Operator: Hello, and welcome to WESCO's 2026 Q3 earnings call. I would like to remind you that all lines are in a listen-only mode throughout the presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Scott Gaffner, SVP, Investor Relations, to begin.
Scott Gaffner: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Before we get started, I want to remind you that certain statements made on this call contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and, by their nature, are subject to uncertainty. Actual results may differ. Please see our webcast slides and the company's SEC filings for additional risk factors and disclosures. Any forward-looking information speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect changed circumstances. Additionally, today we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. Required information about these measures is available on our webcast slides and in our press release, both of which are posted on our website at wesco.com. On the call this morning, we have John Engel, WESCO's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Neel Dev, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Scott Gaffner: With that, I'll turn the call over to John.
John Engel: Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. We're very pleased with our record Q3 results, and we carry positive business momentum into Q4. Once again, sales, backlog, operating profit, and earnings per share all increased double digits versus the prior year. Importantly, they achieved records that exceeded our expectations. We are particularly pleased with our free cash flow generation during the quarter, which was strong given the sales growth that we delivered. The past five consecutive quarters of double-digit sales growth demonstrate WESCO's higher growth profile, which extends well beyond our important data center positioning. Customer demand is strong across the rest of our diversified portfolio and end markets, with sales up high single digits excluding data centers.
John Engel: Our customers continue to invest in major capital and infrastructure projects, and they are increasingly relying on WESCO to manage their needs. This is all happening while we add more services to our portfolio and demonstrate the continued effectiveness of our One WESCO cross-selling strategy. Especially noteworthy, our backlog was up over 80% to a new record level for each of our three business units. The power of our customer value proposition, our global capabilities, and our leading portfolio of product services and solutions is clear as we continue to outperform the market. Our backlog growth is being fueled by multiyear customer commitments as our large customers recognize our unique capabilities across the communications, security, electrical, utility, and power markets. As a result, we are again significantly raising our full year 2026 outlook, reflecting our continued confidence in our continued strong execution.
John Engel: Given the positive market momentum that we are seeing, I am bullish that WESCO will continue to outperform our markets and deliver superior value to our customers, suppliers, and shareholders to close out 2026 and in 2027. With regards to 2027, we will provide our full year outlook when we report our Q4 earnings in February of next year. With that said, we expect to continue to outperform our markets again next year with sales up mid to high single digits, along with continued margin expansion. Before turning it over to Neel, I would like to highlight that we will be hosting a virtual investor event on Tuesday, November 10 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM Eastern Time, where we will discuss our leadership position in the data center space and our differentiated solutions across the data center life cycle.
John Engel: WESCO is uniquely positioned with our comprehensive product services and solutions offerings for data center, white space, gray space, and power infrastructure applications. Our three business leaders will discuss our One WESCO strategy, our leading value proposition, and our end-to-end capabilities for our data center customers during this upcoming virtual investor event. With that, I will now turn it over to Neel to take you through our Q3 results and our raised full year outlook in more detail. Neel?
Neel Dev: Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. As John highlighted, we delivered another exceptional quarter driven by strong execution, accelerating growth, and increasing contribution across the portfolio. Before turning to the quarter in more detail, let me start with a few highlights. We delivered record sales, adjusted EBITDA, and EPS. Organic sales increased 17%, reflecting strong execution across the business. Growth was broad-based with data center sales up 55% year-over-year and non-data center sales growth of 7% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA increased 33%, with EBITDA margin expanded 100 basis points to 7.8%. We generated solid free cash flow after investing in working capital to support strong sequential sales growth. Based on our strong year-to-date performance and continued momentum entering the Q4, we are significantly raising our full year outlook for sales, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS.
Neel Dev: With that, let me turn to our Q3 results starting on slide 5. For the Q3, we delivered excellent sales growth and record profitability across the business. Organic sales increased 17% to $7.2 billion, driven by strong volume growth in all three business units. Pricing contributed approximately 3%, and volume approximately 14%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 33% to a record $562 million, while EBITDA margin expanded approximately 100 basis points to 7.8%. Gross margin increased to 21.7%, and SG&A improved approximately 50 basis points as strong sales growth, productivity, and disciplined cost management drove operating leverage. It is important to note that our SG&A incorporates ongoing investments in expanding our footprint and capabilities to support our profitable growth. Turning to slide 6, adjusted EPS increased 47% year over year to a record $5.77 per share. The improvement was driven primarily by strong operating performance, including higher sales and margin expansion.
