Earnings call transcript: Celestica beats Q2 2025 expectations, raises guidance

Celestica Inc. (CLS) reported strong financial results for the second quarter of 2025, significantly surpassing analysts’ expectations. The company posted an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.39, compared to the forecasted $1.23, marking a 13.01% surprise. Revenue reached $2.89 billion, exceeding the anticipated $2.67 billion by 8.24%. Following these results, Celestica’s stock surged 9.41% in premarket trading, reflecting investor optimism. With a market capitalization of $19.94 billion and a robust revenue growth of 21.05% over the last twelve months, the company continues to demonstrate strong momentum. The company also revised its full-year guidance upward, projecting revenue of $11.55 billion and adjusted EPS of $5.50. InvestingPro analysis reveals that three analysts have recently revised their earnings estimates upward for the upcoming period, suggesting continued confidence in Celestica’s growth trajectory.

Key Takeaways

• Celestica reported a 21% year-over-year increase in Q2 revenue.
• Adjusted EPS grew by 54% year-over-year.
• The company raised its full-year revenue and EPS guidance.
• Stock price increased by 9.41% in premarket trading.
• Strong demand in the AI and networking sectors drove performance.

Company Performance

Celestica’s performance in Q2 2025 showcased robust growth, driven by strong demand in its networking and AI infrastructure segments. The company reported a 21% increase in revenue compared to the same quarter last year, highlighting its ability to capitalize on market trends. The adjusted operating margin reached 7.4%, the highest in the company’s history, underscoring operational efficiency and strategic execution.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $2.89 billion, up 21% year-over-year
• Adjusted EPS: $1.39, up 54% year-over-year
• Adjusted Operating Margin: 7.4%
• Raised full-year revenue guidance to $11.55 billion
• Raised full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $5.50

Earnings vs. Forecast

Celestica’s Q2 2025 earnings significantly outperformed forecasts, with an EPS of $1.39 against an expected $1.23, and revenue of $2.89 billion surpassing the projected $2.67 billion. This marks a 13.01% EPS surprise and an 8.24% revenue surprise, indicating strong operational performance compared to previous quarters.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Celestica’s stock experienced a notable increase, rising by 9.41% in premarket trading. The stock closed at $173.37 before the earnings release and reached $189.68 in the premarket session. This movement reflects positive investor sentiment and confidence in the company’s future prospects, especially considering its position near its 52-week high of $173.71. According to InvestingPro data, the stock has delivered exceptional returns, with a 246.74% gain over the past year and a 72.52% increase in the last six months. However, with a P/E ratio of 47.82, the stock appears to be trading above its Fair Value, suggesting investors should carefully consider entry points. For comprehensive valuation insights and more exclusive metrics, explore the detailed Pro Research Report available on InvestingPro, covering this and 1,400+ other top US stocks.

Outlook & Guidance

Celestica raised its full-year revenue guidance to $11.55 billion, reflecting a 20% growth, and adjusted EPS to $5.50, a 42% increase. The company anticipates continued strong demand for its networking products and expects the enterprise segment to recover in the fourth quarter. It projects Q3 revenue between $2.875 billion and $3.125 billion and adjusted EPS between $1.37 and $1.53.

Executive Commentary

CEO Rob Mayonis stated, "We believe Celestica is exceptionally well positioned to help our customers navigate today’s uncertain landscape," highlighting the company’s strategic positioning. CFO Mandeep Chawla added, "Our demand outlook is higher than the 11,550, but we’re taking into account challenges," indicating cautious optimism for future growth.

Risks and Challenges

• Supply chain disruptions could impact production timelines.
• Market saturation in the AI and networking sectors may affect growth.
• Macroeconomic pressures, such as inflation, might influence costs.
• Geopolitical tensions could disrupt global operations.
• Currency fluctuations may impact financial results.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s expansion plans and competitive positioning. Celestica confirmed capacity expansion in Southeast Asia, Mexico, and the US, and highlighted its leadership in networking switch manufacturing. Analysts also questioned the impact of hyperscaler demand, with executives noting the parity of 800G programs with 400G volumes and continued strong demand.

Full transcript - Celestica Inc (CLS) Q2 2025:

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Celestica Q2 twenty twenty five Financial Results and Conference Call. After today’s prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. I will now hand the conference over to Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica: Good morning, and thank you for joining us on Celestica’s Q2 twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. On the call today, we have Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer and Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer. Please note that during the course of this call, we will make forward looking statements relating to the future performance of Celestica, which are based on management’s current expectations, forecasts and assumptions. While these forward looking statements represent our current judgment, actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast or projection in the forward looking statements made today. Certain material factors and assumptions are applied in drawing any such statement.

