TE Connectivity plc (TEL) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Everyone, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the TE Connectivity third quarter earnings call for fiscal year 2026. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press one again. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Vice President of Investor Relations, Sujal Shah. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining our conference call to discuss TE Connectivity's third quarter results and outlook for our fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. With me today are Chief Executive Officer, Terrence Curtin, and Chief Financial Officer, Heath Mitts. During this call, we will be providing certain forward-looking information. We ask you to review the forward-looking cautionary statements included in today's press release. In addition, we will use certain non-GAAP measures in our discussion this morning. We ask you to review the sections of our press release and the accompanying slide presentation that address the use of these items. The press release and related tables, along with the slide presentation, can be found on the investor relations portion. You may rejoin the queue if you have a second question. Let me turn the call over to Terrence for opening comments.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Before I get into the details on the slides, I do want to frame today's call around a couple key takeaways. Our strategic positioning around the accelerating data and power trend continues to drive broad-based outperformance. We are at the intersection of the largest technology and infrastructure investment cycle that's taking place around the world. We also continue to benefit from continued market momentum driven by both secular growth trends as well as positive cyclical market inflections. We'll click down on these during today's call. As we outlined at our investor day earlier this year, we expect our strategy to deliver broad-based growth while driving sustained margin expansion and double-digit earnings growth. As we progress through this year, we have continued to execute against this strategy. Our third quarter results and outlook provide further evidence that our strategy is working. Our positioning is creating opportunities across multiple long-term growth drivers as increasing data and power requirements are reshaping our customers' architectures. This is where our interconnect technologies are essential. Investments in AI infrastructure continue to drive strong growth in both our Digital Data Networks and energy businesses. Further secular trends, including electrification, automation, and increasing compute at the edge applications, are driving growth across our Aerospace and Defense, Automation and Connected Living, automotive, and Commercial Transportation businesses. These investments are expanding our opportunities across both our segments and reinforce our confidence in TE's long-term growth outlook. The strength of these trends is reflected in our record order performance, with double-digit order growth in every business across both segments. For the full fiscal year, we now expect sales to grow approximately 15%, representing more than $2.5 billion of incremental revenue in 2026 while delivering margin expansion and earnings per share growth above 20%. Importantly, our record order momentum and growing backlog provide increasing visibility into continued broad-based growth as we move into next year, reinforcing our strategy and our ability to compound earnings that create long-term value for our owners. With that as a quick overview, I'd ask you to turn to slide three to review our third quarter results and our outlook for the fourth quarter. In the third quarter, sales were $5.2 billion, and they increased 14% on a reported basis and 12% organically over last year. Our order momentum continues to increase, which resulted in record order levels of $5.7 billion, growing 27% versus the prior year as well as 7% on a sequential basis. As I normally do, I'll provide more details on sales and orders in the next few slides. We delivered 22% earnings per share growth to a record adjusted earnings per share of $2.94, and adjusted margins expanded 90 basis points, reflecting the continued execution of our teams while also delivering for our customers. In this growth environment, the other thing that we're proud of, we continue to demonstrate the strength of our cash generation model. Year-to-date, we've generated approximately $2.2 billion of free cash flow while continuing to make investments to support future growth in both engineering as well as manufacturing capacity. In addition to the organic investments, today we signed an agreement to acquire Astrodyne TDI, which is a bolt-on acquisition that broadens our portfolio of power and filter products for mission-critical applications that'll be part of our Industrial segment, and Heath will click down with some additional details about this acquisition that we're excited about in his section. Looking forward, we expect our fourth quarter sales of approximately $5.25 billion, which will increase 11% versus the prior year. We expect to deliver adjusted earnings per share of approximately $3.05. For the full year, we expect to deliver growth of 15% in sales and 23% in adjusted EPS year-over-year. Let's get into orders, and if you could please turn to slide four, I'll click down into the order trends we're seeing. Orders increased over $1 billion year-over-year to a record of $5.7 billion in the quarter, and the order momentum was in both segments, which reinforces the breadth of our growth. The Industrial segment continues its strong momentum, with orders increasing 36% versus the prior year. These record Industrial orders were driven by increasing momentum in AI, along with strong growth in every business. Just to give you the flavor of the momentum, in our Digital Data Networks business, year-to-date, our orders are up over 70% versus last year. In our energy, Aerospace and Defense, and Automation