Neel Dev: Turning to CSS on slide 7, CSS delivered record sales and profitability in the Q3 as strong data center demand continued to drive growth. Sales increased 22% to a record $2.9 billion, with organic growth of 21%, driven almost entirely by volume. WESCO Data Center Solutions grew approximately 40%, primarily driven by growth in hyperscale and multi-tenant data center customers. ENI and Security also delivered strong growth during the quarter, reflecting continued investment and customer demand in network infrastructure. Backlog ended the quarter at another record level, up approximately 140% year over year, underscoring the strength of data center demand and providing increased visibility into future revenue. Adjusted EBITDA increased 42% to a record $313 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 160 basis points to a record 10.7%.
Neel Dev: Data center business remains margin accretive to CSS and continues to be a meaningful contributor to our overall WESCO margin expansion objective. Turning to EES on slide 8, EES delivered record sales and profitability, highlighted by excellent growth in OEM and continued positive momentum in construction and industrial. We are pleased with the accelerating momentum and improving results over the first three quarters of this year. Sales increased 18% to a record $2.8 billion. OEM grew approximately 30%, reflecting broad-based strength across semiconductor and data center markets. Construction grew mid-teens on continued infrastructure and data center project activity. Industrial increased mid-single digit on healthy MRO demand. Data center sales increased more than 100% year over year, reflecting our expanding participation in data center infrastructure. Excluding data center, EES grew high single digit, demonstrating healthy demand across our core end markets.
Neel Dev: Backlog increased approximately 40% year over year to a record level. Adjusted EBITDA increased 31% to a record $259 million, and EBITDA margin expanded 90 basis points to 9.3%. Margin expansion was driven by gross margin improvement and operating leverage resulting from the strong sales growth and effective cost management. Turning to UBS on slide 9, UBS delivered solid growth and maintained strong profitability in the Q3, while continuing to build on the improving trends we have seen throughout 2026. Sales increased 6% to $1.5 billion, with organic sales up 7%. Utility grew high single digit, driven by strong IOU performance, improving public power trends, and continued infrastructure investments. Broadband was flat year over year on the back of a challenging prior year comparison, as sales in the Q3 of 2025 were up over 20%. Continued share gains supported by our performance in the current quarter.
Neel Dev: Backlog increased approximately 90% year over year to a record level, driven by Grid Services and strong order activity across Utility & Broadband. Adjusted EBITDA increased 6% to $158 million. EBITDA margin remained strong at 10.4%, improving 40 basis points sequentially. We are pleased with the EBITDA margin expansion over the past three quarters and maintained our double-digit EBITDA margin in the Q3. This was achieved with a backdrop of a competitive public power landscape as we focused on pricing for our value proposition, driven strong operating cost leverage, and continue to diversify our customer base. Moving to slide 10. Data center sales are now approximately $6 billion on a trailing 12-month basis and represent approximately 23% of company sales. Importantly, this business continues to be margin accretive to WESCO and remains a meaningful contributor to our profitability and margin expansion.
Neel Dev: Q3 data center sales increased approximately 55% year over year to a record $1.8 billion, marking another quarter of strong growth despite increasingly challenging year over year comparisons. Turning to slide 11. Free cash flow generation was $184 million during the Q3. We continue to focus on our working capital efficiency, and we are pleased with our cash flow generation this quarter. As a reminder, we are an asset-light business with working capital being our primary investment supporting profitable growth. We are successfully managing pressures on our working capital intensity as we execute large, long-cycle projects with longer-term commitments from our customers. Net working capital as a percentage of trailing 12-month sales was approximately 20%, remaining generally consistent with prior quarters, despite higher sales, expanding margins, and accelerating momentum in our business. Moving to slide 12.