For identification and discussion of such factors and assumptions as well as risk factors that may impact future performance and results of Celestica, please refer to our public filings available at www.sec.gov and www.cedarplus.ca as well as the Investor Relations section on our website. We undertake no obligation to update these forward looking statements unless expressly required to do so by law. In addition, during this call, we will refer to various non GAAP financial measures, including adjusted operating margin, adjusted gross margin, adjusted return on invested capital or adjusted ROIC, free cash flow, gross debt to trailing twelve month TTM adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio, adjusted earnings per share or adjusted EPS and adjusted effective tax rate. We have included in our earnings release found in the Investor Relations section of our a reconciliation of non GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. With respect to our Q3 twenty twenty five guidance and 2025 annual outlook, our earnings release does not include a reconciliation of forward looking non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures on a forward looking basis as items that we exclude from GAAP to calculate these comparable non GAAP measures are dependent on future events that are not able to be reliably predicted by management and are not part of our routine operating activities.

We are unable to provide such reconciliation without unreasonable effort due to the uncertainty and inherent difficulty in predicting the occurrence, the financial impact and the periods in which may be recognized. The occurrence, timing and amount of any of the items excluded from GAAP to calculate non GAAP could significantly impact our Q3 twenty twenty five and 2025 GAAP results. Unless otherwise specified, all references to dollars on this call are to U. S. Dollars, all per share information is based on diluted shares outstanding and all references to comparative figures are a year over year comparison.

Let me now turn the call over to Rob.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today’s call. We saw solid demand across our portfolio in the second quarter, which drove very strong performance. We achieved revenues of $2,890,000,000 and adjusted EPS of $1.39 with both metrics exceeding the high end of our guidance ranges. Our adjusted operating margin of 7.4% once again marked the highest performance in the company history. Our CCS segment continues to experience very strong growth driven by the demand for networking products from our hyperscale customers as they pursue significant expansions of their data center infrastructure to support new AI applications.

In our ATS segment, solid demand in our capital equipment business and industrial businesses drove higher than expected revenues, while segment margins of 5.3% continue to improve meaningfully. In the second quarter, the impact from tariffs on our financial results was minimal as the pause on reciprocal tariffs and exemptions on electronics goods, data center hardware insulated the majority of our portfolio. Before I provide you with our updated annual financial outlook and some additional color on our businesses, I would like to turn the call over to Mandeep, who will discuss our second quarter financial performance and our guidance for the 2025. Mandeep, over to you.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Second quarter revenue of $2,890,000,000 was up 21 and above the high end of our guidance range, driven primarily by very strong demand in our communications end market from hyperscaler customers. Adjusted gross margin for the second quarter was 11.7%, up 110 basis points driven by higher volumes and improving mix in both segments. Our second quarter adjusted operating margin was 7.4%, up 110 basis points driven by higher margin across both our CCS and ATS segments. Our adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter was $1.39 exceeding the high end of our guidance range and an increase of $0.49 or 54%.

Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 20%. And finally, our second quarter adjusted ROIC was 35.5% compared to 26.6% a year ago, driven by higher operating profit and strong working capital management. Moving on to our segment performance. ATS segment revenue totaled $819,000,000 up 7% and above our guidance of being flat year over year. The higher revenue was primarily driven by strong demand in our capital equipment business and returning growth in our industrial business.

Our ATS segment accounted for 28% of total company revenue in the second quarter. Revenue in our CCS segment was CAD2.07 billion, up 28% driven once again by very strong growth in our communications end market. The CCS segment accounted for 72% of total company revenue in the quarter. Our communications end market revenues increased by 75% above our guidance of high 50s percentage growth, driven primarily by strong demand and ramping programs in our HPS networking business, complemented by strengthening demand in our optical programs. Revenue in our enterprise end market was 37% lower, which was better than our guidance of a low 40s percentage decline.

The lower revenues were a result of an anticipated technology transition in an AIML compute program with one of our hyperscaler customers. HPS revenues of CAD1.2 billion in the second quarter were higher by 82% and accounted for 43% of total company revenue. This exceptional growth is being driven by the ramping of several 800 gs networking switch programs, complementing strong hyperscaler demand for our 400 gs switches. Moving on to segment margins. ACS segment margin in the second quarter rose to 5.3%, up 70 basis points, primarily driven by improved profitability in our A and D business.

CCS segment margin in the second quarter was 8.3%, an improvement of 130 basis points driven by a higher mix of HPS revenues and strong productivity. During the quarter, we had two customers that each accounted for at least 10% of total revenue, representing 3113% of revenue respectively. Moving on to working capital. At the end of the second quarter, our inventory balance was $1,920,000,000 a sequential increase of $130,000,000 and a year over year increase of $74,000,000 Cash deposits were CAD397 million at the end of the second quarter, CAD75 million sequentially and down CAD179 million year over year. Cash cycle days during the second quarter were CAD66.

