Vertiv at Morgan Stanley Conference: Navigating Data Center Demand

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) participated in Morgan Stanley’s 13th Annual Laguna Conference. The company highlighted its strategic initiatives amid robust data center demand driven by AI. While Vertiv reported strong growth and a promising outlook, it also acknowledged challenges such as tariff impacts on margins.

Key Takeaways

• Vertiv reported 35% organic growth in the last quarter.
• The company maintained a book-to-bill ratio of 1.2, indicating strong demand.
• Tariffs negatively affected Q2 margins, but countermeasures are in place.
• Vertiv is expanding capacity and focusing on innovation to meet market needs.
• The company remains optimistic about achieving long-term financial goals.

Financial Results

• Organic Growth: 35% in the last quarter.
• Book-to-Bill Ratio: 1.2, reflecting strong demand.
• Operating Margin:

- Q2 margin at 18.5%.

- Projected to rise to 20% in Q3 and exceed 23% in Q4.

• Incremental Margin: Targeting 30%-35% in Q4.
• Tariffs: Countermeasures include pricing adjustments and supply chain optimization.
• Price Costs: Expected to remain positive in 2025.

Operational Updates

• Pipeline Strength: Covers opportunities for the next 12-24 months.
• Liquid Cooling: Expected to represent a third of the data center cooling market.
• White Space Solutions: Increasing presence with prefabricated solutions to cut deployment time.
• Supply Chain: Pursuing a region-for-region architecture to enhance resilience.
• Customer Relationships: Collaborating with industry leaders like NVIDIA.

Future Outlook

• Visibility: Extends into 2026 and 2027.
• Growth Drivers: Continued growth expected in physical infrastructure spending.
• Market Expansion: Focus on innovation and capacity improvements.
• Europe Market: Anticipated future growth likened to a "coil spring."

Q&A Highlights

• Demand Acceleration: Monitoring sales growth and pipeline strength.
• Vertical Integration: Collaboration with hyperscalers for deployment.
• Growth Constraints: Power availability remains a moderating factor.
• Customer Lead Time: No observed decline.
• Tariffs: Pricing and supply chain actions expected to offset impacts.

In conclusion, Vertiv remains committed to capitalizing on market opportunities despite short-term challenges. For a comprehensive understanding, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Morgan Stanley’s 13th Annual Laguna Conference:

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Thank you, everybody. I’m Chris Snyder, a U.S. multi-industry analyst. Very excited to have Vertiv up here. You know, obviously a very topical stock. We have CEO Giordano Albertazzi, CFO David Fallon. Thank you guys for joining us. Clearly.

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Thank you for having us. Very much so. I don’t know if this works.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Clearly, very good demand in the market. Maybe not a surprise. I think you 35% organic for you guys last quarter, $1.2 book-to-bill. Oracle was some eye-popping numbers last night. I guess from I think everyone knows that demand is strong. For the investors and kind of on the outside looking in, what’s the best way to gauge if things are accelerating, decelerating, getting better? What should we look for?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: I think there is a, you talking specifically Vertiv or in general?

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Vertiv.

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: I think it is a combination of all the things we share with investors. Certainly, what we say in terms of sales growth, book-to-bill, all elements that are adding a lot of information. A very important parameter for us, and we’ve been vocal about that quite a few times, indeed every time, is the strength of a pipeline. Again, strength of the pipeline tells what is ahead for us. I always like to remind everyone or to reiterate what pipeline means for us. We’re very rigorous in what we define as pipeline; it is only active commercial opportunities for which there is a quote. When we say pipeline is growing, that is a very, very good proxy for what is ahead. That is a way in which we signal the direction in which the business is going.