and Connected Living, all have 20% order growth year-to-date. Turning to Transportation, segment orders increased 19% versus the prior year, reflecting continued content growth in both automotive and commercial transportation. We saw double-digit year-over-year order growth across all three of the transportation businesses, supporting our confidence in continued market outperformance driven by where we positioned ourselves on content. We are running a book-to-bill of 1.1, both in the quarter as well as year to date. Our orders have not only translated into strong growth this year, but also have resulted in a record backlog position, and this backlog position is a strong growth indicator as we move into our fiscal 2027. Let me click down into the segment results, and I'll start with the Industrial Solutions segment that is on your slide five. In the third quarter, our Industrial Solutions sales grew 22% on a reported basis and 21% organically year over year, with broad-based growth, as you see on the slide, across the segment, led by over 30% organic growth in both our DDN and energy businesses. We are uniquely positioned at the intersection of the accelerating data and power investment cycle. What differentiates our Industrial Solutions segment is the breadth of our participation across the AI infrastructure, with AI driving demand not only for high speed and power connectivity in and around the rack, but also for the energy infrastructure required to bring power to the data center. This positions both our DDN and energy businesses to benefit as AI infrastructure continues to scale, while the rest of our industrial portfolio continues to benefit from broader secular growth trends. In Digital Data Networks, our teams delivered another very strong quarter of growth, with sales increasing 34% year over year and up $100 million sequentially, which was in line with our expectations, and we expect DDN to deliver the full-year growth we talked about last quarter. In data connectivity, we continue to see increasing demand as AI architectures evolve towards agentic workloads, driving greater deployment of CPUs and networking, which increases the addressable market for high-speed copper connectivity. In optical, we see additional long-term growth opportunities beyond what we had outlined in Investor Day. Through the RAM Photonics acquisition, we strengthened our optical roadmap with fiber-attached connectivity, and we are encouraged by our customer engagements around this future growth opportunity. In our DDN business, we also see growing opportunities in power connectivity as our customers evolve their architecture. We have deep expertise in material science, thermal management, safety, and reliability challenges associated with moving to higher voltage connectivity. As the industry moves towards higher voltage architectures, we are well positioned to support our customers' evolving connectivity requirements. Turning to energy, we saw very strong sales growth and our organic sales increased a very strong 33%, driven by continued investment across grid hardening, where utilities continue to modernize aging infrastructure for increased power needs as well as data center build-outs. Our AI opportunity extends beyond the rack. Data center build-outs are driving significant investment across the power infrastructure, and we provide the connectivity solutions that enable generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure, which gives us the unique position I highlighted earlier. Turning to our Automation and Connected Living business, sales increased 16% and 14% on an organic basis, with growth across every region. Versus 90 days ago, we are seeing additional indicators of both cyclical growth as well as content outperformance. We now expect this market to grow high single digits this year, and with our strong position in automation, we expect to outperform the end market. In aerospace and defense, our business grew 12%, which reflects the continued strength in both the commercial aerospace as well as what we're seeing in the defense markets, where our data connectivity and power products are essential to next-generation platforms. In our medical business, our team delivered sales as we expected. At the segment level, turning to margins, Industrial Solutions segment adjusted operating margins expanded 70 basis points to nearly 23%, reflecting continued strong execution by our teams. Let me turn to our Transportation Solutions segment, and that'll be on slide six. In the third quarter, our Transportation Solutions segment grew 7% on a reported basis and 5% organically year-over-year. Growth was driven by content outperformance in our end markets, particularly in Asia, our leading global position, as well as our customer co-creation model. In automotive, sales increased 5% on a reported basis and 3% organically. We continue to deliver growth above the market due to content drivers, despite a decline in vehicle production. Data connectivity in the vehicle continues to be a significant driver, along with electrification of the powertrain, where we benefit largely in Asia, and software-defined vehicle architectures. We expect our full-year content outperformance to be in our four to six point range for both this year as well as longer term. Turning to our Commercial Transportation business, sales increased 20% on a reported base as well as 18% on an organic basis. We continue to see improving cycle trends across regions and market verticals while delivering significant growth above the market through new program wins, further electrification of trucks in Asia, and strong execution across all regions. In our sensors business, our performance was as we expected. At the segment level, in looking at margins, the transportation team delivered adjusted operating margins of 21%, demonstrating the resiliency of the execution by our transportation team. With that as a click down on the segment performance, let me turn it over to Heath who'll get into more details on the financials and our expectations going forward.