Turning to cash flows. Capital expenditures for the second quarter were CAD33 million or approximately 1.1% of revenue compared to 1.5% in the 2024. Year to date, our capital expenditures have been below our anticipated range of 1.5% to 2% of revenue due to stronger than expected revenue growth and timing of expenditures. However, we anticipate capital expenditures in the second half of the year to increase relative to the first half and for total annual spend to be within our annual range of 1.5% to 2% of revenues. During the second quarter, we generated $120,000,000 of free cash flow, 54,000,000 higher than the prior year period.

Our free cash flow year to date as of the end of the quarter totaled CAD214 million. Turning to our balance sheet and capital allocation. At the end of the second quarter, our cash balance was CAD314 million, Combined with CAD660 million of borrowing capacity under our revolver, we currently have approximately CAD1 billion in total liquidity, which we believe is sufficient to meet our projected business needs. Our gross debt at the end of the quarter was CAD823 million and our net debt position was CAD509 million. Our gross debt to non GAAP trailing 12 adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 0.9 turns, an improvement of 0.2 turns sequentially and 0.3 turns versus the prior year period.

As of June 30, we were in compliance with all financial covenants under our credit agreement. During the second quarter, we repurchased approximately 600,000 shares for cancellation at a cost of $40,000,000 under our normal course issuer bid, bringing our total purchases under the NCIB to $115,000,000 year to date. We intend to remain opportunistic on share buybacks for the 2025. Now let’s turn to our guidance for the 2025. Similar to last quarter, we highlight that our guidance figures assume no material changes to tariffs or trade restrictions compared to what is in effect as of July 28, as any changes to these policies and their potential impact on our results cannot be reliably predicted at this time.

We also note that substantially all tariffs paid by Flessica are expected to be recovered from our customers and are not expected to materially impact our non GAAP adjusted operating earnings or our non GAAP adjusted net earnings. Third quarter revenue is projected to be between $2,875,000,000 and $3,125,000,000 representing growth of 20% at the midpoint. Adjusted earnings per share are anticipated to be between $1.37 and $1.53 representing an increase of $0.41 at the midpoint or 39%. Assuming the achievement of the midpoint of our revenue and adjusted EPS guidance ranges, our non GAAP operating margin would be 7.4%, an increase of 60 basis points over the prior year period. We expect our adjusted effective tax rate for the third quarter to be approximately 19%.

Finally, let’s review our end market outlook for the third quarter. In our ATS segment, we anticipate revenue to be down in the low single digit percentage range as growth in our industrial business is being offset by lower volumes in our A and D business due to our previously announced decision not to renew a margin dilutive program. In our CCS segment, we project revenue in our communications end market to grow in the low 60s percentage range supported by continued demand strength for our networking switches including ongoing ramps in multiple 800 gs programs. In our enterprise end market, we expect a mid-20s percentage decrease in revenue driven primarily by technology transition in an AIML compute program with the latest generation program beginning to ramp in the third quarter. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Rob for an update on our latest financial outlook outlook for 2025 and to provide additional color on our business.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Thank you, Mandeep. Given our solid first half performance and the strengthening demand forecast for many of our customers, we are raising our 2025 annual financial outlook. We are increasing our revenue outlook for the year from $10,850,000,000 to $11,550,000,000 reflecting year over year growth of 20%. We are also increasing our non GAAP adjusted EPS outlook for the year from $5 per share to $5.5 per share, which represents year over year growth of 42%. Our adjusted EPS outlook reflects an anticipated non GAAP operating margin of 7.4%.

With a higher anticipated profitability, we’re also raising our free cash flow outlook for the year from $350,000,000 to $400,000,000 As with our quarterly guidance, these figures assume no material changes to tariffs or trade restrictions compared to those in effect as of July 28. Now moving on to some additional color on our businesses. In our CCS segment, we now anticipate growth of nearly 30% for the full year. In our communications end market, we continue to ramp multiple 800 gs programs while demand for our 400 gs programs remains strong. Overall, hyperscaler demand for our networking products is very robust as these customers continue to significantly invest in their data center infrastructure.

In our enterprise end market, as anticipated, Q3 will see us begin to ramp volumes for our next generation AIML compute program with a large hyperscaler customer. We expect this to contribute to a strengthening of enterprise volumes in the second half of the year and into 2026. We also continue to pursue a robust pipeline of opportunities for new awards with hyperscaler and digital native customers across compute, storage and rack integration. Moving on to our ATS segment, we are maintaining our annual outlook for revenues to remain approximately flat to 2024. In our industrial business, the strength we saw return in the second quarter is expected to continue into the 2025 supported by several ramping programs.

