rapidly for the last couple of years, and you know, we're accelerating as our numbers are saying, both on CapEx and the top line.

Amit, I think you could look at just the fourth quarter. The acceleration in CapEx is in the financial numbers, and you'll also see that in the guide, that the acceleration in CapEx is there as well, which underscores what we're doing. Most of that is in flight, meaning that we're already doing the build-outs, and we understand what we need to go do to deliver the capacity for the guide that we put out there for sales.

The next question goes to Jeff Sprague of Vertical Research. Jeff, please go ahead.

Hey, thank you. Good morning. Congrats on the shocking odd numbers here. Maybe, maybe we could just hit on Europe and Asia briefly, from my standpoint. First on Europe, you know, have things really changed on the ground in terms of the permitting bottlenecks and the like? Obviously, you said the orders are a bit better, but a slow start to the year. And I'm also just curious on China specifically, if you could address that. Clearly, you know, weak economically and industrially, but I wouldn't think China would want to fall behind in the AI race. I just wonder if the weakness there is maybe some indication that Western players are not being invited to play to the same degree as they were historically, just the competitive state of things on the ground in China. I'll leave it there. Thanks.

Yeah. Well, thanks, thanks, Jeff. Let's start with, with EMEA. Let's start with, with EMEA in general. I think certainly a combination of, an acceleration of investment, basically. So it's not that somebody, wielded a magic wand and everything kind of permit-wise became easy in EMEA. That'd be too simplistic, but I think the focus and the realization that, a lot more infrastructure is needed is now palpable. And, pipelines that have been there for quite a while, you remember I've been, vocal about that, have been and are expanding, and, and the sales cycle, of the various elements in the pipelines are accelerating. And then we have areas that are specifically moving, well. So you take the Nordics as an example, not solely, but that's an example where that is happening.

You've heard me probably talk about a couple of times about the fact that, with all that is happening in North America, some of the decision-makers were still concentrated in North America, while still are concentrated in North America. Now, I think the realization that things need to happen beyond North America is there, and that's, I think, or at least what we see happening as a matter of fact. So, quite optimistic there. See a kind of an effervescence in the market that I haven't seen for quite some time. When it comes to Asia, I wouldn't attribute that to kind of a Western players type of dynamics. The market demand is not very strong in this moment.

So, clearly there is, you know, it's an important AI market with its own characteristics. But again, what we see is more attributable to a general market situation than a particular kind of a player. I mean, we are a Chinese player in China. We are silicon-agnostic, so yeah. But again, very happy with everything outside of China, but also very, very, very, very proud of what we're doing in China as a team, so.

The next question goes to Chris Snyder of Morgan Stanley. Chris, please go ahead.

Thank you. Gio, you talked about the company's deep relationship with the data center industry leaders. So I guess, you know, my question is, is how much visibility do these relationships afford Vertiv into the future workflow or architecture of these data centers? Because, you know, I have to imagine that you guys need to have the solutions developed, you know, before the customers are ready for it. So also interested in, you know, how far in advance does the company start the R&D or engineering process to bring some of these future solutions to market? Thank you.

Sure. Well, thank you, Chris. I think a couple of dimensions to that. We've been always vocal about the strength of our relationship with customers, but also the other players in the ecosystem. Super important. Super important because exactly as you were saying, our technology needs to land ahead of... well ahead of the most advanced silicon. But that to be the case, of course, with NVIDIA or other silicon, let's say technology providers, then it's about looking out two, three years, sometimes in terms of or beyond, at a higher level of, let's say more R&D, but being two, three years out in the way we work together.

So our roadmaps certainly extend, but the role that and aspect that I'm very proud of, and it's very important for for our and especially for our customer success. So for the our end customers success is the work that we do with many of them, really kind of a technology partnership, looking out one, two, sometimes three years and say, "Hey, with all that's happening from a technology standpoint, given your business model customer, what is really the technology that best suits your strategy?" And you know, it's not, it's not being told, but it's architecting together and giving them an understanding of the possibilities that they have from a technology standpoint. I think we have a uniquely stronger role in the industry in this respect, so it's working out quite well.

The next question goes to Nigel Coe of Wolfe Research. Nigel, please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. So I guess we're not seeing too much impact yet from density in the space, so that's good news. So I want to go back to the backlog and, you-

Oh, got it. Sorry, I couldn't hear you. There was a little bit of a blip in the line.

Yeah, sorry. Let me go. Yeah, can you hear me now?