Thank you, Terrence, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide seven. For the quarter, we achieved adjusted operating income of over $1.1 billion and adjusted operating margins of 21.9%. GAAP operating income was $981 million and included $9 million of acquisition-related charges, $83 million of restructuring and other charges, and $56 million of amortization expense. I continue to expect restructuring charges in fiscal 2026 to be roughly $100 million. Adjusted EPS was $2.94. GAAP EPS was $2.55 for the quarter and included restructuring acquisition, other charges of $0.23, and amortization expense of $0.15. The adjusted effective tax rate was 23% in Q3, and we expect Q4's rate to be between 22%-23%. Importantly, as always, we expect our cash tax rate to remain well below our adjusted effective tax rate. Please turn to slide eight. This slide reinforces the themes Terrence discussed, which are ongoing broad-based growth across the segments, strong operational execution by our teams, and continued earnings growth. Sales of $5.2 billion were evenly split between the Industrial and Transportation segments. Given the order strength that Terrence mentioned earlier, we will exit this year with a strong backlog position in both segments. Certainly, this is influenced by AI program wins within the DDN business. The order momentum and backlog growth give us confidence that our strong performance will continue into next year. Adjusted operating margins were 21.9%, expanding 90 basis points year-over-year. Adjusted earnings per share were $2.94, up 22% year-over-year, driven by sales growth and margin expansion. The teams are doing a very good job of meeting customer demands while continuing to manage inflationary pressures through both price as well as cost actions. Turning to cash flow, cash from operations was $1.2 billion, and free cash flow was $883 million during the quarter. Year-to-date, free cash flow was roughly $2.2 billion, and we've returned approximately $2 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks so far this year. We continue to expect our free cash flow conversion to be roughly 100% this year. Let me talk about the acquisition that Terrence mentioned earlier. Astrodyne TDI will generate more than $250 million in annual sales and had a purchase price of approximately $1.4 billion. We expect to close the transaction by the end of this calendar year, subject to customary closing conditions. Our cash generation model, coupled with our strong balance sheet, supports our capital deployment strategy, and Astrodyne is a good example of a strategic bolt-on acquisition while we're still returning capital to our shareholders. Before I turn it over to questions, let me reinforce that our performance reflects our positioning to benefit from the largest technology and infrastructure investments taking place globally. We are delivering well ahead of our through-cycle business model, generating strong margins, earnings growth, and cash flow. Just as important, our record order momentum provides heightened confidence as we wrap up fiscal 2026 and jump into fiscal 2027, which starts in October. With that, let's open it up for questions.