In A and D, we continue to see strong improvements in profitability driven by mix improvements, including our previously communicated decision not to renew a margin dilutive program. The revenue impact from this program began in Q2 and is expected to result in lower year over year revenues in A and D for the remainder of the year despite otherwise healthy demand across the rest of our A and D portfolio. In our capital equipment business, we achieved solid growth in the 2025, driven by strength in our base demand supported by new program ramps. As anticipated, some second half demand was pulled into the first half and consequently we expect demand to moderate. The second half revenue is expected to be lower than the first half.

Despite this, we anticipate full year growth approximately in line with market growth rates. Overall, we continue to anticipate another year of solid financial performance for Celestica in 2025. We remain confident in our ability to continue our strong momentum even with the uncertainty in the current macro environment. Our portfolio is strongly supported by enduring long term secular tailwinds. We believe Celestica is exceptionally well positioned to help our customers navigate today’s uncertain landscape, backed by a globally diversified manufacturing network and our best in class supply chain and operations teams.

As a company that thrives in managing complexity, we feel these challenges allow me further highlight the critical value we provide with our market leading capabilities and competitive positioning in key technologies, a disciplined approach to capital allocation and consistency in our operation execution, We believe we are positioned to continue to excel and to sustain this positive momentum into 2026 and over the long term. We look forward to updating you on our progress during the next call in October. And with that, I will now turn the call back to the operator to begin the Q and A session.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you’d like to ask a question, please raise your hand now. If you have dialed in to today’s call, please press 9 to raise your hand and 6 to unmute.

Please standby while we compile the Q and A roster. And your first question comes from the line of Karl Ackerman with BNP Paribas. Karl, your line is unmuted. You may now go ahead.

Karl Ackerman, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Great. Thank you, gentlemen. I have two, please. Could you speak to the breadth of customers as well as the number of platforms that you have on 800 gig switch ports that are helping drive your upward revised outlook for CCS? In other words, I guess, how should investors gauge the breadth of design engagements you have on 800 gig and above relative to 400 gs?

And I have a follow-up, please.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Hi, Paul. Yeah. On 800 g, in terms of the breadth we have versus 400 g, I would say every 400 g customer we had has turned into a 800 g customer. So the breadth of our our offering is quite large. Our market share also for 800 g is that much larger than market share for 400 g as well based on our early wins.

So the breadths that we’re seeing across a number of hyperscalers and the ramps we’re seeing across a number of hyperscalers is great to see, and it’s better pronounced.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Got it. Thanks for that. And Carl,

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: I’ll just add on to that to say a little bit more color on four hundred and eight hundred. The 400 demand has been very strong now for quite some time. We saw a lot of strength in the first quarter. What was nice about the second quarter is the 800 gs now is ramping, and it’s basically on parity with our 400 gs volumes in the second quarter. And now we see 800 gs continue to accelerate.

So the point that Rob made, if you think about our top three hyperscaler customers, we’re we’ve won 800 gs programs with all three of them. We saw an acceleration in demand in the second quarter with one in particular and the other two are now starting to catch up in the back half. So it is there’s a lot of breadth, I would say.

Karl Ackerman, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Great. Thank you for that. I mean, just given the amount of revenue growth that you’re seeing in the business, could you remind us on the manufacturing ripeness you have at your Monterey and Richardson campuses today to handle the growing demand of your CCS business? Thank you.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Can start off. Rob can add on to Pete’s. From a capacity perspective, we’re still very comfortable. We are seeing a significant amount of demand for Southeast Asia, both in Thailand as well as in Malaysia. Customers are continuing to want to invest in The United States in our Richardson, Texas facility And customers are continuing to look at Mexico.

And so if you look at our capital plans as well, our CapEx spend, those are the locations where we’re spending the money. And we’re continuing to invest to support the growth. We have not run out of capacity. And as we commented last quarter, we have the ability to support, I would say, 3,000,000,000 to $4,000,000,000 of additional revenue should our customers want

Background Voice: to continue to be in those geos.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: And I would add, Carl, that right now the majority of our networking is coming out of Thailand, but we also are producing networking products, eight energy products out of our Mexico facility as well.

Karl Ackerman, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Ruben Roy with Stifel. Ruben, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ruben Roy, Analyst, Stifel: Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question and congrats on the continued momentum. Mandeep, I wanted to zoom out maybe and given the Q3 guidance and the full year guidance, the implications for Q4, maybe a little decel coming in CCS and with enterprise coming back a little bit into year end. Just wondering if you can walk through some of the puts and takes on how to think about sort of the momentum into year end.