Neel Dev: Net leverage improved to 2.8x net debt to adjusted EBITDA compared to 3.4x at year-end, notably ending the quarter below three times. This continues our trend of steady deleveraging, with leverage improving every quarter over the past year. Approximately $2 billion of our debt consists of our revolving credit and accounts receivable facility. These credit facilities are in place to support fluctuations in our working capital, and the balances are typically counter-cyclical in nature. We exited the quarter with available liquidity of over $2 billion. We also maintain a well-structured debt maturity profile with no significant near-term maturities and sufficient flexibility to support our capital allocation priorities and future growth. Moving to slide 13. Turning to our 2026 outlook by business unit. We have raised our growth expectations for CSS and EES.
Neel Dev: We now expect CSS sales to grow about 20%, and EES to grow low double digit for the year. Within CSS, we have also increased our outlook for WESCO Data Center Solutions and now expect growth of more than 40%. We continue to expect UBS to grow at a mid-single digit rate in 2026. Moving to slide 14 and our outlook for the remainder of the year. Based on our strong year-to-date performance and continued positive momentum across the business, we are again raising our full-year outlook. We now expect organic sales growth of 13% to 14% and reported sales growth of 14% to 15%, resulting in expected full-year sales of approximately $26.8 billion to $27 billion. We are significantly increasing our adjusted EBITDA margin outlook to approximately 7.2% and significantly raising our adjusted EPS outlook to $18 to $18.50 per share.
Neel Dev: As reflected on the slide, we have made some minor adjustments to D&A, stock-based compensation, and interest expense. Despite significantly higher sales growth and implications for working capital, we are maintaining our free cash flow guidance, reflecting the progress we are making with our working capital improvement initiatives. Overall, our updated outlook reflects continued strength across the portfolio, strong execution, and confidence in our ability to deliver. Turning to slide 15, preliminary October sales per workday are up in the high teens year over year, providing an excellent start to Q4. We currently expect low to mid-teens reported sales growth and adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of approximately 50 basis points in Q4 versus the prior year. These expectations are consistent with our increased full-year outlook and reflect the continued positive momentum we are seeing across the business.
Neel Dev: We have covered a lot of material this morning, so let me briefly recap the key points before we open the call to your questions. In summary, we delivered our fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit sales growth with record sales, backlog, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS. Momentum continued to build across the portfolio with positive organic sales growth across all three business units. Data Center remains a significant growth driver and continues to evolve into a company-wide growth engine. CSS delivered another quarter of exceptional growth and profitability, further demonstrating that Data Center remains a margin-accretive growth driver. EES delivered another quarter of exceptional growth and profitability, reinforcing its role as an increasingly important contributor to WESCO's overall performance. UBS delivered solid growth and a third consecutive quarter of sequential margin improvement while Grid Services continues to diversify our customer base.
Neel Dev: Strong sales growth translated into record profitability, driving meaningful operating leverage, and further improving our leverage profile. Lastly, based on our strong year-to-date performance and continued momentum, we are significantly raising our full-year outlook for sales, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS. With that, operator, we can now open the call to questions.
Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. Please limit your questions to 1 question and 1 follow-up. Our first question today comes from David Manthey with Baird. Please go ahead.
David Manthey: Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
John Engel: Morning, Dave.
Neel Dev: Morning, Dave.
David Manthey: Everything looked really good. I am sure you will get a lot of questions on data center, so I will go on a tangent here to start off. Could you give us an update on the digital transformation? I believe you have 100 basis points of EBITDA margin benefit targeted. Is that expected to start to materialize in 2027? Is that a part of your mid-single digit, high single-digit top line and margin expansion outlook in broad strokes you gave us, John, here on 2027?
John Engel: Dave, thanks for that. Look, we are making very good progress on our digital transformation, and we remain committed to the long-term vision we outlined in our last full Investor Day back in 2024. All three SBUs are running an initial build on the new digital platform in multiple locations, so that gives us a strong foundation as we continue to expand the capabilities. Over the past year, we have continued to build out the functionality while deploying the platform across additional locations. In the H1 of this year, we successfully deployed the platform in a much more complex operation, really an end-to-end business, and it has been successfully converted to the new platform, which gives us the confidence that we are on track and we will realize material benefits of our digital transformation. We are on great progress.