Thank you, Heath. Pascal, can you please give the instructions for the Q&A session?

We will now begin the Q&A portion of the call. I would like to remind you that to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone keypad. In order to have time for all questions, each participant is limited to one question. Your first question comes from the line of Scott Davis from Melius Research. Scott, your line is open.

Hey, good morning.

Good morning, guys.

Good morning, Scott.

Terrence and Heath and Sujal.

Morning.

Hey, guys. Can you talk a little bit about the ramp you expect in your FAU optical business? My understanding is it's a hard business to scale up and scale out, but you guys seem to have some capabilities here. It could be pretty important to calming that debate of copper versus optical. Just curious to see where you're at there. Thanks.

No, thanks, Scott. Let me start with the second half. Then I'll talk about the FAU. I think the first thing is that we said it's copper and optical. I'm going to come back to that again because you're going to have different needs. We've seen the architectures where within the rack, what you're doing in the rack, copper's going to be the heavy workload. With what we've done with the RAM Photonics acquisition, it really is something that we opened up incremental market access to as optics come into the things that are going to be the scale out, also probably moving off the switch in the architecture. As you know, there's a lot of customers that are working on this. What really makes this exciting for us is the engagement that we have with our customers on the FAU technology. It's early days. I think this is the type of thing, you won't really see meaningful revenue until we get to 2028 and beyond that. It's an incremental TAM, Scott, and it builds on the copper position, and it's going to add incremental revenue and TAM for us as we go forward. Near term, we're investing in it. Certainly, you all know the acquisition that we did. Certainly, we are investing in the scaling of the manufacturing as well as the engineering teams off that acquisition to really make sure we can meet the intercept point that our customers expect us to meet, which will be more in the 2028 and beyond timeframe. That's what we get excited about, how we rounded out the portfolio with that, and we'll continue to look for opportunities that strengthen it based upon where we're co-creating with our customers.

Okay. Thank you, Scott. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs. Mark, your line is open.

Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. I'm hoping you can give more color on how the record orders and backlog are setting the company up for revenue growth, not only for this year, but any early thoughts on 2027. As a part of the order commentary, can you speak specifically to DDN orders relative to your outlook for sales growth? Because you said it improving momentum in AI orders, but then you also said that revenue is tracking in line with your prior expectation within the DDN segment. I'm trying to reconcile those comments and why DDN revenue for this year isn't tracking to be better than you previously thought in light of the AI order momentum. Thank you.

Yeah, sure, Mark. Thanks for the question. Like you said, the orders I talked about in the call are up about $1.2 billion. The bigger jump was in our Industrial segment, so about $800 million increase in Industrial, and half of that order growth came from DDN. It ties right into the trends that you see that relate to AI, and that's going to just continue. AI, as a percentage of that, is just going to continue to increase. I did mention that we had 70% order growth year-to-date in DDN. Let's face it, that's building backlog as we're ramping programs. Just with where we are in the year, with three months left, these are program ramps, and we have multiple program ramps going on at any time. Really, this momentum is really going to deliver more into next year than increases to this year. We do expect DDN to be up in our fourth quarter sequentially over the third quarter. Just as importantly, when you think about that Industrial segment order, I know I mentioned some of these, energy business, AD&M business, as well as the ACL business, we're all up 20% year-to-date. When you look at energy and AD&M, they're really, really strong secular growth trends that we don't see that momentum slowing down. It's broad-based. Certainly, you can look at the investments that are happening, that traction's going to continue and carry into 2027, to your 2027 question. The last piece that I think is the big piece in our Industrial segment is ACL. ACL has more cyclicality to it, and it's nice that we're having that cyclical uptick, but those orders are up. In Transportation, our orders are up $400 million year-over-year, and we're seeing benefit of ICT. The orders that we're seeing are really just reinforcing our content position in automotive. Vehicle production is down slightly. It really hasn't moved from when we talked to you back early in the year, and we think it'll stay around this slight decline. Our team's doing a great job delivering the performance of content above production, and that's what our orders are reinforcing. The programs that are coming in to really make sure it continues to have that four to six points outperformance.

Thank you, Mark. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my question. It's Ruplu filling in for Wamsi. Terrence, the question is on the Transportation Solutions segment. You said global vehicle production is expected to be slightly down this year. There's some concern on the China market. How do you see the China domestic market evolving versus the export market, and how do you see TE positioned here?

Ruplu, thanks for the question and thanks for covering for Wamsi. It's a great question. Let me frame it a little bit, because when you think about TE, we need to think about production. Production is slightly down, and certainly there's headlines that are out there that, "Hey, what's happening in China domestically?" China auto production is down similar to the global picture. Our Asian-China position's very strong, and we had eight points of outperformance over production in China. Or actually, our China business grew 6% against 2% down in production. Exports are the element that I think people miss in that narrative. Right now, the exports out of our China OEMs are offsetting a weak China local market. You have to think about those exports that's really driving it and what they're doing in Southeast Asia, Central and South America, where they have over 100% exports to Africa as well as Europe. I do think some of the narrative is around the car sales in China, the exports are clearly benefiting from that and offsetting that. The other thing I would just highlight, while production hasn't changed, our European business had four points of outperformance in the quarter. They're square back in there after last year was sluggish due to some of the EVs. Really, Asia and Europe are offset in a weak North America market still. Net-net, we feel very good about the four to six. Production is staying exactly where we thought, and we would expect production to be similar next year, maybe down a little bit. Feel good about the team momentum and also the content outperformance that we have this year and into the fourth quarter that'll roll into 2027.