Thank you.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Yes. Thanks, Ruben. I would say that we’re pleased with the full year outlook. The 11,550 is 20% growth. We’ve been more or less that for Q1, Q2 and Q3.

To your point, it implies Q4 would maybe grow at 18%. We’re really just continuing to take into consideration the uncertainties that are out there. What I can tell you is this is our high confidence view. Our demand outlook is higher than the 11,550, but we’re taking into account challenges such as material availability or situations where customers may choose to temporarily pause just given the continuing turmoil that’s happening in the tariff environment. But the 11,550 is our highest confidence view at this point.

Ruben Roy, Analyst, Stifel: Got it. Thank you. And then as a follow-up for Rob perhaps. It seems like 400 gig is hanging in maybe for longer than you folks might have expected earlier this year. And obviously, 100 ramp is happening now.

I was wondering if you could maybe comment on updated thoughts around 1.6T timing now that we’ve got the official launch of the silicon. Just wondering how you’re thinking about that as we look forward to 2026. Thank you.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Yes. Thanks, Ruben. Yeah. We received Tomahawk six samples in June, and we successfully brought up the first system within days of receiving that sample. So that bodes well for the silicon and bodes well for our engineering.

Right now, we have several new programs, dot Amox six programs, one dot 60 programs that will start generating some revenue in the 2026 and certainly into 2027. Again, this will all be paced by silicon availability.

Background Voice: Appreciate it.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of David Voigt with UBS. David, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

David Voigt, Analyst, UBS: Great, guys. Thanks for taking my question. So maybe two for me also. So maybe, Rob, can you dig in a little bit on the 800 ramp that you referenced or Mandy preference? Looks like Google, if I strip out sort of what’s going on with TPU, was probably incredibly strong from an 800 ramp.

And can you maybe talk to what you’re seeing from the other two eight hundred gs customers in terms of how they’re ramping in 2Q into 3Q? So it looks like maybe one of them might be a little bit more muted to start this 800 gs ramp. I wonder if that’s just more timing. And then I’ll give you my follow-up is when I think about the capital equipment business that had a little bit of a pull forward into H1, can you maybe shed some light on was that more on the lithography side, memory, logic, kind of what are you seeing by end vertical within capital equipment H1 versus H2? Thanks.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Okay. Let me start off with the capital equipment one, and I’ll go to the networking one. So on capital equipment, Q2, very strong growth, 20% plus. It was really driven by normalization of inventory levels that we started seeing in the 2024. As we go into the third quarter, we are seeing some incremental demand from a couple of our customers, but we’re also seeing that offset by a decrease in demand by others and hence kind of flattish as we go into the third quarter.

And for those customers, we actually saw an acceleration and what we think is an acceleration of demand from the second half into the first half. And so I do think and we believe that capital equipment will have a growth year this year in line with market rates, but it’ll be more front end focused than than back end focused relative to the the pulling that that we saw. And on the 400 g versus the 800 g, yeah, we, as Mandy mentioned earlier, you know, right now in the second quarter, we saw about a, I’ll call it, a fifty fifty split between 400 g and 800 g networking volumes. As we get into the back half of the year, we certainly see 800 g ramping up in excess of that. But 400 g also has a very long tail through this year and certainly in connection with visibility right now.

There will always be ebbs and flows, but, you know, across our customer base, there’s certainly a couple of customers that are are ramping a lot harder and a lot faster than others on eight entry.

David Voigt, Analyst, UBS: Great. Thanks, guys.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Thanos Moschopoulos with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanos Moschopoulos, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Hi, good morning. On the cash cycle, is it reasonable to expect some ongoing improvements in cash cycle days just simply as CCS is becoming a bigger part of the mix relative to ATS?

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Hi Thanos, Mandy Pierre. It’s certainly an area that we continue to work to improve. We’re really happy with our cash generation. We’ve generated positive free cash flow every quarter for over five years and we’re raising the outlook this year as you would expect from $350,000,000 to 400,000,000 The thing that I’ll note is that we continue to have a lot of confidence in our cash generation ability even while we’re growing our revenues at a 20% clip. And so you could think about the amount of working capital that we’re investing in to support this growth.

But that being said, we do think that we’ll continue to have strong inventory turns, lead times on materials are steady, probably at around sixteen weeks, which is in line with what you would have seen pre COVID. And so we do expect to be able to continue to turn inventory quickly. 400, we think, is the right number for this year, and we would be targeting a higher number next year.

Thanos Moschopoulos, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: Great. And on the CCS margins, how should we think about the near to medium term trajectory just given that you’ll have enterprise ramping back up, which might provide a negative mix dynamic there?

