Vertiv Acquires UtilityInnovation Group for $1.5 Billion in AI Infrastructure Push

GE Vernova closed its most recent quarter with a $176 billion backlog, with management guiding to $200 billion in 2027, as surging AI power demand drives turbine capacity rationing. Q2 orders came in at $24.2 billion, up 88% organically, and the company signed 20 GW of gas contracts in the quarter alone, expecting at least 125 GW of gas equipment under contract by year-end 2026. CEO Scott Strazik told analysts the company expects to be "mostly sold out through 2030," with 2031 slots already filling, while annual turbine output scales from 20 GW in Q3 2026 to 24 GW in 2028 and 30 GW in 2030. Q2 free cash flow hit $5.1 billion, exceeding all of full-year 2025, prompting management to raise 2026 free cash flow guidance to $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion from a prior range of $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion, double the quarterly dividend to $0.50 per share, and lift buyback authorization to $10 billion. Electrification orders grew 66% organically at a book-to-bill of 1.7x, with data center orders crossing $5 billion year-to-date, more than double the entire 2025 total, though the Wind segment remains a drag with revenue down 10% in Q2 and roughly $400 million of full-year segment EBITDA losses expected.

Analog Devices Chief Financial Officer Rich Puccio said the company expects demand strength across its portfolio to support double-digit growth into fiscal 2027, citing a broad industrial recovery alongside continued momentum in data centers, aerospace and defense, and automated test equipment. Speaking with JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur at the firm's 2026 U.S. All Stars Conference in London, Puccio said aerospace and defense, automated test equipment, and data centers account for roughly 30% of the company's business and have been growing at high rates. The aerospace and defense business was nearing a $2 billion annualized revenue run rate as of the fiscal third-quarter exit rate, up from approximately $1 billion a year earlier, while the automated test equipment business was operating at an annualized run rate of about $1 billion and the data center business is running at about $2 billion annually, split roughly equally between power and optical products and growing about 100% year over year. Puccio declined to provide a mid-quarter bookings update or formal guidance for the January quarter but said Analog Devices expects to perform better than its normal seasonal pattern, in which the first fiscal quarter is typically down in the mid-single digits sequentially. He said more than half of the company's industrial subsegments remain double digits below the consumption line, that the company guided for a record gross margin in the fourth quarter, and that its pending acquisition of Alif Semiconductor is not expected to be material to revenue or costs in the near term, with the business more likely to ramp beginning around 2028.

Heartland Advisors' Opportunistic Value Equity Strategy named Texas Instruments a significant contributor to its second-quarter 2026 performance, citing the chipmaker's entry into the AI infrastructure narrative. In its Q2 2026 investor letter, the firm said Texas Instruments, the world's largest analog semiconductor manufacturer, has seen its data center power management revenues rise more than 90% year over year as its chips handle electrical power regulation and management in data centers. The strategy returned 12.32% in the quarter, trailing the Russell 3000 Value Index's 14.02% gain, with negative security selection in Technology offsetting positive selection in nine of eleven sectors. Heartland noted the stock rose more than 70% through late June and closed at $270.87 per share on September 21, 2026, returning 4.16% over the past month and 48.80% over the past 52 weeks, with a market capitalization of $247.37 billion. The firm said Texas Instruments has passed peak capital expenditures in its multi-year fabrication-capacity buildout, and that higher fab utilization should drive incremental profits and cash flow, though the business now trades between its price target and intrinsic value. According to the article, 111 hedge fund portfolios held Texas Instruments at the end of the second quarter, up from 71 in the previous quarter.