All right. Thank you, Ruplu. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question is from Christopher Glynn at Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Good morning. Just wanted to go a little more into the energy segment. The organic had pretty meaningful acceleration in organic growth versus tougher comp. That spells exceptional sequential too. Are you seeing a particular build in just baseline run rates there? In other words, is that new key program and design wins layering in, or was there something peculiar about the growth in this quarter for energy?

No, Chris, thanks for the question. Let me frame it a little bit for you. One of the things that was really nice, and we've been talking about energy and how we get excited about it certainly ties into the power trends, but it was well over $100 million of growth this quarter of our $600 million of total growth. It's very meaningful. When you look at it, we think of our energy business in three basic verticals below it that you should think about it. About 60% of it, or two-thirds, is really around where we service the utilities, and we talked about grid hardening. There's the investment that's happening around the aging infrastructure. Clearly, that is on an upward inflection point that you all know about. There's about 20% of it that we call industrial, but this is also where you bring power into a data center. You bring power into buildings, and that is clearly growing very fast, and we're benefiting from it, and even reflected in some of this quarter's numbers. The remainder is around clean energy. That had been, and is, a growth driver. Been stronger in the past, but certainly what we're seeing in the data center, as well as the grid hardening, is just accelerating. If you look at energy this year, we're probably expecting it, you should think about it more as a mid-teens type grower this quarter. There is a project nature to some of our programs because you're selling into infrastructure. I really think as you look at it this year and into next year, think about it more of a mid-teens grower is the right way to think about it. Just the last thing I would tie back to is when we look at this market, yeah, there's energy CapEx, but we do think about a third of the energy market growth where we're positioned is driven by data center build-outs. It ties back into, yes, we have a great position in DDN, but you also, where we're going to benefit from the power infrastructure build-out is just as important.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question is from Amit Daryanani from Evercore. Your line is now open.

Hey, Amit.

Thanks. Hello. Good morning. Hope you all are doing well.

Good morning.

Good morning, Terrence. Terrence, there's been a lot of focus on AI revenues, and maybe I missed this part, but could you just touch on how are you tracking in the June quarter versus your targets? Is it still 70% of DDN? It would be good to get that clarified. Then really more broadly, as I think investors focus in on this copper versus fiber debate Can you just help frame TE's opportunity across copper, optical, and power, and how do you see these businesses complementing each other over time? As the scale-up architectures really migrate more aggressively towards optics, do you think that's a tailwind, a headwind, a neutral thing for your content story? Thank you.

Yeah, fair. The first question's pretty straightforward. When you think about what we think about DDN and where AI is, we're on track to what we said last quarter. For DDN will be exactly where we thought we were going to be. When you look at it, because of the AI momentum and the orders that we see, all you're going to continue to see is the percentage of AI of DDN is just continuing to increase. It goes up. I know a few quarters ago we talked about it, 70%. Every quarter it goes up as AI continues to accelerate, and that trend's going to continue. That's the first part. On the second part, on copper, and it goes back to Scott's question. On the copper and the inflection point, couple of things. When you're in the scale-up versus scale-out, let's face it, scale-out already is very optical, because you have longer lengths and things like that. Optics exist. When you're getting to more agentic workloads, that's where you're introducing more CPUs. That's all going to be copper, Amit. When you look at it, as architecture is evolving, and that's why you hear the global merchant chip makers say copper's going to be the workhorse within the rack, and in that scale-up, is going to continue. I think where you get the inflection point, which is incremental benefit for us, is when you would get opticals like CPO coming in at the switch level. It's sort of in between. In that regard, that's where I think with what we've done with RAM on the FAU side really plays into the connectivity suite, and that's incremental TAM. That's just on the data side when we're talking about it. Like I said in the prepared remarks, power just continues to move up. The power connectivity as they're moving to higher voltage architectures. You introduce optics, that creates more power need, and if you look at that, in some cases, we can get content increases that'll be 1.5 what traditional power content would be. All this inflection, we like it. We think it is all positive for us. We have to realize, when you play with technology and play where we want to play, architectures evolve. You need data, you need power, and we do both. We get excited about it, and we think it's going to continue to benefit us as we move forward. Clearly our orders also represent that.