Beyond the individual quarter order intake, etc., have been quite strong, as we know, on both the year-on-year and a trailing 12 perspective. Listen to what we’re saying in terms of pipeline and pipeline direction. I think that’s always a good indicator for us.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Obviously, the company has a lot of backlog, and then you have a pipeline that’s even, I guess, in addition to the backlog. How much visibility does that give you? Do you guys, you know, it feels like 2026, you have good visibility. Does that pipeline even extend into 2027 at this point?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Yes, the answer is yes, it extends into 2026 and 2027, of course, further out. In terms of active quotations that are in the hands of our customers, of course, it diminishes, but it doesn’t mean that we do not have visibility beyond that. We have a lot of visibility in the industry. We have all the right relationships to continue to lead in the industry. Our conversations with our customers are, you know, years out. A lot of visibility for us. Typically, our pipeline covers 12, 24 months. Again, I’m talking about pipeline. I’m not talking about backlog. The pipeline is opportunities that are yet to turn into orders.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Appreciate that. Maybe on liquid cooling, which is obviously a big change that’s going on in the market. Vertiv clearly does very well there. I guess, how should us on the outside looking in kind of track the progress of liquid cooling? Think about all the gigawatts that are being added, how much of that could go to liquid cooling? Are there any parameters out there we should look at, maybe Blackwell shipments?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Yeah, I think clearly we see that the industry is shifting to liquid cooling. This trajectory is clear. When we think Blackwell and further future generations, it’s all high-density liquid cool pretty much. That is a good proxy to define what part of the industry is needing, demanding liquid cooling. I always like to remind everyone that even in a liquid cooled data center, you will have air cooled in parallel to that, simply because there are loads, and there will be loads that will continue to be air cooled. If you think about the flow of heat, there is a big chunk of the data center cooling market TAM that is in heat rejection. Never think about, oh, the liquid cooling is the only element of a thermal chain in a data center. It is part of a bigger chain.

When we think long-term, let’s say, state-to-state, we think about liquid cooling as representing about a third of the total TAM of data center cooling. It doesn’t mean that only a third of the data centers will have servers that are liquid cooled. That % will be much higher. There is much more to the TAM than just the very important liquid cooling part, a part that we are very happy about in terms of our growth and a part that we love and in which we excel.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: That’s great. Another change that’s going on in the data center market and something that’s driving a lot of questions for us is the shift in spend between gray space and white space, or, you know, infrastructure to things like servers and chips. I guess as a company that competes across and sells into the whole ecosystem, what’s your view on that and what does it mean for Vertiv?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Yeah, I think this is an important question in terms of explaining what happens in the CapEx structure. Clearly, the total CapEx numbers that we all hear about, total CapEx is infrastructure, physical infrastructure, power, cooling, the building, etc., etc., and the sheer IT. In this total CapEx, %-wise, the IT is growing a little bit, but the net sheer growth of total CapEx makes the pure infrastructure, our TAM, grow very, very, very strongly. Yes, the mix is heavy and heavier in the IT part, but the net growth that we see on physical infrastructure is very, very encouraging. We’ve been vocal about that in our investor day. We see things moving certainly in that direction. If anything, on the upper range of the growth rates that we indicated specifically for colo and hyperscale market.

One thing that we’re doing, I’m going to be a little bit long-winded on this one. One thing that we are doing is really increase our presence in the white space. Go back three, four years. Four years. The white space would have very little challenges and content in terms of power and cooling and infrastructure. No longer the case. As density increases, think about the extreme one megawatt rack instead of 10 kilowatt racks, so multiple orders of magnitude. It’s mind-boggling. The complexity in terms of how to distribute power, how to distribute cooling inside the rack, and then the row, and then the whole white space poses challenges that we are very well equipped to address. The white space is becoming a very fertile ground for us in terms of growth. You heard about our acquisition of Great Lakes exactly to further strengthen system-level offering.

It will be, it is liquid cooling, power distribution. It will be high-voltage DC as that type of, I would say, liquid cooling-like type of transition happens also with power. One thing that we are super excited about is prefabrication inside the white space. We were explicitly talking about our smart run prefabricated white space fit-out solution in July when we had our last earnings call. That can cut the deployment of actually fit out, using the exact terminology, the fit-out time by an order of magnitude. Think about you have built this very expensive, massive data center, and then you spend months fitting out the white space. That month can become just weeks. As an investor, your time to revenue is shortened dramatically. All things that we like a lot.

In the space of three, four years, the space, the white space that was a little bit, yeah, we were in also play. It becomes an absolutely playground for our strengths in power and cooling and prefabrication. Very, very excited about that.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Appreciate all of that. When we think about the infrastructure side, are these, you know, is a new Greenfield AI data center being future-proofed? Is it bringing the thermal and power requirements to support where chips are going, you know, five or ten years from now? Do you think that, you know, even within that physical infrastructure, there’s an upgrade cycle because of where it’s going?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Yeah, we can certainly talk about the next five years. The next ten years is a little bit earlier. We don’t mind that. Certainly, we are a partner to all the important players from the Silicon side, the NVIDIA’s of the world, of course, but also hyperscalers and colo. We are a partner in defining what their future infrastructure should look like exactly to be a future-proof. An example we shared with all investors at our investor day, a product that was quite cool in that respect, that is CoolPhase Flex, a product that is fully prefabricated in terms of thermal management infrastructure. That can flex liquid and air depending on how the evolution of the loads inside a given data center will happen during the life cycle of the data center. There are a number of ways in which this flexibility can be built in.

