Celestica, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for... Matthew Pallotta, Head of Investor Relations.

Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on Celestica's Q4 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. On the call today, we have Rob Mayonis, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer. Please note that during the course of this call, we will make forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the future performance of Celestica, our business outlook, guidance for the first quarter of 2026, our 2026 annual outlook, and anticipated trends in our industry and their anticipated impact on our business. These are based on management's current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions, including that there are no material changes to tariffs or trade restrictions compared to what is in effect as of January 28th. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and their potential impact on our results cannot be reliably predicted at this time. For identification and discussion of the material assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, please refer to our public filings with the SEC and on CDAR+, as well as the Investor Relations section on our website. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements unless expressly required to do so by law. In addition, during this call, we will refer to various non-GAAP financial measures we have included in our earnings release found in the investor relations section of our website, a discussion of those non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures. Unless otherwise specified, all references to dollars on this call are to U.S. dollars, all per share information is based on diluted shares outstanding, and all references to comparative figures are a year-over-year comparison. Let me now turn the call over to Rob.

Thank you, Matt. And good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us on today's call. We delivered very strong results in the fourth quarter, driven primarily by growth in our CCS segment across both our communications and enterprise end markets. This led to revenue and adjusted EPS, both exceeding the high end of our guidance ranges, while adjusted operating margin of 7.7% once again marked the strongest performance in company history. I'd like to briefly review our performance for this past fiscal year. Overall, 2025 was another exceptional year for the company. For the full year, we achieved revenue of $12.4 billion and adjusted EPS of $6.05, representing growth of 28% and 56% year-over-year, respectively. Our adjusted operating margin of 7.5% marked the second consecutive year of 100 basis points improvement, driven by growth in AI-related demand for data center technologies, strong operational execution, and improved operating leverage. We surpassed our annual outlook for each of our key financial metrics, further building on our positive momentum generated over the last several years. Looking back, our financial results reflect a consistent progression marked by sustained annual improvement across revenue, adjusted operating margin, and adjusted EPS. As we look ahead, we anticipate the strong momentum to continue, with revenue growth expected to accelerate in 2026. Furthermore, our optimism continues to strengthen regarding the significant pipeline of growth opportunities that lie ahead for our businesses, particularly in our CCS segment, which we believe will sustain this growth trajectory in 2027. Before I provide an update on an annual outlook for each of our businesses, I would like to hand the call over to Mandeep to discuss our financial performance during the quarter and our guidance for the first quarter of 2026. Mandeep, over to you.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. In the fourth quarter, revenue of $3.65 billion was up 44% and above the high end of our guidance range, driven by very strong demand in our CCS segment. Our non-GAAP operating margin was 7.7%, up 90 basis points, driven by strong margin improvement in both of our segments. Our adjusted earnings per share was $1.89 in the fourth quarter, exceeding the high end of our guidance range and an increase of 78 cents or 70%. Moving on to some additional metrics. Adjusted gross margin was 11.3%, up 30 basis points, driven by higher volumes and stronger productivity. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 19%. And lastly, as a result of strong profitability and disciplined working capital management, we achieved adjusted ROIC of 43%, up 14 percentage points versus the prior year. Moving on to our segment performance. Revenue in our ATS segment for the quarter was $795 million, 1% lower and in line with our guidance of a low single digit percentage decline. The decline in revenue was driven by lower volumes in our capital equipment business and previously communicated portfolio reshaping in our A&D business, partly offset by stronger demand in our other end markets. Our ATS segment accounted for 22% of total company revenue in the fourth quarter. Revenue in our CCS segment was $2.86 billion, up 64%, driven by very solid growth in both our communications and enterprise and markets. The CCS segment accounted for 78% of total company revenue in the fourth quarter. Revenue in our communications and market increased by 79%, above our guidance of a high 60s percentage growth. primarily driven by strong demand and ramping programs for 800G networking switches across our largest hyperscaler customers. Our enterprise end market revenue was higher by 33%, which was above our guidance of a low 20s percentage increase, driven by the acceleration in the ramping of a next generation AI ML compute program with a large hyperscaler customer. Our HPS business generated revenue of $1.4 billion in the fourth quarter, representing growth of 72% and accounted for 38% of total company revenue. The strong growth was driven by ramping volumes in 800G switch programs with multiple hyperscaler customers. Moving on to segment margins. ATS segment margin in the quarter was 5.3%, up 70 basis points, primarily driven by improved profitability in our AMD business. CCS segment margin in the fourth quarter was 8.4%, an improvement of 50 basis points, driven by strong operating leverage. During the fourth quarter, we had three customers that each accounted for at least 10% of total revenue, representing 36%, 15%, and 12% of revenue, respectively. For the full year 2025, we also had three customers that accounted for at least 10% of revenues at 32%, 14%, and 12% of revenue, respectively. Moving