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Yes. I mean, going back to the outlook that we have, given the 11,550 implies about 18% growth in the CCS or excuse me, the total company. Our ATS growth is going to be muted because of the return of that unprofitable program to one of our customers. So it’s really been driven by CCS. What I would say is to your point, the enterprise demand is starting to improve as we get into the fourth quarter, we will start to see enterprise come back to year to year growth.

And right now the communications demand will continue to be strong driven by 800 I’ll just say again though that our customer outlook is higher than that. And so we’re just factoring in right now a lot of the uncertainties, but we would look to see very strong growth in both communications and enterprise.

Thanos Moschopoulos, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: That’s fine. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica0: Yep. Hi. And hope you can hear me. Strong print here, and maybe if I can start with your CCS guide, for the full year. You’ve raised that substantially, for the full year.

I’m just wondering when you call out strengthening demand for the second half, you’re just calling that out more for the enterprise segment itself. Maybe if you can sort of dive into, is that the area that you’re seeing more visibility from your customers? Or does that extend over to 800 gig in terms of volume expectations for the second half? Or is there really sort of the upside surprise on communication more from 400 gig demand being more resilient than you expected earlier? And I have a follow-up.

Thank you.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Yes. Hi, Samik. So I’d say a couple of pieces. On the enterprise, as we’ve talked about and everyone is aware, we’re going through a technology transition. That program is ramping nicely in the quarter right now.

And so we’re seeing a good contribution in the third quarter, and we will get more out of that in the fourth quarter. So while we are showing negative year over year growth rates in the second and third quarter, in the fourth quarter, we expect to start resuming growth. On the communication side, when we talked about acceleration of growth, it’s in the 800 gig programs. To one of the questions that was given earlier, we saw it in the second quarter with our largest customer. We’re now seeing it pick up with our other large hyperscaler customers as well.

400 gs is moderating, still very strong demand, just not as strong as the first half because that’s being replaced by 800 gs. And then again, if we saw demand strength across all the areas that

Background Voice: we think we could see, we would hope that

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: we could do more than what we’ve outlined.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica0: Got it. Got it. And maybe for the follow-up, you just sort of highlighted this earlier to a question about sort of the 4Q run rate being around that sort of 18, let’s call it, sort of ballpark 20%, which is what you’ve been running at. I mean, is that a fair way of thinking about sustainability of growth into next year as well, even as we layer on sort of some of these AIML projects that ramp further? Would you sort of look at that as a sustainable growth pace for investors to think about 2026 as a starting point?

Thank you.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Yes. Samik, I think what you’re also getting to is it’s probably a bit early to give a full 2026 number. Customer outlooks just don’t go that far at this point. In October, when we do our Investor Day, we will share our view of 2026. But what I can tell you right now is that the hyperscaler demand is very strong through the back end of this year, and we do have outlooks with our customers going into the first half of next year, and we’re not seeing a slowdown.

In addition to that, we have a number of programs that we’ve already won and are in the process of ramping, which gives us further confidence going into the first half right now. And then also as you think about next year, we do believe that ATS is going to grow in line with our targets that we set, which are typically around 10% over the long term. So right now the growth is continuing into the

Background Voice: first half. We’ll just wait

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: to give a full year number. We just need a little bit more time to work with our customers.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: And Sumit, I would also add that we have the capacity to service growth north of 20% per year for sure.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica0: Got it. Thank you. Thanks for the comments.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Paul Treiber with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica1: Yes. Thanks very much and good morning. Just could you speak to the new program pipeline that you’re seeing right now and then the opportunity to expand further with existing hyperscalers, but then also additional hyperscalers beyond the top three that you have? And can you speak to it in terms of on the communication side, but then also the enterprise side?

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Sure. Yeah. So in terms of new programs, we’re continuing to, I’ll call, build the breadth that we have in terms of our offering with our existing hyperscalers. So in terms of all the hyperscalers, if we’re if we’re providing one with networking products for in conversations or doing proof of concepts or things like that to provide them with AI compute products and things on those lines. So, you know, our first order of business is to kinda increase our share of wallet with our hyperscalers, and those conversations are are mature and ongoing and and having some good traction.

In terms of, you know, penetrating new hyperscalers, we’re fairly penetrated. Our focus right now are in new regions or also with digital natives, as we mentioned, and we’re having some very interesting conversations on why what the right entry point is for us to help support these customers moving forward. As we mentioned also in previous earnings calls with our recent digital native win, which includes the design manufacturing for a full orchestrated AI rack, not so not just a networking rack, but a full orchestrated rack. That really gives us incremental proof points to broaden our solutions for the whole plethora of additional customers out there.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica1: Thanks. And a follow-up for that is pricing factoring into discussions at this point? Or is it one of the items that’s much lower down discussion point just given the demand environment at the moment?