Whether that will be sufficient ten years out, it remains to be seen. If that turns into a ten-year-out replacement and upgrade opportunity, then we will like it a lot. It’s early to say. What we can say, though, is that if we, instead of looking at the traditional gray space, the power and mechanical, the electrical and mechanical infrastructure traditionally outside the white space, we go into the white space with that electrical and mechanical infrastructure, power and cooling, call it the way you want. You’re designing now a data center for 150 kilowatts per rack. Maybe you have stretched that to 300 because you’re thinking forward-looking as a data center developer. What happens six years from now? The likelihood that the white space replacement cycle that did not exist before will have probably a five, seven-year rhythm is quite high. Time will tell.

It’s very logical to think that that’s what will happen.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Appreciate that. You know, you guys help customers with front-end design work. You know, you’re part of the NVIDIA preferred supplier network. Can you talk about your closeness with the key customers or key industry players and how that is a moat versus new entrants that are trying to come into the market?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: We believe a very important one, a very important competitive advantage in twofold. Being involved in road mapping the future of silicon is absolutely important. We have to provide the technology that will enable Rubin, Rubin Plus, et cetera. We need to have those technologies in our roadmap today because our products and our systems need to be out probably at least six months or a year ahead so that the infrastructure can be built so that that new silicon can be then deployed. Very important. Being there at a drawing table as an enabler, as opposed to say, oh, OK, now we see where the CVU technology goes. Let’s build that too. Being a me-too type of player in the liquid cooling as an example, but the same is true with high voltage direct current power distribution.

All big advantages because those conversations, that knowledge then enables us to sit at the table with a large customer, be it hyperscalers or large colocators everywhere in the world and say, hey, this is what we see happening. Sometimes it’s a three-way table with a silicon provider, with NVIDIA, the customer, and ourselves and say, hey, this is what is happening. This is how you should design your data center. It’s never us telling. That would be, how can I say, not the right characterization of the thing. It’s really engineers and engineers cooperating and saying, how do we figure out the future challenges? Our role is bringing our knowledge about the future technology of silicon, bringing our knowledge of what is the art of the possible because of our knowledge of our roadmaps in terms of electrical, mechanical, white space infrastructure, et cetera.

Also at that table, we define and understand what their needs are in terms of scaling. It’s very mutually helpful. Our customers know that the conversation with us is the entire infrastructure, the entire data center. They don’t have to sit with 10 different customers, one that knows UPS very well, another that knows CVU very well, et cetera. We know the whole infrastructure.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Maybe outside of competitors, how do you feel or what do you think about hyperscalers vertically integrating into the infrastructure? I know Amazon’s been doing it for a while, but there was an announcement a couple of months ago that got a lot of headlines. I guess, what are your thoughts on that? What does it mean for Vertiv? Is anything changing there?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: I would say not really. No two hyperscalers behave in the same way and have the same philosophy when it comes to how they build and what level of involvement they have in the definition of the technology. They all have a very strong opinion, as they should, as to what the data center needs to look like, but how exactly a CDU or a power distribution unit looks like, some going very much into the details. When you say vertical integration, we do not see vertical integration, even in the example that you have given. If anything, it is ownership of IP. If we, specific case, you have a hyperscaler who has traditionally wanted to own the IP. That’s true across everything. When people say, hey, AWS, are you surprised about that? No, we are neither surprised nor is it a novelty.

Generally speaking, the hyperscalers, even those who have a strong grip on the deep IP of the technology that goes into their data centers, then collaborate with the likes of us, or us directly, in developing that technology or certainly in deploying that technology as a supply chain player. Yeah.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: I guess, last quarter, 35% organic growth. You build backlog on top of that. What is the constraint on growth here? Is it customers’ timelines and all the upstream power issues? Is it Vertiv’s capacity? Is it your supplier’s capacity? Customer timelines?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Let’s start with the industry as what are the, I don’t like to talk about constraints, but I call them pacing factors or moderating factors. Clearly, there would be an almost infinite appetite for capacity increase in the data centers world. You need power, as we know. Power is, especially in some parts of the world, a limiting factor, not in the sense that there will be a cliff. I personally don’t believe there will be a cliff. Certainly, the speed at which power is being made available is slower than the theoretical speed at which the industry would like to travel. What we see is an enormous amount of capital and ingenuity applied and entrepreneurship applied to the power side of the equation with more and more battery energy storage systems being deployed, more and more, let’s say, off-grid data centers or partially off-grid data centers being designed.