on to working capital, At the end of the fourth quarter, our inventory balance was $2.19 billion, a sequential increase of $141 million and higher by $427 million compared to the prior year, as we support continuing revenue growth in our CCS segment. Cash cycle days during the fourth quarter were 61, an improvement of eight days versus the prior year and was four days better sequentially. Turning to cash flows. In the fourth quarter, we generated $156 million of free cash flow, resulting in total annual adjusted free cash flow of $458 million in 2025, which was an increase of $152 million compared to the full year in 2024 and above our most recent annual outlook of $425 million. Our capital expenditures for the fourth quarter were $95 million, or 2.6% of revenue, bringing our total capital expenditures in 2025 to $201 million, or 1.6% of revenue. Since we last spoke at our Investor and Analyst Day in October, we have continued our discussions with key customers in our CCS segment in order to align on long-term capacity planning. As a result of these discussions, we are meaningfully increasing the scale and scope of our capital investment plans in 2026 and 2027. in order to build out the revenue enabling capacity required to support the strengthening demand we see ahead. We now anticipate that our capital expenditures for 2026 will be approximately $1 billion, or 6% of our current annual revenue outlook. Importantly, we anticipate to be able to fully support this increase in capital expenditures through operating cash flow, The investments we are making in new capacity, which we expect will come online throughout 2026 and 2027, are a response to record bookings, accelerating growth in the scale of our existing engagements, and meaningfully improved long-term demand visibility with our hyperscaler customers. We view our investments in new capacity as highly strategic, aligning our global footprint with the multi-year capacity roadmaps of our key customers, in support of their large-scale investments in data center infrastructure and AI capabilities. These investments will include a combination of capacity additions at our largest sites, new customer-driven investments in the United States, and upgrades to manufacturing capabilities, including investments in power. We are undertaking significant new investments in Texas in support of growing customer demand for US capabilities in the areas of R&D, manufacturing, and advanced assembly. At both our Richardson campus and new site in Fort Worth, we are adding a total of over 700,000 square feet of footprint with expanded power availability. This incremental capacity is expected to come online in 2027. Also, in order to facilitate greater engagement on R&D and design, we plan to establish a new HPS design center in Austin. Our CapEx plans also include large-scale investments in our manufacturing capacity and capabilities across the rest of our global network. In Thailand, we continue to add new capacity to support very strong demand from multiple customers. We are adding over 1 million square feet in additional footprint, with upgrades including expanded power availability, advanced liquid cooling manufacturing, and testing capabilities. we expect this new capacity to come online towards the end of 2026 and into 2027. Elsewhere in our network, we are upgrading and retooling sites to add new manufacturing lines in locations such as Mexico and Japan in support of customer demand for greater geographic diversification, allowing them the flexibility and optionality to de-risk their global supply chains within our network. We are also excited to announce our plans to establish a new HPS design center in Taiwan. Overall, we are very encouraged by the strong alignment and close collaboration on capacity planning we have with our customers, which underpins our confidence in making these investments. Turning to our balance sheet and capital allocation, At the end of the quarter, our cash balance was $596 million. Our gross debt was $724 million, resulting in a net debt position of $128 million. We had no draw outstanding on our revolver at the end of the quarter, leaving us with approximately $1.3 billion in available liquidity. Our gross debt to non-GAAP trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 0.7%. an improvement of 0.1 turns sequentially and 0.3 turns versus the prior year period. As of December 31st, we were in compliance with all financial covenants under our credit agreement. During the fourth quarter, we received regulatory approval to launch our new normal course issuer bid, which permits us to, at our discretion, purchase up to approximately 5% of our public flow until November 2nd, 2026. We will continue to be opportunistic towards share repurchases as our approach remains unchanged. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 132,000 shares under our normal course issuer bid for $36 million. For 2025, our repurchases totaled 1.36 million shares at a cost of $151 million or an average cost of approximately $111 per share. Now moving on to our guidance for the first quarter of 2026. First quarter revenue is projected to be between $3.85 and $4.15 billion, representing growth of 51% at the midpoint. Adjusted earnings per share are anticipated to be between $1.95 and $2.15, representing an increase of $0.85 at the midpoint, or 71% growth compared to the prior year. Assuming the achievement of the midpoint of our revenue and adjusted EPS guidance ranges, our non-GAAP operating margin for the first quarter is expected to be 7.8%, representing an increase of 70 basis points. We expect our adjusted effective tax rate for the first quarter to be approximately 21%. Finally, let's review our revenue outlook for each of our end markets. In our ATS segment, we anticipate revenue to be down in the low single-digit percentage range, as growth in our health tech and industrial businesses are being offset by market-related softness in our capital equipment business and portfolio reshaping in our A&D business. In our CCS segment, we anticipate revenue in our communications end market to grow in the low 60s percentage range, primarily driven by ongoing ramps in multiple 800G programs with our hyperscaler customers. In our enterprise end market, we expect a very strong growth in the 100 high teens percentage range, supported by the progression of a next generation AI ML hyperscaler compute program. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Rob for an update on our 2026 annual financial outlook and to provide additional color on the latest developments in our business.