All right. Thank you, Amit. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Giordano with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. How you doing?

Hey, Joe.

Good. How are you?

I wanted to touch on the other parts of DDN. Like if you're tracking towards your AI cloud number of like around $2.4 billion, it suggests that like the rest of DDN, that $800 million of more traditional stuff isn't growing that fast this year, I'm just curious, can you frame that piece for us? When you talk about the agentic CPU type incremental demand that you see, where would that fall? Would that fall within that $2.4 billion that you're currently calling AI cloud, or would that fall into that other like $800 million-ish of like more traditional, How should we think about the content step up there?

Couple of things. When you see that content step up, this is where in this space it blurs a lot, and it depends on where the customer is that's doing it, Joe. I'm not trying to be cute, but when you actually sit there, if a hyperscaler's doing it, we would put it more in the AI cloud number. If it was just somebody buying a server, it might be an enterprise type number. We continue to get clouding on that due to how these architectures evolve, and it's another reason why you're going to hear us talk much more at the DDN level as we go forward. When you look at it, talked about it just on the prior question, the growth in AI and cloud is the big momentum and growth driver. What you look at in the other areas, you do see people prioritizing to the AI workload. While you do see some increase elsewhere, it's not as big of an increase as AI and cloud. In some cases, we actually see down a little bit as you have shift of investment. Net-net, long term, both will be benefited as these architectures go forward. I just think we're in really early days to see it outside of the AI and cloud space.

Thank you, Joe. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Asiya Merchant with Citi. Asiya, your line is now open.

Great. Just a little bit, if you can clarify on the sequential order growth that you're seeing within these DDN and AI and cloud. I think the commentary was more year-to-date with orders up 70%. Just if you could clarify that in line with the content growth that you expect, or one would expect as you see new architectures coming here, which tend to be more content intensive and should benefit TE. Thank you.

Yeah. When you look at it, we had very strong organic growth in bookings, as you saw on that slide. You look at that. I'm just trying to get a paper in front of me. On a sequential basis, about half of that growth was due to DDN, similar to the year-over-year. We continue to get very strong growth momentum. As I said, I think the real number is that 70%+ year-to-date booking growth that we have. It's very strong across as you look at it, but DDN played a very big role in that order growth in Industrial in the quarter, which was about half of our overall order growth sequentially.

Okay. Thank you, Asya. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Fox with Fox Advisors LLC. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning. I was just wondering, Terrence-

Hey, Steve.

I'm wondering if you could just go a little bit deeper on the acquisition you just announced. I'm not quite clear what's special about it. Just as a related subject, given what you've done recently in that power space, does this mean you're more aggressive in that area? It seems like there's a lot of opportunity you guys build an even bigger business. Thanks.

No, Steve, great question. Let me talk about a little bit. To your point, I know we get a lot of discussion around data, especially with DDN and where we do data connectivity in the vehicle. We get excited about power and data because when you think about where we play in the architecture, somebody's making a semi choice, somebody's making a power supply choice, and how does the architecture come together is always what we're looking at. We look at both. Even if you look at this here with RAM, which in optical connectivity, that's data. This is a power play. I'll ask Heath to talk about it, but when you look at what we announced, Astrodyne TDI has a very good position both in power filters, which makes sure you have quality of power coming into applications as well as some custom power supplies. We already have a very similar position that Astrodyne has in the power filter side. We've had something from a legacy perspective, we added to it with Schaffner, and about 40% of Astrodyne is in the power filtering side. This just continues to add to our position, which certainly is a great thing to have. On top of it, they do some custom power solutions that actually go into applications that we really like semiconductor equipment, goes into the defense market as well as medical markets that we talk about. We're going to continue for those customers as they evolve their architecture, be able to give a pretty robust power solution piece to them that we've given them, but it's going to expand it. That really, the custom piece expands our TAM. We're very excited for this team to join TE later this calendar year. Heath, why don't you talk about some of the numbers?