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Yes. In our industry, pricing is always a factor, but it is really not the main factor right now. I think our customers are looking for certainly certainty of supply at scale. They’re looking for best in class designs and technology leadership, and those are the top two on on the list. Competitive pricing will always be a factor in our industry, but if you have the first two, then the second one usually just falls in line because the customers understand the value that you actually are delivering to them.

Background Voice: Yes. Only thing I’d add

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: to that one, Paul, is we constantly work with our customers on total cost of ownership. And we think that our footprint gives us a very sustainable advantage in this space whether customers need to be close to the deployment areas, whether they’re looking for lower cost geographies. Being in 16 countries, we really are able to offer a wide variety of solutions to them. And because of our relative discipline on CapEx deployment, we aim to run our facilities at a high level of utilization. So we’re looking to constantly drive productivity and pass those savings on to our customers as well.

Conference Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Atif Malik with Citi.

Background Voice: Nice results. My first question is on your 10% of sales and more customers. You had 3% in Q1, it dropped to 2%. How many are you expecting in the September? Hi, Tifa.

It’s

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: really nice to see Citibank back in the coverage universe for us. So welcome. We saw strong growth across our top three customers. As you’ve noted, one of them just fell under. Was just a smidgen under.

It rounds to 10% still. And we are seeing both the good thing is that we still saw quarter to quarter growth with that customer. It’s just frankly the base grew faster than they did. When you go into the following quarters, we do expect that we’re going to have three customers above 10% going into the third and fourth quarter.

Background Voice: Great. And as a follow-up, in your prepared remarks, you guys talked about strengthening in some optical projects. Can you kind of elaborate on what these projects are?

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Yes. We have a an enterprise customer that has been ramping some programs, and I’ll call that in the data center interconnect area. Those products have been widely successful in the market, and we’re supporting them in ramping those programs.

Background Voice: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Todd Coupland with CIBC.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica2: Can you hear me okay? Yes. I wanted you to bridge what we hear from hyperscalers. Recently, we heard a big CapEx increase last week from a large hyperscaler. We’re getting three other updates this week.

And just bridge how we should think about those increases relative to your change in guidance?

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Why don’t I start, Todd? Good morning to you. Look, there’s always a little bit of a lag, if you will, between the announcements that the hyperscalers are making and the forecast that we’re receiving from them. And so when we see these increases come through in prepared remarks from our customers often it’s an affirmation of what we’ve already been seeing from a demand perspective. And so to the comment that I had made earlier, we’re seeing very strong demand right now in the back half of this year.

That demand outlook with our customers looking at their forecast is continuing into the first half. And so really we look at the announcements that have just been made and we expect will be made as an affirmation of the forecast that we’ve already received.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Todd I would add one of our leading indicators CapEx is certainly a leading indicator. Another leading indicator is also silicon, you know, because of the lead time associated with a lot of this silicon. We look as far ahead as we can and understand what our customers are putting on order, asking us to put an order, and that helps us align our longer term forecasts and long term financial and revenue outlooks as well.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica2: Great. Thanks for that color. There’s been a number of questions on switch market share. I wanted to turn to server market share. Seemed like you had lost a little bit at the the end of last year.

Now now it’s coming back. Could you just frame up what your server market share trends are at the moment? Thanks a lot.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Yeah. Thanks. So, you know, I would say that we are gaining share with our largest customers with respect to AI server market share. Frankly, a lot of that is just due to strong execution and ability to build these very complex products at scale. And then deep mentioned, we just went through a technology transition.

We see these programs starting to ramp in the third quarter and getting some significant momentum as we exit the year and also into next year. And we will also expect this product line to produce probably even more revenues based on that increased share as we get into twenty late ’twenty six and into ’twenty seven and beyond based on next generation programs.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica2: Thank you very much.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Robert Young with Canaccord Genuity. Robert, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Robert, your line is now open.

Please go ahead or press 6 if you’ve dialed in.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica3: Can you hear me now?

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Yeah. I can hear you.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica3: Alright. Okay. I think you had, okay. So you’ve had some very strong momentum on 1.6 terabyte, and I’d love to get some context on, whether that has continued. I think earlier in the call, you said that the, full rack proof point was opening up new opportunities.

And so if you can just talk about the halo that the relationship with the hyperscalers, this 1.6 terabyte, win rate and, maybe the full rack proof points. So what is that doing around the opportunity to grow white label opportunities along the ODM path?

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Yeah. Thanks, Rob. So on the on the one dot six, we continue to win, I’ll call it, one dot six t variant. So we have one dot 60 awards with many of the large hyperscalers. There’s a lot of variants, I.

