VRT delivered 23% adjusted margins and $925M free cash flow while SMCI grew revenue 93% but burned cash and holds billions in debt. Supermicro's $60B order book signals massive demand, but Q1 FY27 margin guidance near 11% suggests its 18% Q4 result was largely one-time. Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Super Micro Computer didn't make the cut.
Grab the names FREE today. Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) and Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ: SMCI) both just reported, and the results tell two very different AI infrastructure stories. Vertiv sells the power and thermal gear that keeps data halls alive.
Supermicro builds the AI servers that fill them. One quarter came in disciplined and margin-rich. The other came in loud, volatile, and backed by a staggering order book.
Vertiv posted Q2 revenue of $3.27 billion, up 24.1% YoY, with adjusted operating margin expanding 410 basis points to 22.6%. Services and Spares grew 28.6%, a sticky, high-margin annuity that server vendors rarely touch. CEO Gio Albertazzi framed the moment plainly: "We provide the picks and shovels for the digital age." Supermicro's Q4 landed differently.
Revenue hit $11.12 billion, up 93.2% YoY, but missed consensus by 3.83% as customers hit power, cooling, and networking bottlenecks. The stunner was GAAP gross margin at 17.5%, up from 9.5% a year earlier, driven by a richer enterprise mix. Charles Liang called the shortfall "purely a timing story." I take that at face value, cautiously.
Vertiv is investment-grade, generated $925.3 million in free cash flow in the quarter, and joined the S&P 500 in March 2026. Content per megawatt is expanding as 800V DC architectures roll in with NVIDIA Vera Rubin. Supermicro is playing a different game: $(6.81) billion in FY26 operating cash flow, $8.7 billion in bank and convertible debt, and an ongoing board review of export-control transactions.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