Thank you, Mandeep. Given the strengthening demand forecast across our portfolio, we are raising our 2026 annual financial outlook. We are increasing our revenue outlook to $17 billion and raising our adjusted EPS outlook to $8.75, representing year-over-year growth of 37% and 45% respectively. This represents our high confidence view for 2026, which we will continue to refine and update as the year progresses. We are also maintaining our free cash flow outlook of $500 million. This demonstrates the inherent cash generating power of our business, allowing us to organically fund a significant increase in capital investments while continuing to generate cash to fund other investment opportunities. Since our Investor and Analyst Day this past October, the velocity and scale of awarded programs and growth opportunities for Celestica continues to expand. As Randeep discussed, we have responded by significantly increasing our capital investment plans in order to grow our global footprint in alignment with our customers' multi-year requirements. These investments are intended to provide us with the necessary scale to support the accelerated growth we anticipate in 2026 and which we believe will be sustained in 2027. In undertaking these investments, we have closely collaborated on demand planning with our largest customers, which has informed our decisions on the location, capabilities, and scale of the new capacity we are developing. These investments are targeted to strategically support our customer base and their program-specific requirements over the long term. On this note, we are proud of our decade-long partnership with Google and are excited to continue supporting the acceleration of leading AI data center architecture. Celestica remains closely aligned with Google on the development of complex data center hardware and systems. As a preferred manufacturing partner for Google's Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU systems, Celestica is committed to making long-term investments in both capacity and capabilities, both in the United States and across our global footprint. which includes our planned investments to expand manufacturing capacity in 2026 and 2027. These investments are designed to support the scaling of production for current and future generations of Google's custom silicon TPU systems, as well as leading-edge networking technologies. Based on our latest outlook, we anticipate full-year revenue growth of approximately 50% in our CCS segment, supported by strong demand and new program ramps across both end markets. In communications, demand from hyperscalers is driving strong volumes for our 800G programs, while 400G remains highly resilient. we continue to expect mass production for our first 1.60 switching programs to begin ramping in the latter part of the year. Over the past 90 days, we have continued to add to our pipeline of newly won business and networking, adding to an already robust view of demand into 2027. We are pleased to announce that we have secured the Design and Manufacturing Award for the 1.16 networking switch platform with a third hyperscaler customer. This HPS engagement is expected to ramp production beginning in 2027 with design work already underway. This new program award, along with strengthening demand forecasts from our largest customers and a significant funnel of opportunities, gives us confidence and optimism regarding the growth trajectory of our networking businesses. In our enterprise end market, demand signals remain solid. As anticipated, we saw a meaningful ramp in our next generation AI ML compute program of a hyperscale customer during the fourth quarter. And we continue to expect that volumes will accelerate into 2026. Looking towards 2027, We continue to anticipate strong demand from our hyperscaler and digital native customers, driven by RAMS and next gen AI ML compute programs. Now moving on to our ATS segment. We are maintaining our outlook for revenues to remain approximately flat to up in the mid single digits percentage range for the full year 2026, consistent with the targets we shared at our investor and analyst day in October. We continue to expect growth in our industrial and health tech business, supported primarily by the ramping of new programs. We anticipate this growth will be at least partially moderated by lower volumes in our capital equipment business in the near term. As we progress through 2026, we anticipate overall ATS revenues to be higher in the second half of the year, led by a recovery in capital equipment volumes as broader market growth tailwinds come into effect. We also expect year-over-year growth to improve as we allow the impact from the strategic portfolio reshaping activities we undertook in A&D during the first half of 2025. Overall, we expect 2026 to be another year of transformational progress in the growth and evolution of our business. We are experiencing an unprecedented level of demand supported by the sustained large-scale multi-year investments from our largest data center customers. We believe our company is uniquely positioned as a critical enabler of the AI ML revolution, helping to solve the most difficult challenges in the data center from advanced liquid cooling solutions throughout the rack to the transition to next generation networking platforms. It's our ability to deliver these complex system level solutions that allows us to win new mandates and solidify our leadership in the technologies of tomorrow. Today, our team is intently focused on our operational execution as we scale our global footprint to meet this growing demand. With that, I will now turn the call back to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand now. If you have dialed into today's call, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute when you're called upon. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And your first question comes from the line of Ruplu Bhattacharya from Bank of America. Your line is Rupali, your line is now open. You might have to unmute.