Different types of one dot 60 silicon or different use cases in the rack. So we’re continuing to kinda grow our our market share on these variants of those customers. In terms of the digital native win and doing that fully orchestrated rack, that is certainly opening up new doors and new conversations with people, even the hyperscalers. But the entry point on that might be next generation systems in terms of what more can we do. So those conversations are still, I’ll call it, in the early stages, but producing a lot of interesting conversations.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica3: Okay. And then my second question, just on the the full wrap solution, as you add maintenance and service into the mix of services. I know that you acquired NCS Global, but do you need to acquire, or, are you well positioned for that shift? And then what’s the potential timing? If you give any context around margin impact and timing, that would be helpful.

I’ll pass on.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Yeah. I’ll start. I’ll let Mandy finish on the M and A front. Yeah. Services is certainly a major focus area for us.

The the South Africa and CS Global was a fantastic acquisition and is certainly supporting us. In order to really support the demand that we have from our customers on services we will need and are planning to expand our services footprint and offering. And with that I’ll turn it over to Mandeep.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Yeah. Rob, so services is an area of focus for us. And the acquisition for SCS was able to bring in

Background Voice: some good capabilities and a

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: good foundation. We do have a very extensive partner network. And so we don’t see any gaps in being able to support the customer wins that we’ve already received. But there are going to be opportunities along the way to vertically integrate. And so we do continue to look at various targets.

And if we can see the synergies come to bear, then we will be comfortable to go ahead and act. But our funnel does continue to include service targets.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: And obviously, services margins would be north of the company margins as well and be accretive.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica3: Right. Is there any timing on the the rollout of that services offering? Is that happening today, or is it something like, how do we think about that, from a modeling perspective?

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: It is it is happening today. It is happening today, but, not at the scale where it would be moving, the company’s, financials, I would say. Anything anything there?

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Would I would think about it, Rob, as Rob Young, as in terms of a materiality perspective is when we get into that large digital native one. That’s where it’s gonna be a larger part of the of the offering. That being said, we price and and look to support our customers holistically. And so they’re you know, not everything is gonna always be accretive to the company services. Certainly, it will be.

But there will be a variety of services we provide. So we’re gonna be incrementally investing in this area, and I would say it has more of a materiality impact probably as we get to 2021.

Matthew Pilotta, Head of Investor Relations, Celestica0: Okay. Thanks.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your final question is a follow-up from David Voat from UBS. David, your line is open. Please go ahead.

David Voigt, Analyst, UBS: Great. Thanks guys for taking my follow-up. Mandeep, this is a question for you. You mentioned that you have enough capacity or maybe Rob mentioned you have enough capacity for calendar year 2026 growth in CCS and you have basically a visibility for the next twelve months. Can you help us understand when you would need to make adjustments to your capacity as we move through 2025

Thanos Moschopoulos, Analyst, BMO Capital Markets: into 2026 or the back half of 2026 and 2027? How should

David Voigt, Analyst, UBS: we think about that flowing through your capital priorities as demand strengthens or your visibility improves as we move forward? Thanks.

Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer, Celestica: Yes. Why don’t I start off on the number side and Rob can jump in as needed. So we if you look at one of those large buildings that we were able to add on in Thailand, we were able to do it in about twelve months. And so expansions in areas like Mexico and Southeast Asia about twelve months lead time is required. This is a reminder on the approach that we take is we have a campus strategy the way our network is set up up and so we do have the ability to add on additional buildings within the campuses typically and then we can quickly fill it with equipment.

We have already made decisions to expand capacity to support programs that we’ve won in areas such as Thailand, such as Richardson, Texas, such as in Mexico. You’ll see the CapEx spend in the first half of this year being a little bit on the lighter side and that’s just reflective of expenditures that we’ve actually incurred so far. But the back half of this year is going be a little bit more weighted. Just taking a step back from an overall CapEx intensity perspective 1.5 to 2% is still the right number for us. This year we’ll be tracking towards $200,000,000 it just has been under 2%.

But 1.5 to 2% of our revenues continues to be around the same amount that we would expect to spend. And I’ll just highlight that only about 40 basis points of our CapEx spend is for maintenance and so the rest of it is to support growth programs which gives us a lot of discretion on where we put those dollars. But right now, we think that we can meet the demand for the programs we’ve already won with that amount spent.

David Voigt, Analyst, UBS: Great. Thanks, Mandeep.

Conference Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over Rob Mayonis for closing remarks.

Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Celestica: Thank you, and thank you all for your time and engagement today. We’re pleased to report a strong second quarter, demonstrating our resilience in a dynamic market. The upward revision of our full year outlook reflects the strength of our customer relationships and the confidence in the current demand environment. We value your ongoing support and look forward to sharing more positive updates with you next quarter. Thank you again for joining us this morning, and have a great day.

Conference Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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