John Engel: I will tell you, we are not going to give you the composition of the 2027 outlook or guide yet. We will do that as part of the Q4, when we deliver the Q4 earnings release. I will say this, though, the 100 basis points that we targeted as a result of digital transformation, it will be an at least 100. I think as we have made progress on the deployment, we see material opportunities and upside. I will just say that without updating the number. Let us say it is an at least 100 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion. Dave, we will give that a little more color when we provide the full year outlook for 2027 in the Q4 earnings release.
David Manthey: That sounds good. Then as a follow-up, I think when people think data centers, they sort of think AI data centers, and I know you have a broader business than that. Can you talk about beyond that specific vertical, your exposure to general cloud providers, on-prem, et cetera, in terms of your capabilities?
John Engel: David, that is an outstanding question. Look, this is a really important question, and I think that everyone is getting painted with the AI hyperscaler data center brush. This is why we chose to do a deep dive on data centers in our Virtual Investor Day, week after next. Just to address your question directly, we have been in the data center business for decades. Our business is broad-based. Yes, we obviously serve the hyperscalers, and we have, again, a terrific, we think, a leading value proposition, global execution capability, and we serve end user customers directly, not through intermediaries. That includes the hyperscalers. It includes MTDCs, it includes the emerging AI players, but very importantly, includes all the enterprise class customers, of which that is where our deep roots are in data centers.
John Engel: We've been serving them for decades, not just in US and North America, but around the world. Our data center demand remains strong and very broad-based. What I see happening for data centers, and we'll double-click this and go in much more detail in our deep dive, enterprise AI investment is expanding well beyond the hyperscalers with the large enterprise customers building out hybrid and private AI infrastructure and deploying AI closer to the edge. That sets up exceptionally well for WESCO, given our history, our leading capabilities in terms of the value prop across white space, gray space, and power and infrastructure, and our global execution model. For us specifically, our bookings and sales accelerated in Q3. The backlog growth is exceptional, far surpassing the sales growth.
John Engel: It's important to note that as we had expected, and we said this would happen as we move through the cycle, the data center business is now margin accretive. It's a great question. We'll bring this to life in much more detail again, week after next. Thanks, Dave.
David Manthey: We'll look forward to it. Thanks, John.
Operator: The next question comes from Sam Darkatsh with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Sam Darkatsh: Good morning, John. Good morning, Neel. How are you?
John Engel: Morning, Sam.
Sam Darkatsh: Yeah. We will repeat what David said. It was a hell of a quarter, obviously. My first question, as it relates to the implied Q4 guide, it seems as though the margins, there is probably some conservatism, I think, in your margins. I am just trying to understand the decremental margins sequentially are like 20% to 30% or so, if my math holds, and the incremental margins year-on-year are only around 10% or so. Is there something structural keeping the margins lighter than a normal flow-through, or is that just normal conservatism?
Neel Dev: Sam, I think, just to put the outlook in context. We are guiding to solid Q4 growth year-over-year. But if you think about Q4, you have the December dynamic, potentially weather, there are holidays, et cetera, and so we are factoring that in. But having said that, very solid growth. If you think about it sequentially, you got one less business day, so there is a slight step down in revenue, and so operating leverage goes slightly different direction. We are also continually investing in the business as we look forward to next year. We have got longer-term customer commitments, long-cycled project bills. All in all, we factored all of that in. So it really is the leverage in the business that is driving that.
Sam Darkatsh: Got it. My follow-up.
John Engel: Nothing structural.
Sam Darkatsh: Okay, go ahead, John, please.
John Engel: Yeah, nothing structural, Sam, or anything to highlight.
Sam Darkatsh: Got you. My follow-up, sort of similar. With this kind of growth that's likely to be sustained, at least for a fairly extended period of time, John, how do you view your labor and your physical footprint capacity right now, especially knowing that the digital transformation is still in its early stages?