Yeah, great. So I wanna go back to the backlog. And I think, Craig, you mentioned, you know, more system-level orders. So, you know, obviously, you've been highlighting the SmartRow, you know, product. Maybe just talk about, you know, where you're seeing that success and the sort of work share you're gaining with the data centers. And maybe, Gio, could you just touch on the backlog aging? It seems to, you know, the guidance implies roughly 15 months of conversion of the backlog. Typically, you do nine months. So maybe just talk about, you know, are we seeing longer duration orders in that backlog? Thanks.

Well, so let's start with the aging, so we can address that. We are, we've been already vocal quite a lot already that our customers requested lead time pretty much ranges from 12-18 months, especially when we talk about the bigger orders. It's never an exact science, always range, but I would say that 12-18 is a good, is a good approximation of where the large orders demand the deliveries to be. And typically, it's not even just one bulk if it is really a large order.

But, having said that, if you think about the structure of our order, we take this, this year, sorry, last year, 2025, with a very, very strong second half, relative anyway to a very strong year all together, but, particularly strong in the second half, and particularly strong in the last quarter. Then you see that the 12-18 months pushes things into 2027, while we have... We're very happy with how 2026 is covered. So, again, as I said in my comments earlier, the shape of the backlog is not something different. It's just a consequence of the phasing of the orders when we receive that.

So no big differences in the way the market asks and, and demands or expects our deliveries. When it comes to the system question, we clearly see an acceleration. When we talk about OneCore, or we talk about SmartRow. You know, we, we talk about systems and solutions that start to be quite broadly adopted. And certainly that helps the dynamics of of our order intake of and our backlog. But when we talk system, we don't just talk about integration. System for us is having the entire powertrain, the entire thermal chain, certainly when we deliver a prefabricated solution or a converged solution, considering all the pieces that are really designed to work to work together.

But again, if we go back to the previous question, my answer was, it's, it's about sitting together with a customer and having an entire portfolio and having a very profound understanding of a system level and a whole data center level technology, and being able to talk systems with our customers.

The next question goes to Andrew Obin of Bank of America. Andrew, please go ahead.

Gio, Craig, Lynn, thank you. So the question I have is on services. You know, it seems that the feedback we're getting is that the big differentiator for Vertiv is your ability not only to deliver the product, but to actually service it in the field and wrap all the sort of additional value-added stuff around that. Last quarter you shared with us, you know, the increase in service headcount. Would you update us on what the headcount looks like as you increase in backlog rapidly, and maybe preview where the service organization is going? I'm sure you're going to talk about it at your Analyst Day, but just give us a preview of what's happening in that. Thank you.

Well, thank you, Andrew. One of my favorite subjects. So, I have many, but this is certainly one of my favorite subjects. So, I agree, it's a big differentiation, and as you see, a big differentiator that we continue to fuel. So absolutely not static in our view. Well, we talked about headcount. I think we are approaching it very, very rapidly, the 5,000 field people right now. And really think in terms of our field capacity following very similar trajectories to the delivery capacity. Now, of course, is a function of the install base, but the install base is growing. Our services are growing.

Certainly, the commissioning, the start-up, are very important, event in the life cycle of a data center, and we make sure we're there with the capacity locally to serve our customers. But also evolving our technology, not only in a, to me, a great example of a, of PurgeRite, but also the, all the digitization that, that, that we are injecting into, into our services business.

I mean, I would add on that, I'm just as excited as Gio is on our services portfolio, coming from, you know, heavy industrial companies that lived and died on services. I think this is a superpower that we're going to continue to build out, and especially when you're starting to look at what we can do with the installed base that's out there.

The next question goes to Nicole DeBlase of Deutsche Bank. Nicole, please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Good morning, everyone, and congrats on a great quarter. Just to start with the backlog, I guess, you know, obviously a really nice step up in backlog sequentially and year-on-year in the fourth quarter. Gio, when you kind of look out over the next 12 months and with what you see in pipeline, do you expect that we will see another year-on-year increase in backlog in 2026? And then just a small follow-up on CapEx. Are we going to kind of be in this 3%-4% CapEx to sales zone for the foreseeable future, given how fast the industry is growing? Thank you.

Well, you know, I wouldn't go all the way to guiding orders, which I would do if I were to answer in with many details. But if you go back, if we go back to what we shared already, if you think about our directional indication that we believe our orders will be up. You probably have done the math about our orders in 2025 right now, yeah, of our sales. So, probably the answer is straightforward. We believe we'll continue to build backlog directionally. So, that's certainly the case.

Vertiv Holdings (VRT) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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