Vertiv Holdings is set to report first-quarter results on Wednesday, April 22, with vrt stock already up 95% year-to-date and traders bracing for another sharp swing after the numbers hit.
Options markets are pricing in a move of about 9.16% in either direction around the earnings release, almost exactly in line with Vertiv’s average post-earnings move of about 9% over the past four quarters. Wall Street expects the company to post earnings of $1.00 a share on revenue of $2.64 billion, up 29.4% from a year earlier.
The stock’s run has been fueled by a simple idea: Vertiv sits in the middle of the AI data center buildout, supplying the power and cooling gear that keeps those facilities running. That case has only gotten more visible in recent months. Vertiv ended 2025 with a backlog of $15 billion, up 109% from a year earlier, a sign that demand has stayed strong even as the share price has sprinted ahead.
Analysts have responded by pushing their targets higher. Roth MKM’s Justin Clare lifted his price target to $335 from $275 and kept a Buy rating, while Bank of America’s Andrew Obin raised his target to $330 from $277 and also reaffirmed a Buy. TipRanks’ AI Analyst has an Outperform rating and a $349 target. In all, Wall Street’s consensus remains Strong Buy, based on 16 Buys and one Hold.
That optimism is getting fresh support from the broader construction data. ConstructConnect said U.S. data center construction starts reached $36.9 billion in the first two months of 2026, up from $1.4 billion in the same period of 2025. Census data also showed U.S. data center construction spending rose 31% year over year to a $47 billion annualized pace, underscoring how much capital is still flowing into the sector Vertiv serves.
There is one change investors will have to watch closely on Wednesday: Vertiv will no longer report quarterly orders and will discuss only annual backlog in its 10-K filing. That means the earnings update may offer less short-term color than some traders want, even as they parse whether AI infrastructure demand is still running hot enough to justify the stock’s 19x multiple and the 95% rally already baked into vrt stock.
The numbers on April 22 should answer the immediate question, but the bigger test is whether Vertiv can keep turning a massive backlog and a booming data center market into results fast enough to support where the stock is trading now.