John Engel: Yeah. Great question, Sam. We haven't talked much about that, but we've been continuously managing that since Anixter and WESCO came together back, now 6 years ago, in the beginning of the pandemic. We've been going through a continuous process of where we've been optimizing that. Again, we haven't really put a spotlight on that externally for all the investors, but we've been continuously combining facilities where it makes sense. Our new facilities that we added to our footprint are materially larger, and they also have a kind of a different scope and expanded mix that supports more of our value-added services. We had a press release recently on a very large facility down in Texas that's new, that we stood up and expanded, and that includes level 10, level 11, and level 12 data center testing capability for the full-up server racks.
John Engel: We'll double-click on that in much more detail in our Investor Day, week after next. We've been investing, Sam, since we put Anixter and WESCO together, while pruning and optimizing the footprint. I feel very good about what we have right now. Look, we've kicked into a much higher gear in terms of growth. I've said for a number of years now that this portfolio mix shifted to a higher growth profile. We're really seeing it kick in now. As strong as data centers are, and look, they're terrific. We're exceptionally well-positioned with a leading set of capabilities, and we're taking advantage of that. It's terrific. I'm especially pleased with the growth across the balance of the portfolio being high single digits. It stepped up from Q2 to Q3, and that just shows the breadth and depth of the portfolio.
John Engel: Sam, we're leveraging really the optimization moves we've made on our footprint over the last several years. I think we're exceptionally well-positioned to continue to see the operating cost leverage, that gearing, I'll say, as we drive to these higher sales growth numbers.
Sam Darkatsh: Thank you much.
Operator: The next question comes from Tommy Moll with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Tommy Moll: Morning, and thank you for taking my questions.
John Engel: Morning, Tommy.
Tommy Moll: John, I want to push a little bit on the comment you made regarding 2027 sales. If we just look at the acceleration in the non-data center business, which you've highlighted a couple of times was a 7% in the most recent quarter, presumably you're dialing in something similar in Q4, so you're exiting very strong into next year. I do not know what you assume for data center, but something accretive to that. Almost any way you cut it, you're going to get to a solid high singles kind of outlook. Is there some kind of conservatism in your comment or something I've overlooked here?
John Engel: Tommy, I'll stand with my comments because we're not providing the outlook yet. I think it's been our history that with the Q3 results, we're at least trying to give you a sense of how we're beginning to think about it. We do have very strong positive momentum. We carried it into the Q4. We expect that'll continue through the quarter, and we'll exit with that very strong momentum entering next year. Then we'll give our full outlook when we do our Q4 results.
Tommy Moll: Fair enough. I also wanted to ask on the digital investment. Today versus when you kicked off that initiative, there's a lot more opportunity to deploy AI now across the enterprise. I'm just curious, have you needed to update your planning on how you execute this big investment cycle, or what can you tell us there?
John Engel: Yeah. So, one of my quotes is, "Timing is everything in life and business." When you think about when we started down our digital transformation journey, that strategy was clearly articulated back in an Investor Day in 2019. Some of you will recall that, and that is captured in the history books. We said very strongly that we want to invest and be the leader in digitally transforming the B2B distribution value chain and do it by leading that transformation of our company. We said we would have to acquire a big or bigs and then get the synergies to pay for that, but then take a piece of those synergies and reinvest it in the business.
John Engel: That is the playbook we have been running over the last 5 to 6 years. We absolutely picked the right architecture. It is a new tech stack wrapped around one world-class data lake that we have been hydrating all our data in, and we have made substantial progress on leveraging AI. We focused inside our four walls, quite frankly, as we are learning and developing and expanding our AI applications. It started as standard AI applications several years ago. We moved to generative AI. Now we have a combination of generative and true agentic AI applications running inside our environment with our new tech stack and against our big data set that is in our data lake. The data lake really is the core. I have said many times the greatest asset we have that is not on the balance sheet is our big data.