Sorry, can you hear me now?

Yes, hi, Rupali. Hi, welcome back.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. So looks like you've taken up both the top line and the bottom line guide for fiscal 26. If we take the midpoint of the guidance literally, then there seems to be a slowdown coming in fiscal second half and also some loss of operating leverage. I mean, the revenue guidance is 51% year-on-year for fiscal 1Q, but the full year is 37%, so implying some slower growth in the remaining three quarters. Likewise, in EPS, it's 71% for the first quarter, but full year is 45%. So, EPS is definitely growing faster than revenue and there is leverage in the model, but it looks like some operating leverage decline in the remaining three quarters. So, can you just clarify for us, is there something specific that's causing this slowdown or should investors just chalk this up to conservatism in the guide?

Good morning, Rupaloo, and first of all, welcome back. We're always very happy to work with you, so thank you for the coverage. Yeah, look, we're very confident on our 2026 outlook. And as we said in our commentary and Rob mentioned, it's our high confidence view. Our customer forecasts right now for 2026 are higher than the $17 billion that we are guiding. And what's also really nice to see right now is that the demand outlook with our customers is actually extending beyond sometimes our typical four-quarter outlook. You know, similar to past outlooks that we've had, We're just being pragmatic. We're focusing on securing supply. We have no concerns at this time, but we just want to make sure that the supply base can also ramp as fast as we are ramping. And then we take into account the macro uncertainties, which, as you know, there's a lot of them. But as we go through the year, we are working towards a higher number, and we'll look to be updating the number.

Okay, thanks for the details there. If I can ask a quick follow up, I want to ask about risk management. So, you know, you've obviously have a lot of opportunity in both your white box switching business and the custom ASIC server business. One thing you've mentioned is you're increasing CapEx to fund the growth. Can I ask if you're concerned about any potential funding for future AI-related projects? And is there any risk to programs materializing? And have you taken that into account? And also, you've kept free cash flow at $500 million. Given that CapEx is going up and you're probably going to need more working capital to support revenue growth, Can you just tell us, like, you know, is there a risk to the story here? And what is giving you confidence to maintain the free cash flow guide? And again, congrats on the quarter. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks, Rip. Well, I'll start off. I'll let Mandeep finish up. With respect to programs materializing, you know, the buildup that we're doing is based on both business. We had a record bookings year in 2021. and we're really just building out to support those bookings. So there's very little risk in those programs materializing. They've been in the development cycle right now, and we're doing proof of concepts with respect to validation testing, and they're well underway to ramping in 2026. In terms of risks to the entire story, Mandy talked about it. We view it more as uncontrollable, like geopolitical risks, There's always an opportunity of tightening supply chain, but frankly our suppliers realize now that we have a lot of leverage these days given our scale. And we're also a design agent, which is giving us some leverage in the supply chain. We also have a lot of opportunities, as Mandip mentioned. Demand continues to well outstrip our ability to provide it in the very short term. We have very strong demand from networking with respect to and the 1.6T ramps that are happening later on this year. And on top of this, we have some very strong demand for AI, ML, compute. And within the enterprise market, we're also seeing signs of very significant growth. So overall, we see more opportunities than risk at this time.

Thanks.

Sorry, go ahead. We talked about cash generation, and look, we're very comfortable with our ability to invest in We're willing to invest even more as we go through the year. That's what's in front of us. We think we'll generate at least $500 million of free cash flow this year. That's after paying for a billion dollars of CapEx. I know that those on the call already are aware of this. We've generated positive free cash flow every quarter for almost seven years now, and it's because we are very focused on generating it. And so we think that we can fund these with cash generation and not have to even use the balance sheet.

Thanks for your question. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Sameek Chatterjee with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Hi, hopefully you can hear me. Thank you for taking my question. Maybe if I can start with the CapEx investment and the ramp here. I know you provided us an update at the investor day and you mentioned that activity really ramped with customers again since then engagement did ramp. I'm trying to think like when you are sort of going ahead and doing those investments, should we think about this as something that drives revenue in 2027 itself or are these sort of programs as well as the ramp sort of more to address customer demand in 2028, 2029? Just trying to get a sense of what kind of program visibility customers are giving you already to drive this significant investment from you. Just trying to get a sense of that. And I will follow. Thank you. Hi, Sameek.