Things will happen. That will continue to be a moderating factor, but I don’t see a cliff. The other fact is that the data center industry is a construction industry. There is a limit to how fast you can go. I was mentioning our smart run fit-out technology, but prefabrication is a way to liberate speed, if you will, in the construction business. When it comes to us, the growth that we have demonstrated in the first part of the year and anyway last year is certainly a testament to the fact that we can accelerate. We are very rigorous in the way we look at forecasts and capacitize for that forecast. Forecasts are never an exact science, as we know. That’s why we make sure we keep wiggle room in our manufacturing capacity. Again, it’s not just manufacturing capacity. We are increasing our CapEx.

We are adding square feet of manufacturing space. We are certainly ahead of the growth curve. A very important element that is often overlooked is you have to have services capacity. The speed at which you’re growing your services needs to be at least equal to the speed at which you’re growing your manufacturing capacity. That is more obviously what people think of when we’ve been doing that. I think that continues to expand that moat that we’re talking about earlier.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Yeah, I mean, maybe I just want to follow up on Vertiv’s capacity. I guess, is it reasonable to think that your capacity is growing, you know, kind of in line or quite similar to the revenue we’re seeing? A secondary question on capacity is that the view in the market was that as companies add capacity, orders would go down and backlog would go down because there’s less concern around lead times. We saw, you know, kind of the opposite. Do you feel like this capacity is actually maybe a driver of share gain in that you can now, you know, more so accommodate customers?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Let’s start from the first part. Is your capacity proportional to revenue? Yes, almost by definition. Clearly, as I said, there is a wiggle room where you can accelerate, use more of an asset or less, but you always have to have, in the long run, in the medium run, absolutely, there is a proportionality between capacity and output. Again, capacity doesn’t necessarily mean an additional square feet. There is certainly an efficiency and productivity improvement that you drive in your infrastructure. That needs always to be the case. Otherwise, you forego an important element of, let’s say, the operational leverage that we promised all of you guys. What was the second part of your question?

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: A driver of share gain.

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Oh, yeah. Oh, and how that correlates to orders and why the industry was expecting orders down. I think that we’ve been explicit about the fact that we have not seen our requested lead time. The customers need a certain product system at a certain date, and the time between when they place an order and when they need the stuff is typically driven by their construction plan. Of course, we are shrinking our lead times, but it doesn’t mean that every time we get an order, the customer is using the shorter lead time. The shorter lead time is to gain market share when the customer finds and says, oh, this supplier is creating a problem. Vertiv, can you come in? Or we have an opportunity to accelerate a project. Can you serve us at a higher speed?

We continue to think that that 12 to 18 months lead time, average lead time that we see in large projects, will stay, and that doesn’t have consequences in terms of order intake reduction. We are very rigorous in terms of the definition of backlog. We only define backlog as what is a legally binding PO. That is not going to change dramatically, maybe two months more, two months less. If we were, but we are not, if we were to say, hey, every time we have kind of a long-term commitment and people say, hey, do you have capacity for the three, four years out? Maybe the answer could be slightly different, but those three, four years out type of conversations continue and are very active because people are aware of the importance of securing capacity in a data center industry that continues to accelerate.

I don’t see a kind of a dramatic shift from an order intake standpoint.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Appreciate that. Maybe moving over to margins. You know, margins down in the quarter. We saw gross margin pressure despite, you know, 35% top line growth. Can you just talk about, you know, the headwinds incurred in the second quarter and kind of what’s the pathway for recovery there?

David Fallon, CFO, Vertiv: Yeah, sure. I would pocket the headwinds into two different categories. One, of course, are tariffs. It took us 25 minutes to get to a tariff question. That’s pretty good. It’s tariffs. Everyone’s been impacted by tariffs, and we’re no exception. The tariffs certainly hit us in Q2 without the opportunity to put into effect countermeasures, so both pricing and then supply chain. In addition, as it relates to some of the supply chain actions that we have put in place, those have created some operational challenges. To the extent we changed the footprint, we probably underestimated the impact and the disruption that has on the actual operations. That’s what you saw in Q2. We also laid out a path as we go through the year addressing these headwinds, both related to tariffs and also the operational execution.

If you look at our Q2 quarter operating margin around 18.5%, we project that going to 20% in Q3 on lower volumes because of timing. That’s absolutely reflective of some of the work that we’re doing related to the tariff offset and also addressing some of the operational challenges. When you get to Q4, we’re guiding to an operating margin in excess of 23%. That would translate into an incremental margin between 30% and 35%, which is absolutely in line with what our long-term ambition is for incremental margins. I don’t want to say we were ever off the path to hit our long-term margin goals, but certainly looking at Q4, it provides pretty good confidence heading into 2026 that we’re back in line with what we would expect in the long term for margins.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Yeah, I mean, you guys obviously have a lot of backlog. Does that make it harder? Something that we’ve heard in the channel is that it could be hard to reprice the backlog against data center customers. I think maybe the more important question is, do you feel confident in the ability to get price and margin on the next order, on new orders that are coming through?