John Engel: That is our data on all our transactions. Remember, we are the market leader. So it is that, plus uniquely customer data, supplier data, and then we use other external data sources as well. We will talk much more about this as we move into next year. I am really pleased with the value we are already getting out of AI in terms of enhanced analytics, driving some productivity. It is starting to support the operating cost leverage. We did not spike out the contribution, but it is clearly a contributor, which tags on to Sam Darkatsh's comment. Look, this is why we did this, but we are in the early days of starting to realize these benefits. By the way, bottom line too, we do not have to wait for the digital new tech stack to be "deployed" to every location around the globe.
John Engel: We are getting these benefits of AI implementation, both generative and agentic AI, along the way. So, I am more bullish than ever in terms of the operating leverage, the productivity. It will actually help accelerate our sales growth as well with some unique insights we are gaining across our big data set. With 20/20 hindsight, we absolutely had the right strategy, and I am really happy that we launched this years ago as opposed to just trying to get started now. Again, maybe my final point is the quality and fidelity of the AI implementation and the ability to get the benefits is directly proportional to the quality and fidelity of your big data. Again, it is the greatest asset we have that is not on the balance sheet. Thanks for that question.
Tommy Moll: Thank you, John. I will turn it back.
Operator: The next question comes from Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Christopher Glynn: Thanks. Good morning, John, and congrats on the quarter here. Interesting the comment that data center sales now accretive to enterprise margins. That is great to hear. We have been seeing them deliver great incrementals for a while now. Particularly interesting to hear that comment in a context where CSS is reporting 1% growth and EES is reporting 5%. Just curious about the pricing differential there and what you could say about that and if that is a pricing opportunity to come.
John Engel: Well, great question, Chris. Here is what I would focus you on. If you go back several years ago when we started seeing the acceleration in data centers, you will recall that we had a few quarters in CSS where the margins were not moving. They were kind of flattish, maybe a little bit of pressure. I was very clear that given where we fit in the construction cycle, the data center life cycle, and where we sit in terms of the value chain, that this was the front end of that business. As we secure these bigger construction projects, as we progress through and manage them, there would be additional products that we would pull through, and we would increasingly add services. That is what you are seeing. Like for like the products, there is not tremendous inflation for what we do.
John Engel: Again, we are not doing NVIDIA chips and the core compute solution. That does not go through distribution to the end customer. We are doing everything else wrapped around it. We will deep dive this the week after next. But the way you should look at it is, it is not that price is going to be a huge lever to gross margin expansion. It is our conscious strategy of adding additional products once we are in at the beginning through the life cycle of the build and increasing the services content while the project is being built and post-deployment of the project. Which again, we have done a series of acquisitions that give us additional capabilities to manage day 2 through day N of the data center, not just up to day 1. So this is really an important point.
John Engel: I would really focus you on the gross margin improvement is because of our services content increasing over time, and we are continuing to drive and accelerate that. The operating cost leverage is inherent because we are getting this exceptional growth, and we are getting great leverage off our operational footprint, which tags back to what I mentioned in response to Sam Darkatsh's question. So the one-two punch we are seeing in CSS is really remarkable, and to get CSS above the 10% EBITDA margin two quarters in a row, this quarter in particular, represents really terrific momentum.
Christopher Glynn: Sounds good. I have also got a question on the UBS margins. Just given the peculiar dynamics of the trough that that is moving off of and the PPU recovery, you have had a two or three quarter sequential margin expansion. Is there kind of just a natural course of the next few quarters where that trend of sequential expansion prevails as a function of the PPU headwinds dissipating?
John Engel: Yeah. I will address that question, but expand it a little bit in terms of the different dynamics occurring there. But remember, UBS had gotten to an 11% EBITDA business. So, we think we have a terrific set of capabilities, unique leading market position, value proposition. So, we are in a very interesting period because we are seeing very good accelerating momentum. First of all, the backlog being up over 90%, I will come back to that, is just a terrific indicator. But fundamentally, we have got improving sequential momentum. IOUs grew double digits in Q3. That is the fourth quarter in a row of double-digit growth for IOUs. Public power grew in Q3. Okay? That is the second quarter in a row that public power grew. Core margins have stabilized. Grid Services is up double digits the last four quarters in a row.
