Vertiv

Sales jumped 61 percent last quarter to 4.3 billion dollars, and new orders more than doubled from a year ago, a sign demand is still speeding up. Every region grew, led by the Americas at 75 percent, and management raised its full year sales forecast by 650 million dollars to about 14.65 billion dollars.

As Vertiv gets bigger, more of each sale turns into profit. It now keeps about 25 cents of operating profit from every dollar of sales, up from about 22 cents a year ago, and profit per share jumped 78 percent to 2.21 dollars. It also has more cash than debt, with 6.2 billion dollars of available funds to keep building factories.

The company is valued at about 94 billion dollars, more than six times the sales it expects this year, so a lot of future growth is already baked into the price. The stock also tends to swing about twice as hard as the overall market, so even a strong quarter that misses sky high hopes can send shares tumbling.

Vertiv's fortunes ride on how much big tech spends building data centers, and that spending moves in cycles. The Americas grew 75 percent while Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew just 23 percent, so much of the growth depends on one region. If AI budgets tighten or power shortages delay projects, customers can push back or cancel orders, and that big pile of orders could shrink fast.