Thanks, Steve. I mentioned on the call that this business has been growing very nicely with a really nice trajectory going forward. If we calendarize it for our fiscal year, it's about $250 million in sales right now. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we paid about $1.4 billion. That will be funded through cash. We expect it to close later this year. This business, as it comes into TE in our industrial segment, it will be accretive to our growth rates and our margins, at both the TE level and the industrial level. It's a really attractive business. On top of that, we do see the operational synergies, both in where they manufacture versus where we manufacture and some opportunities there, as well as some other things that we bring to the table in terms of the construct of the deal. Pretty excited about getting this one over. We've just got to get it through the customary close process towards the end of this calendar year.

All right. Thank you, Steve. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Manmohanpreet Singh from JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to ask about the AI specific revenues. Can you please provide an update on the updated guide for AI revenues relative to the past update of $2.4 billion? How to really think about AI linked or AI data center linked revenues within the energy segment and now potentially also within the Astrodyne acquisition. Thank you.

A couple of things. First off, as we said earlier, we expect DDN to be delivering on what we said 90 days ago. It's fully as we expected, and it's going to continue. The AI revenues are going to continue to increase as a percentage of DDN based upon the strong backlog we have and the growth momentum going into 2027. On the energy, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, about 20% of our energy business is benefiting from where you get data center build-out. You do see that. You see that driving really nice growth in the energy business. When you look at the acquisition we just talked about with Astrodyne, it gets the benefit really from where it plays into semiconductor equipment. Clearly where you have that increased capacity going in for chips that are all driven by AI, clearly that's a really good position they have, and we will benefit from that through that position that they have, and we're going to build on.

Okay. Thank you, MP. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Spak with UBS. Joe, your line is now open.

Hey, Joe.

Thank you. Hey, good morning. Terrence, at your Investor Day in late 2025, you talked about that AI cloud being $3 billion in two years, which would be next year 2027. You've raised that number through this year, and even in your commentary today that it's sort of in line with prior communications. It suggests like the annualized rate in fourth quarter is already at, if not above $3 billion. I was wondering if you could help provide an update to that figure or maybe some context and sort of how you're thinking about that business over the coming years.

I think the things you said were right on, Joe, let me give you context. We said this last quarter, the $3 billion we laid out, we're ahead of, and that has continued to shift left, and that's how you should think about it. Even with the momentum we have in the orders we've laid out, DDN is going to be a very big growth driver into 2027 again, as well as the other units that we have from a growth perspective. Nothing has changed on that $3 billion. Continues to shift left, and we'll be above that. What's really good is the breadth of the growth we have, which includes DDN, to really make sure we continue to compound the growth that we've had on top of the 15% we're going to deliver this year.

Right. Thank you, Joe. Can we have the next question, please?

Your next question comes from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo. Colin, your line is now open.

Oh, great. Thanks for taking my question.

Go ahead.

Terrence, could you touch on the opportunity on 800-volt data centers? Obviously, that sort of came up during the quarter. Any color on how much content that switch could add? Any color on the competitive landscape, does that change opening up some, maybe new competitors? Obviously, you have the current data center market fairly locked up, does that actually allow some new competitors to come in with that technology shift potentially coming in the next few years?