John Engel: We told you that would grow double digits this year. Fundamentally, this recipe, it has an improved EBITDA margins profile as we move forward, and we have improved EBITDA margins successively over the last three to four quarters on a sequential basis. Grid Services will increasingly contribute as we move through time. So, I remain very bullish on utility and the required power chain investments that are going to have to be made to support not just AI-driven data centers, but all the other mega projects and the infrastructure build-out. Look, I have mentioned before, and I have a very strong belief, that utilities become a secular growth industry.
John Engel: When I say utility is a secular growth industry, I will include the IPPs, the independent power producers, where, basically, the way I look at this is all things power, is what we are focused on due to the increasing energy demand, and that bodes exceptionally well for us.
Christopher Glynn: Good color.
Operator: The next question comes from Ken Newman with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Ken Newman: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Congrats on the solid quarter.
John Engel: Morning.
Ken Newman: Maybe first, John. Morning. John, I appreciate the color on the support for mid to high single-digit sales growth for next year. I am assuming that comment is primarily just being driven by what is currently in the backlog today. First, is that a fair assessment? Secondly, is there a way to help us think about the stock and flow side of the business, and how that performed this quarter relative to the backlog side?
John Engel: Again, I think what we have done with that commentary, Ken, is just consistent with the last couple of years, so I think you should put it into that context. In terms of what really is the drivers and the composition, we will give that in great detail when we release our Q4 earnings results, as we always do. We are in the middle of Q4 now. We do have positive momentum, and that commentary was meant to reflect that we entered the quarter with great momentum. We expect to exit the quarter with strong positive momentum, and it is more of a momentum comment as we move into next year. So that is how you should take it. In terms of the detailed guide, we will provide that again once 2026 is in the record books.
Ken Newman: Okay. Anything to comment on stock and flow versus project-oriented?
John Engel: We have been getting a pickup actually, mix-wise in stock and flow, and it is most notable in our EES business, which I made that comment last 2 quarters. That has continued, and it is part of the broader commentary around EES just posted a record quarter, another record quarter. There is accelerating business momentum. Construction is accelerating. Industrial is improving. OEM has further acceleration as represented by our Q3 results. I think we are at the beginning of an industrial super cycle. I have made those comments before, so the best is yet to come on industrial. I will just tell you, it is great to see EES kicking into gear, and one of the attributes of that is we are getting this very strong growth in stock and flow.
Ken Newman: That is helpful. For the follow-up, obviously it seems like you are not seeing or expecting any impact from the moratorium headlines from earlier this quarter. That seems like it jives with what most of your suppliers and competitors have said or been seeing in project activity year to date. I guess when you think about where you play primarily in the timing of new data center construction, is there a higher-level way to think about the inherent lag of the new orders that you are winning today for new greenfields and when they ultimately flow through the P&L? Maybe asked another way, how much of the increase in the CSS backlog is for new data center projects that likely you will not play for until 2028 versus 2027?
John Engel: No, it is a good point. We have given that view before over the last few years, and this is something we will highlight in more detail week after next in our data center deep dive. When you see the headline numbers from a hyperscaler or an MTDC in terms of their increased CapEx, where we play in the value chain, there is a meaningful time delay or time lag, right? It is the nature of the beast. So you will see these reported headlines on CapEx increases. The first thing that has to be done is the overall power solution. Then as the construction build cycle progresses, it is gray space moving to white space. So, what we are benefiting from now is projects that are spending that was announced quite some time ago on behalf of our end user customers.
John Engel: It is a really important point that you have called out and that we have cited before. Again, when you look at our momentum vector, look at the backlog growth in CSS, 140%. Look at the sales growth. Look at the backlog growth in EES, at the 40% level. Then look at the sales growth, and look at the backlog growth in UBS at 90%, and look at the sales growth. I think that answers your question. At the high level, in terms of the dynamics of brand-new projects being loaded in backlog and the time phasing.