David Fallon, CFO, Vertiv: Yeah, I would say incrementally, yeah, it’s probably a little bit more of a challenge on backlog than going forward. I would say every single case is different. Every single customer, every single order has a nuance that makes it a little bit different from case to case. As I mentioned, one of the responses to tariffs has been pricing. We’re absolutely doing everything we can first from a supply chain perspective to mitigate the impact of the tariff, and we’re very transparent with our customers as far as what we’re doing. We’ve been pleased with the results we’ve gotten with our pricing discussions. I would say it’s not unique to tariffs. As we laid out in November 2024, the investor day, we see commercial execution and in particular price costs as a lever for margin expansion.

We continue to be price costs positive in 2025 with and without tariffs, and we would expect to continue to be price costs positive going forward.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: I appreciate that. You kind of talked about Q4, that normal 30% to 35% incremental. I think you guys talked about still some headwinds in Q4 and maybe exiting the year kind of more at a neutral. We, I guess, have easier margin comps into the first half. Is it reasonable to assume that next year could have above normalized incrementals?

David Fallon, CFO, Vertiv: Probably a bit premature to talk about 2026. I would say there is nothing that we imply with the margin that we expect in 2025 that would suggest 2026 would be any different than what we would expect any year heading out to 2029. In general, we expect that 30% to 35% incremental, and there may be a little bit of a tailwind as we get the year-over-year overlap with some of these tariff actions. Probably a little premature for 2026. I don’t see 2026 as being anything different from the expectation perspective versus 2027, 2028, 2029.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Appreciate that. Kind of staying on the tariff, is the policy having or bringing any sort of competitive advantages to the company? You know, there’s European competitors, there’s Asia competitors, Americas where we’re seeing most of the activity.

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: I can take this. I would not comment for our competitors. What I would comment is we’re pretty happy about our footprint. You know, well before tariffs, we were pursuing a region-for-region type of supply chain architecture within reason, of course. What we have done as tariff hitters is to accelerate this. The resiliency of our supply chain is still there and it’s even stronger. We think that we’re very well positioned. You know, go back to the question we’re saying about some of the challenges that we have experienced in Q2 and everything else that David explained. There are many perspectives in the industrial community who call us tech industrial, but industrial anyway. You see a quarter that is growing 40%. For example, in North America, 40% get a physical stuff being shipped out the door.

Oh, by the way, while we’re doing that, we were just reconfiguring our supply chains to make it happen. That means a lot going on. You in operations and supply chain, I have your hands full. I’m pretty, pretty proud of what we’ve done. I mean, we know that we, as always, we can do much better and that’s our commitment to all our investors. There was a lot going on that.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: 40% sounds like more of a decade’s worth of growth than a year. I think the strength in America is, I think it’s pretty well appreciated and known by the audience here. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in the international markets? Europe seems like it’s disappointed from a growth perspective at the industry. APAC seems stronger. I guess, what are you seeing there?

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Oh, absolutely. Just like you said, Europe is slow and it’s something that everyone in the industry is saying. There are multiple reasons for that. Certainly, a stringent regulatory environment, a little bit of a lag that has always existed relative to what happens in North America and the U.S. That lag is a little bit exaggerated relative to what we have seen historically. One thing that we know is pipelines are very strong. Pipelines are strong. The second thing that is encouraging is that if you look at the vacancy rates in existing data centers, they are really low. The other aspect that I always like to think about is, whereas from an AI standpoint, you can train everywhere in the world, when you go to inference, you have to inference within the, let’s say, sovereignty jurisdiction in which you want to operate.

This is particularly true for the EU. We like to think of Europe as a coil spring. Not sure when that will start to uncoil, but there are very, very compelling reasons to believe that that will not be too far out. Asia is certainly a good story. We should talk India and China and the rest of Asia or Australia, New Zealand individually. Generally speaking, it’s quite an encouraging market.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: We’re up on time. I could ask questions all day, but I would appreciate you guys coming up here with me.

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Thank you very much.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Thank you. Thank you.

Giordano Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv: Thank you.

Chris Snyder, U.S. Multi-Industry Analyst: Oh, great. Thanks, guys.

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