Yeah, the capacity that the CapEx that we're investing in now, as I mentioned earlier, is based on book business. With respect to 2026, we do have the capacity to grow beyond our current high-confidence outlook. So, the investments we're making are enabling additional capacity for 2027 and to 2028 based on book business. Now, as we continue to win in the marketplace, We'll further evaluate our capacity expansion plans, and then there will be an opportunity to, you know, expand our revenue outlook for 27 into 28. But right now the investments we're making in 26, which also will have a follow-on effect into 27, is really just on the backlog of business that we have right now.

Okay, and then maybe for the follow up the outlook that you're sharing for CCS to maintain these sort of strong growth rates into 2027. Just wondering, does that sort of incorporate the digital native customer and the ramp with that customer and any updates in terms of over the last sort of 90 days, anything, any updates in relation to the timing or sort of how you think about the magnitude of that ramp in 2027?

Thank you. Yeah, good morning, Samik. So we are seeing accelerating growth happening within CCS. If you go back to our commentary from three months ago versus today, Three months ago, we were saying that when you break down the numbers, that CCS would be growing by about $3.5 billion in 26, and then when we put a 40% growth rate on that, it was implying about a $5 billion of CCS growth in 2027. We're now updating those numbers and going off of a higher base, so now what we're implying is that 2026, CCS will grow probably closer to $4.5 billion, so about a billion dollars higher than what we talked about three months ago. And because we're saying that we're seeing very strong trajectory continuing, we're now seeing CCS grow close to $7 billion in 2027. And that's off of a higher base. And so the demand outlook is very robust. Your question on the digital native customer, that continues to progress just as we would have expected it to. We still expect it to be a meaningful contribution in 2027.

Great. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question. Your next question comes from the line of Thanos Moschopoulos with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. Can you speak to how we should think about the margin trajectory? Just given the mix shift dynamic where you've got enterprise becoming the larger part of the CCS mix, would that imply that there might be some compression in CCS margins as the year progresses and into 27, or are there offsets to that? Thanks.

Good morning, Thanos. Yes, we're seeing a tremendous amount of growth happening right now in enterprise. We are really pleased with the trajectory that's our that program to continue to grow all through 2026. And then just as a reminder, we've already won the next generation of that program, and so we would expect those programs to actually ramp into 2027. So our outlook for enterprise can be very healthy. We are seeing very strong operating leverage, and so we don't necessarily expect a large headwind, if you will, from growing of the enterprise business. We do make more money on networking in general, but with the leverage that we're getting and the very disciplined cost management, we still think that the enterprise business is going to be able to generate very strong profitability. And so for that reason, it's embedded in our numbers. 2026, we're giving an outlook right now where margins expand by 30 basis points. And what I would just say is that that's the floor of our expectations. We would be looking to do better than that, hopefully, as we do.

I would also add that networking is also very strong in 2026 and going into 2027 and 2026. We see 400 G very resilient, the 800 G very strong and we see 1.60 ramping in the back half of the year. So we have all three major programs running concurrently, which is helping the operating leverage and also helping the mix.

Thank you. Congrats on the strong quarter.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you so much for the question. Good morning. My question is just around the CapEx. Encouraging to hear about all the visibility your partners are giving you. I wanted to ask whether the capital intensity in the business has changed at all or does the $1 billion CapEx support 2% to 2.5% revenue over time, kind of implying a path to $40 billion to $50 billion of revenue over time. Is that a fair way to think about it, or has the capital intensity in the business changed at all? Thank you.

Good morning, Michael. I'm not going to help you back into that number, but I completely understand the way that you looked at it. What I would say is this. We have, in the last number of years, been investing the majority of our CapEx dollars into growth CapEx. We spend probably $70 to $80 million on maintenance, and that's not going to change very much. And so as a percentage of revenue, we expect that our maintenance CapEx is going to be very predictable and not a huge driver. And so therefore, the delta is really on growth CapEx. To the point that Rob had made, we are making... 2027 and 2028. Should those wins continue, and we would expect that they would, we have no hesitation in increasing our CapEx. But you almost want to think of it almost like at a project level. We are making these investments to support specific wins at this time. At a certain point, we would expect the CapEx to moderate because, again, the vast majority of it is growth. And so when we get back to a maintenance level, we would be back to what we would normally expect.