First off, Ian, when you think about power and in our AI revenue, probably one-third of what we do in AI is power connectivity, whereas two-thirds is data connectivity. When you sit there, you're going to continue to see as that power flex up, it's going to create opportunity for us. We have a very strong position in power. We're already architecting with our customers around how does the data and the power needs go together when you're really talking at the rack. I don't see new entrants coming in because this is a simultaneous equation of trade-offs and constraints between the data and the power equation when you're at the rack. Our customers really like somebody that understands both the power chain and the signal chain. When we look at it, we feel very fortunate that we can have discussions with them on the power chain that also considers the data chain, and that's an advantage position. We feel that you're going to continue to see outgrowth in that area as people move up the high voltage architectures. Some people are playing with 800 volt, there's a whole continuum of where people are making trade-offs. I don't think it's one end game, and that's what's really great about what DDN is going through. All of our customers are really experimenting in the architecture on different trade-offs to make sure they get to the lowest cost per token. We have to realize that's the ultimate end game that they're going to, and different customers have different paths they're trying to challenge. When we look at it, that's going to be part of the growth momentum we have is what's happening on the power chain as you move up. Like I said already, a third of our business is related to the power connectivity side.

All right. Thank you.

Got it. Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of William Stein with Truist Securities. William, your line is now open.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Believe it or not, I'm going to get off the AI topic for a moment anyway. I'm hoping, Terrence, you can talk to us a little bit more about what's going on in defense. Our channel check suggests that the strength in that end market has been unusual, and I'm hoping you can talk about new projects and backlog trends, and perhaps component pricing as well in that end market. Thank you.

Sure. Will. Thanks for the question. Yeah. On defense, let's face it is at a different inflection point due to some of the geopolitics in the world, and you all know that, I don't need to talk about that. What we're also seeing, we are seeing a velocity increase on programs due to what's going on. It is also both very strong in Europe as well as in the U.S. It's on both of those vectors that are very much driving the increased backlog. Even when we talk about the backlog position earlier, when we said it a quarter or so ago, backlog that we're having, some of the more significant builds are not only DDN, it's also in aerospace and defense, and especially on the defense side. That inflection point, even when you look at what is budgeted for defense spending around the hardware side, which is where we would play, is very important. It is also important when you think about when you get into UAVs and applications like that, come back to the data connectivity and the power connectivity is very important. When you get things that are remotely controlled, that comes into very high speed elements where the compute has to actually happen real time, and we're benefiting from that. We're on a breadth of programs. The growth that we're having, defense is growing faster than commercial air right now, which is a little bit different than you would've thought about TE maybe 10 years ago. That trend is a real secular trend that we don't see slowing down, and we continue to invest in capacity to make sure we can deliver for our customers.

He Will.

Your next question comes from the line of Shreyas Patil with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.

Hey, thanks a lot for taking my question. Terrence, maybe to put a finer point on some earlier questions, how much of the business today is tied to optical in AI, in areas such as transceivers? Maybe pivoting away from that, I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about the incremental margins in the quarter. Looked pretty strong at 36%, even as you were facing input cost inflation. On my math, it looked like the organic flow through next quarter appears pretty strong as well. I'm just curious what's driving that? Thanks.

Sure, Shreyas. Let me take the first piece. As I said earlier, when you think about optics today, we do have optical positions today that we have in DDN. The element is we are not a major player in scale-out. When you think about scale-out, which is almost all optical today, we have a limited position there. Where we typically are completely focused is in the scale up, in the rack, is where our focus has been and continues to be as we make the investments. Do you want to talk about the margin?

Sure. Shreyas, we are running where we would expect at these volume levels. Certainly, the heightened growth in Industrial, you would expect to see 30-plus % flow through for these types of volume. A given quarter, as I've said in the past, is not always the best measuring stick, but I would say the momentum is there, and you see it in our margin, and our margin rates have continued to improve, both at the Industrial segment as well as the Transportation segment that doesn't have quite the same market support that we're seeing in the Industrial segment. As we finish up the year, your fourth quarter questions as we wrap up the year, certainly, we maintain that strong momentum. There's nothing that really changes that perspective on things. Quite honestly, as we jump into 2027, we would expect the same kind of momentum.

Okay. Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

There are no more questions in the queue. This therefore concludes our Q&A, and I will pass the call back for some closing remarks.

No, thank you. I want to thank everybody for joining us this morning, and if you have any questions, please contact investor relations at TE. Thank you and have a nice day.

Today's conference call will be available for replay beginning at 11:30 A.M. Eastern Time today on the investor relations portion of TE Connectivity's website. That will conclude the conference for today.