5 Data Center Power Stocks to Watch Before Earnings | OilPrice.com
Michael Kern
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By Michael Kern – Oct 27, 2026, 3:00 PM CDT
- Data center builders and equipment makers are down a median 23% since Oct. 6, yet GE Vernova’s backlog stands at $176 billion, Quanta’s at a record $53.4 billion and Fluence’s at $6.4 billion.
- GE Vernova reports Wednesday, Quanta on Thursday and Eaton on Nov. 3, and profits are messier than orders: Quanta’s GAAP earnings guidance sits about $5 a share below its adjusted figure, and Eaton’s profit fell in the second quarter on record sales.
- Fluence has cut guidance twice in six weeks and now expects an adjusted EBITDA loss of about $200 million, while Powell Industries logged a record $934 million in orders.
Wall Street has spent the last three weeks punishing the companies that build and equip AI data centers, which would make more sense if anyone could point to the orders drying up. As of Friday, that group was down a median 23% since the S&P 500’s record close on Oct. 6, while the Big Tech companies actually writing the checks were down only 5%. A dozen of the biggest builders and power suppliers lost more than $300 billion in market value over the stretch, including $54 billion at GE Vernova, $30 billion at Eaton and $25 billion at Quanta Services.
Last Thursday’s leg down came after Meta’s latest earnings report reignited worries about AI infrastructure spending, but the physical shortage hasn’t changed. Jefferies’ Aniket Shah told Yahoo Finance that “the biggest constraint right now for the AI build-out is power,” U.S. transformer supply is running about 15% short this year according to Wood Mackenzie, and Apollo’s Torsten Sløk puts lead times at transformer makers at as long as 26 months.
That is the thinking behind this list. Whether the power comes from gas, solar or nuclear, somebody has to build the turbines, transformers, switchgear and batteries it runs through, and those factories are booked years out. Three of the five companies below report within a week, so we are about to find out whether the order books still look the way they did in the summer.
GE Vernova Reports Tomorrow
GE Vernova (NYSE: GEV) would probably like to talk about something other than its stock. Since GE spun it off in 2024 it has been the poster child for the power crunch, and it ended the second quarter with a $176 billion backlog, nearly four times the revenue it expects this year. The shares slid to about $823 last week anyway, their lowest since March 31.
The gas turbine order book gets most of the attention. Customers have signed up for 116 gigawatts of equipment and production slots, although 63 GW of that is reservations rather than firm orders, and CEO Scott Strazik says the company is “implementing actions to produce 30 GW in 2030.” GE Vernova is only now reaching a 20 GW annual pace, so the current list is nearly six years of production, and anyone who isn’t already in line has a long wait ahead.
The weak spot is Wind, which lost $657 million at the EBITDA level in the first half and helped push GE Vernova to miss Wall Street estimates for adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter. Management expects Wind to come in roughly break-even this quarter, and Bank of America is looking for orders of about $21 billion, up 44% from a year ago, so what matters tomorrow is whether the order book keeps growing while the stock keeps falling.
The Venture Global deal gets less simple the closer you read it. GE Vernova and Baker Hughes signed frame agreements with the LNG exporter this month covering up to 16 gas-fired power islands, and with transformer equipment included the package could be worth $17.2 billion if every purchase order goes through. Venture Global says it expects to place the first one by the end of the year, which is the sort of detail that tends to get dropped from the headline.
Quanta Services Starts Building What It Used to Install
Quanta Services (NYSE: PWR) has spent decades putting up other people’s equipment, so its new joint venture with Hyosung HICO to make high-voltage circuit breakers in Pennsylvania says a lot about where the bottleneck is. Quanta pitched it as a supply chain fix for customers, but it reads like a contractor that got tired of waiting on suppliers.
CEO Duke Austin said second-quarter results “meaningfully exceeded expectations,” which is fair when revenue rose 41% to $9.56 billion and backlog hit a record $53.4 billion. Which earnings number you use matters more than usual, though: Quanta guides to $16.45 to $16.95 a share adjusted but only $11.41 to $11.92 under GAAP, a gap of roughly $5 that comes mostly from amortization of acquired intangibles and stock compensation. The data center money is also a year or so away, since CFO Jayshree Desai says Quanta is being conservative about counting those projects in backlog and meaningful field work doesn’t start until the second half of 2027. Quanta reports before the open Thursday.
Eaton Bought Its Way In
Eaton (NYSE: ETN) did not get into the data center business by waiting. Since April 2025 it has paid $1.43 billion for Fibrebond, which builds modular power enclosures, and $9.55 billion for Boyd Thermal, a thermal management business, and CEO Paulo Ruiz says data centers “remain a key growth driver” even as he points out that demand is strong across its other markets. The orders support that, with rolling 12-month orders at Electrical Americas, the unit that sells power distribution gear into data centers, up 41% and backlog across the electrical business up 43% from a year ago.
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