Great. Thank you, Mindy. That's very clear.

Thank you. Your next question comes to the line of Carl Ackerman from BNP Paribas. Carl, your line is now open. Carl, your line is now open. You may have to unmute.

Yes, can you hear me okay? Okay, hi, sorry about that. So I know you have deep engagements on the 400 gig and 800 gig switch programs, but could you speak to the opportunity you have to address multi-rack, scale-up XPU networks, such as optical circuit switches and co-package optics-based switches, perhaps in terms of the breadth of customer engagements? Thank you.

Yeah, sure, so we see... increasing activity and increasing R&D expenditures. Some of it's a little premature to talk about now, but to do more AI, ML, and networking integrated, fully integrated systems, both supporting scale-up and scale-out fabrics. You know, based on our proof point with our digital native and some other early engagements that we have with other providers We see this as a major growth driver for our business moving forward. As these AI models continue to grow and GPU-to-GPU interconnects become more and more important, scale-up will be as much of an opportunity as scale-out. So we see this as a major growth opportunity for us. And we're well underway in capturing a lot of those growth opportunities, and we hope to have more to share with you.

we've already had to date, they are both being used for scale-up and scale-in. And with the funnel of opportunities that we have in front of us, that diversification continues, and we would expect that we would continue to grow in that area. In addition, I think, to the question that you raised on co-passage optics, we are starting to see conversations with our customers increase in this area. We still believe that in terms of

yeah it's pretty similar to what we said a few months ago thank you thank you your next question comes from the line of tim long with barclays your line is now open

Uh, thank you. Hopefully you can, hopefully you can hear me. Um, I did want to just talk about, you know, a few comments on the call you guys made about, uh, new programs and new program wins. Could you talk a little bit about kind of, you know, you talked about some strong backlog and visibility and wins, uh, as well as obviously the capacity, uh, expansions, you obviously got a lot of large switching and AI ML and, and, uh, digital native rack, um, wins, can you talk about the outlook for the next few years, what we should expect to see from newer programs where they could be centered? Would this more be around new switching customers or new applications or use cases from some of the existing customers? Anything you could give us on that would be helpful.

Thank you. Yeah, the visibility, Tim, that we're seeing with our customer's at this stage is unprecedented. We're totally into 27 and many customers. We're talking into 2028. You know, our customers now are viewing us less as a supply chain partner and more as a technology leader. And part of that process is aligning on our technology roadmaps, which is informing our investment decisions. And these investment decisions are, you know, enabling and informing customers all the future products moving forward, and those products are more in the lines of fully integrated rack systems supporting in scale up and scale out, also staying on the leading edge of switching. 3.2 T samples are due in probably towards the end of 2026, and we're already starting to work on that. Mendeep alluded to some of the proof of concepts that we have So we're certainly going to be ready for when that hits during the 3.2 cycle as well. So broadly speaking, our portfolio is getting broader and deeper with our customers.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes to the line from David Vogt with UBS. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks, guys. Can you hear me? So I have a question about sort of the scope of work and the economics of the digital native customer. Can you kind of update us on where we stand in terms of what that relationship looks like as we go into 26 and to 27? And then, Mandeep, on the CapEx numbers, that billion dollars, can you help us parse through how much of that CapEx is tied to sort of the existing customer base and the expansion of programs and projects with your largest customers versus incremental customers like the DNC or any other incremental customers that you see in the pipeline for 26, 27? Thanks.

Yeah, I'll start off. With respect to the digital native customer, we have a very tight engineering-driven relationship with our customer. In 2026, we're going to be shipping them largely samples and getting ready for the ramp that should be starting the early parts of 2027. At this stage of the game, the program is on track, and we're just getting ready for the ramp, working with them and the silicon provider and all the ecosystem partners, but it's a relationship, a solid relationship.

Yeah, and just to add on to that, in terms of the question for CapEx and how it's kind of decallocated, so geographically, now you're aware of how we're allocating and Richardson, Texas, as well as Fort Worth. And it's really to support multiple customers. And so we are largely investing in programs that we've won across the major hyperscalers. We have high confidence to work with these customers, sometimes for well over a decade. But with our digital native customer, we are willing to make investments as well. And so some of the investment is going towards enabling the ramp in 2027. But I would say the vast majority of the expenditures are tied to programs with our hyperscalers.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Paul Treiber with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Yeah, thanks, and good morning. Just a question, just in light of the new program win momentum that you're seeing, can you speak to how the returns, the expected returns on those programs compare against existing programs? And really, what I'm going to add is also, are you seeing competition changing the returns on new programs versus what you saw in the past?

