When Vertiv earnings came out this week, the stock jumped 16.5% in a single day, to $242.94. Even after that jump, it is still 35% below its high of the past year, $376.23. Vertiv makes the power and cooling gear that AI data centers cannot run without, and it said its orders had more than doubled in a year. The orders look real. The harder question is whether the stock price already assumes all of them.
Much of the fall from that high came in one day. On Jul 29, 2026, Vertiv reported its second quarter and the stock dropped 17%. Vertiv said sales had been held back by short delays from crowded supply chains and projects delivered in stages. So this quarter was a test of whether those delays were only delays.
Orders doubled, but Vertiv will not say how many
Vertiv said orders grew more than 100% from a year earlier, but it gave no dollar figure. So I looked at the money customers pay before they get their gear. Think of it like a deposit on a kitchen remodel: nobody puts down a deposit for a job they do not plan to go through with.
Those deposits stood at $4.1B at the end of the quarter, 3.6 times what they were a year earlier. To me, that says the orders are coming with real cash. Vertiv also raised its sales forecast for the full year by $650M.
| Quarter ended Sep 30, 2026 | Value |
|---|---|
| Sales | $4.3B (+61% from a year earlier, about +6% of it from companies Vertiv bought) |
| Money customers paid in advance | $4.1B (a year earlier: $1.1B) |
| Sales forecast for next quarter | $4.4B |
| Sales forecast for full-year 2026 | $14.7B (raised by $650M) |
Two things make me careful. Vertiv’s annual report says customers can cancel or reschedule orders. And its inventory, the parts and finished gear it holds but has not sold yet, more than doubled this year, from $1.5B to $3.3B. If that gear is waiting to ship, sales are on the way. If it is piling up, customers are slowing down. The next report will show which.
The good news is already in the price
The price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E, tells you how many dollars investors pay for each dollar of yearly profit. Based on the past four quarters, Vertiv’s is about 44.6 times.
Many reports quote a lower “forward” P/E, which uses the profit expected ahead instead of profit already earned. Using Vertiv’s own forecast of profit per share for 2026, my calculation gives about 38.6 times. The figures elsewhere are lower because they usually use analysts’ estimates for the next twelve months, which reach further into expected growth. Either way, the price assumes more great quarters.
Vertiv’s forecast for next quarter’s sales can be read two ways. Compared with the same quarter last year, it is about 50% higher, not counting companies it bought. Compared with the quarter just reported, it is only about 2% higher. The first shows a business still growing fast. The second shows that growth is no longer speeding up from quarter to quarter.
So when the stock jumped in a day, I read it as investors paying today for months of growth that has not happened yet.
There is a fair case on the other side. Vertiv’s operating margin, the share of sales it keeps as profit, has peaked before, at the end of 2023 and again in late 2024. Both times its sales kept growing in the year after.
But that record covers only one stretch of the chip and data center boom, when spending kept rising. It has not yet been tested by a downturn.
What would change my mind?
The number I watch most is the deposits customers pay up front.
If Vertiv’s sales keep growing but the deposits start to shrink, Vertiv is working through old orders without winning enough new ones. If the deposits keep rising, new orders are still arriving with cash, and today’s price gets easier to justify. Based on its usual timing, I expect the next report between Jan 22 and Feb 11, 2027. Until then, Vertiv stays on my watchlist.
A year from now, will customers' prepayments to Vertiv be higher?
How each language voted
Resolves: Vertiv's report for the quarter ending September 2027 · Reader opinions, not investment advice.
Sources
- Vertiv third quarter 2026 earnings release (SEC Form 8-K, exhibit)
- Vertiv annual report for 2025 (SEC Form 10-K), backlog and order cancellation
- SEC EDGAR companyfacts (XBRL): quarterly history, deferred revenue; valuation and cycle figures calculated by MKViz
- Yahoo Finance, Vertiv price history