John Engel: We will give a little more insight on that week after next, because again, I think as we peel the onion on our data center business, I think you will all appreciate to a much better degree, which is why we chose to do it, the depth and breadth of our WESCO Data Center Solutions positioning, our leading value prop, our global execution model, and that we are across all types of data center applications, and now have capabilities across the whole life cycle. That is the really important point. It is not just the build, but it includes day 2 through day N of running the data center.
Ken Newman: Appreciate the color. Thanks.
John Engel: Yep.
Operator: The next question comes from Guy Hardwick with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Guy Hardwick: Actually, Ken asked most of what I was going to ask, but maybe I will ask the question a different way. John, is it possible to kind of parse the backlog as to how much is delivered next year, how much is it in 2028 and beyond?
John Engel: Yeah, Guy, we have not done that historically, so I will not do that in Q&A. But we will take that input and see if we can provide some further insight as we move forward. I will just tell you that, in general, what is in backlog, it includes a broad mix of demand that can be tomorrow, next week, next month, next quarter, and typically it is not five years out or four years out, but it can be a year to two years out for some very specific long cycle products that are part of projects. So, that is kind of the nature of the beast of our backlog for wholesale distribution.
Guy Hardwick: And just as my follow-up, what percentage of UBS now is Grid Services given it has grown? I think you said at one point it was 10%. I assume it is higher than that now.
John Engel: We were a $300-plus million business last year, and when we gave our outlook and guidance, our original one for 2026, we said it would grow double digits this year. It has grown double digits all three quarters. We expect it to grow double digits in the Q4 as well. We will update those mixes when we close out 2026. So we will give you a sense of that then, because it is growing at a higher rate than UBS overall, clearly. So it is mix shifting up.
Guy Hardwick: Thank you. I'll pass it on.
Operator: The next question comes from Chris Dankert with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.
Chris Dankert: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I guess I did kind of want to hold on Grid Services for just a minute. John, I want to make sure I'm understanding your earlier comments. When it comes to the profitability there, is that accretive to UBS today? Is there opportunity to expand that to be even higher than the segment average, kind of similar to what we've seen in data center? Maybe just some comments on the profitability of Grid Services would be great.
John Engel: It's accretive to WESCO, for sure. It will obviously help UBS. We've kind of given a profile of that business as we move through the year. I'll just remind everyone that we first called it out at our last full Investor Day in 2024. Jim Cameron, who leads UBS, called it out during that Investor Day as part of Q&A. When we announced our Q4 results for 2025, we did profile that business because it was an important part of our plan for 2026, because we had planned double-digit growth this year. Now here we are three quarters in the record books, it's driving double-digit growth. Last quarter, we called out a very large win that's multi-year in nature, that ostensibly kicks in 2027, starts to contribute meaningfully in the H1 of 2027.
John Engel: The margin characteristics, because of the value proposition we are delivering and we are managing a global supply chain with some very challenging requirements, they are attractive margins and it is margin accretive. I thought I would just give a little more color on what the drivers are there.
Chris Dankert: Yeah, no, thank you very much for the reminder and that color there. I guess to zoom out a little bit, can you remind us, and forgive me if I missed it somewhere in the deck, but as far as the price cost impact, are we kind of hovering at neutral right now? That the same kind of price cost neutrality expected Q4 in the guide there, but just kind of give us an update on price cost.
Neel Dev: Yeah, Chris, you are right. That is usually our objective, so we are generally neutral. If you look at pricing, it is not a factor in our CSS business like John touched on before. It is really primarily in our EES business, and we manage that very closely and try to maintain margins.
Chris Dankert: Got it. Thanks so much. I will pass it back.
Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to John Engel for any closing remarks.
John Engel: I think we addressed all your questions today. It is great that we were able to get through all them. Thanks for joining us. I will bring the call to a close. Thank you all for your support. It is very much appreciated. I am going to remind you again that we will be hosting a virtual investor event on Tuesday, 10 November from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM Eastern Time, and I hope you will be able to make it. I know we have got a number of follow-up calls lined up with Scott and team, so we look forward to engaging with you in the coming days. Finally, we expect to announce our Q4 earnings on Tuesday, 9 February 2027. Thanks again for your support. Have a great day.
Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