Yeah, good morning, Paul. in the marketplace. Look, the approach that we take when we make investments with our customers is really a holistic view. We look at it on a global basis. We want to ensure that we're generating strong profitability, but more importantly, we want to make sure we're supporting our customers in the geographies that they need. And so we will look at investments at the customer level on a global basis, but of course we want to ensure that specific investments tie on their own as well. I know you know this, which is we're a very ROIC-driven company, We're focused on strong profitability, but just as much we're focused on a very disciplined level of investment. And so we'll make sure that business cases hold. And so from a returns perspective, what I would just say is that we continue to focus on expanding our ROIC. We continue to focus on expanding our margins while generating very strong top-line growth. And so those are always factors whenever we're looking at business cases.

In terms of competitive intensity and – You know, I would say as time goes on, the programs that we're bidding on and winning are becoming more and more complex. In many cases, some of the business that we decided not to play the pricing game on in 2025 have come back to us in 2026 because others could not execute on it. So when we look at our competitive mode, We have some fantastic engineering to be able to design these complex products. But even more so, very few of our competition can produce these products at scale. And when you combine those two together, it's really giving us a lot of tailwinds in 26 and also moving into 2027. That combination has proven to be very powerful for us.

Thank you for taking the question.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Ruben Roy with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rob. Maybe we can follow up where you left off there. And I had a question on the 1.6T win, the new win at a new hyperscaler. Are you seeing a shift towards HPS design-led uh solutions and away from cost plus um you've got the design center that you talked about in austin just wondering if um if that's something that's happening as you move towards these more complex uh switching technologies and how you see that playing out from a uh margin perspective as you think about uh 20 27 28 time frame thank you yes uh certainly thanks for the question uh

At 1.6T and even as we move into 3.2Ts, the complexity that's required, the engineering complexity that's required on these things is moving more towards HPS engagements. So on the networking side, we see that increasing over time, and the density and the complexity is only going to increase at every node. On the AI ML compute side, We like to play really on the HPS and JDM design-oriented AI ML compute, and we also see as that gets more and more sophisticated, there will be more opportunity for us to play in that area, and we have several projects in the pipeline to improve those engagements on the HPS side as well.

Great. Thank you.

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

Hi, good morning. First of all, congratulations on reaching the point where people are complaining about 37% growth. I thought that was great. In terms of my question, there's been a bunch of confusion around with your largest customer, how the supply chain works on those AI ML compute programs and where you are sort of positioned versus you know, there are other suppliers. Can you just sort of clarify, you know, how you're playing there, you know, what kind of competition you see? And then it looks like you're also expanding directly to support some more programs on that. So anything on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Certainly. You know, I would chalk this up to you can't believe everything you read. What I can emphatically say is that our partnership with Google has never been stronger or more integrated than we have absolutely no indication there are new entrants into that market. As you know, these are very complex products to manufacture, especially at scale, and we have been doing it for a very long time with this family of products. As a preferred partner with Google on these leading edge compute programs, we have a joint commitment to each other moving forward, not just for the current generation, but for future generations of their TPUs. And, you know, we've been supporting this technology for generations, and we hope to continue to do so going well into the future, which is warranting a portion of the investments moving forward. And I would also add that the capacity expansion that we're making certainly is in support of Google, but it's also in support of growth from other hyperscalers and digital native software.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of John Hsiao with TD Cowen. Your line is now open, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So within your guidance, how much do you bake in the price increase of key components or materials? At this point, are you still comfortable with the supply chain? Do you think this is going to be any source of potential margin compression given right now we're getting this inflationary environment in the supply chain? Thank you.

Yeah, good morning, Jonathan. So we factored in inflation and pricing into the numbers that we've already shared. Just as a reminder to everyone on the call, when we have networking, we have it at a turnkey basis, which is our typical approach, meaning it includes the silicon, where on the compute side, it typically does not. And so where there is a lot of price inflation, it's happening on the silicon side. So you're not going to necessarily see our growth and our enterprise numbers being driven by that. On the networking side, we're growing in terms of overall volume. But yes, there is inflation happening at the silicon side, which we're able to pass on to our customers. And so are we seeing margin compression? No, not right now. But if silicon becomes a much larger part of the bill of materials, then perhaps it will. But that's not in our line of sight at this

Thank you again.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Todd Coupland with CIBC. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks, Ed. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to ask about the 1.6 programs in the second half of the year. And at this point, what are the range of outcomes and gating factors for those programs to start to ramp this year? Just talk about that a little bit. Thank you.

Yeah, we have 10 active 1.16 programs in the pipeline right now. And about five of them will start ramping in the back half of the year and so into 2027. And several, the balance of them are in the development pipeline and will be ramping later in 2027 into 2028. Dating factors really is just completing the development cycle as planned and things are on track. Silicon is on track, so I just think it's business as usual in terms of supporting our customers' ramps.

I'd just like to maybe add to that. When we look at the overall switching demand that's out there right now, what we're really encouraged by is there's been a tremendous amount of growth happening in 800G that happened in 2025 and And 400G continues to hold. So 400G will be a strong contributor in 2026. 800 will continue to grow. And then you got 1.6 coming on as well towards the end of the year. And so the dynamic that's really been playing out in the last couple of years is that the next generation technology is not necessarily cannibalizing the previous generation. And so this is one of the reasons that we have a lot of optimism on the networking space, exiting 26 even and going into 27.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Atif Malik from Citi. Your line is now open.

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. We got a couple of questions from investors on this yesterday. In your press release, you called out Google or TPUs as a preferred manufacturing partner versus sole source. Is that a new disclosure? And then just as a follow-up, if some of your hyperscalers were to adopt more TPUs, do they all go through you guys or are there other entities like Broadcom and others that can participate in the TPU rack or trade business?

On the first one, no, I don't think it's a new disclosure. We're not sole sourced or single sourced on the TPU programs, nor have we, frankly, nor have I think we've ever said that. For BCP purposes, most if not all of our hyperscaler customers remain a second source. But we are a primary source for them on the TPU programs and continue to do so. With Google and with all of our hyperscalers, share is largely awarded on performance. Our performance has been very strong, and as a result, they make the decisions accordingly.

And then to the question that you were raising about as Google's TPU gets adopted beyond just Google itself, how does that play out? Right now, our view is that that increased level of demand for their types of products will float through their supply chain. And as their preferred manufacturing partner, we would expect to be able to support them with that. And so right now, you know, it's wonderful to see that their product is being adopted in the marketplace. And we do expect to be able to support them with that growth.

Thank you. Thank you. And your final question comes from the line of Robert Young with Canaccord Genuity. Robert, your line is now open. Robert, your line is now open. You might have to unmute.

Hopefully you can hear me now. On the third hyperscaler, 1.6 win, how was this one? Was it an extension of 800? Was it tied to your Tomahawk ASIC experience? And is it a part of a rack integration with another outside vendor? Or is that being done by the hyperscaler? Just some context around that. And then if you could also... Talk about how you expect operating margins to evolve as you move into 1.6 terabyte programs and how that might differ between, I think you have two full rack and then two standalone, if I understand the large programs. Now, how would the margin structure differ and evolve?

Hi, Rob. Yeah, on the third 1.6T, so with this hyperscaler, we were predominant share on the 400T We were a predominant share and one on the 800G, and this is just an extension of going to the 1.60. The engagement started with a design win. They were happy with the performance with this switch based on the 400 and 800, and we were awarded the mass production for this switch as well.

Yeah, and then in terms of the margins, Rob, good morning. What I would just say is that we approach our switching portfolio in a similar way. Even as we go into the next generation, we typically make more money during the ramping and the development cycle of a program. And then as it gets to mass production, we try to offset that pricing with operating leverage. And so we do expect 1.6 programs to be as profitable as we've seen on some of our past switching programs. But one interesting dynamic, though, is that more and more of our switching portfolio should be moving towards HPF. We have some of our switching portfolios today in EMS. And just typically as we embed more of our engineering, that leads to better pricing. And so we are happy with the way that the margin profiles look like for 1.6 products.

And is there any context on between the full rack deployment and standalone?

Yeah, it's integrated. And so we take a look holistically when we are doing this for our customers. We do that just by hand. 1.6 switches, but then there's also compute, and then there's the integration activities, and then we do testing for them. And then at certain points, we may be able to do services as well. We look at it on a holistic basis, and we ensure that the value that we're bringing on the switching side, which has the most engineering that we have, is getting captured in overall price.

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I will now turn the call back to Rob Mionis, CEO, for closing remarks.

Thank you. And thank you again for joining us this morning. 2025 was an exceptional year for Celestica, characterized by record financial results. We're excited to build on this momentum in 26, and as we raise our annual revenue out to $17 billion. The strategic investments we are making provide us with the capacity to support our customers' multi-year AI roadmaps, and our deep partnership with industry leaders like Google and our expanding global footprint in Texas and Asia reinforces our confidence that our growth trajectory will sustain into 2027 and beyond. We look forward to updating you on our continued progress next quarter, and thank you again for joining the call.

This concludes today's call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.