TE Connectivity posts record quarter and guides above consensus; its stock falls anyway
TE Connectivity beat on revenue and earnings and told investors fiscal first-quarter sales would clear consensus by more than $200 million, then watched the stock open 6% lower while Amphenol, which grew five times as fast, jumped 5%.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The beat that got punished
TE Connectivity−0.83% — TE Connectivity, down 0.83 percent today, the Galway, Ireland-based maker of the connectors and sensors that move power and data through cars, factories and data centers, reported record fiscal fourth-quarter results today: net sales of $5.3 billion, up 12% reported and 13% organically, and adjusted earnings per share of $3.14, seven cents above the $3.07 analyst estimate 12. It then guided the fiscal first quarter of 2027 above consensus on both lines, roughly $5.35 billion in sales against a $5.12 billion estimate and adjusted EPS of about $3.30 versus $2.99 expected 12.
The stock fell anyway. At the opening bell in New York, TE shares traded at $211.87, down 6.0%, while Amphenol+5.11% — Amphenol, up 5.11 percent today, the far larger connector maker that reported its own record quarter this morning, opened 5.0% higher at $82.08 5. Wall Street ended a beat-and-raise morning by paying the smaller of the two interconnect players nothing for it.
Records in sales, orders and cash
Underneath the sell-off, the quarter itself is strong. Orders hit $6.1 billion in the quarter, up 29% year over year, and $22.2 billion for fiscal 2026, up 27% 1. Orders divided by sales gives a book-to-bill above 1.1 on this arithmetic, and it backs management's call for another year of double-digit sales growth 1.
Full-year sales reached a record $19.9 billion, adjusted operating margin held at 22%, free cash flow came in at $3.4 billion, and TE returned roughly $2.8 billion to shareholders while committing $1.6 billion to bolt-on acquisitions in optics and power filtering 1. Reported growth also carries an $87 million deduction for tariff refunds TE expects to pass back to customers, so the underlying run rate is a touch stronger than the headline 1.
TE's quarterly revenue spent 2024 flat, then climbed to a record $5.3 billion
Data
| Net sales | |
|---|---|
| FQ1 '24 | $3.83B |
| FQ2 '24 | $3.97B |
| FQ3 '24 | $3.98B |
| FQ4 '24 | $4.07B |
| FQ1 '25 | $3.84B |
| FQ2 '25 | $4.14B |
| FQ3 '25 | $4.53B |
| FQ4 '25 | $4.75B |
| FQ1 '26 | $4.67B |
| FQ2 '26 | $4.74B |
| FQ3 '26 | $5.16B |
| FQ4 '26 | $5.31B |
Where the growth actually lives
The mix inside the record is the whole story. TE's Industrial Solutions segment, where CEO Terrence Curtin says the company benefits from customers' AI investments "from inside the rack in the data center to the networking edge all the way to the energy grid," grew 26% in fiscal 2026 1. Its digital data networks line, the server and networking interconnect business, grew 44.2% and the energy business 40.4%, while the legacy Transportation segment grew 7.3% 1.
TE's AI power and data segments carry the growth; transportation runs single digits
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Digital data networks | 44.2% |
| Energy | 40.4% |
| Industrial Solutions | 25.8% |
| Company total | 15.2% |
| Transportation Solutions | 7.3% |
Amphenol's shadow
The problem is what printed next to it. Amphenol, with quarterly revenue of $10.2 billion against TE's $5.3 billion, posted sales up 65%, with orders of $12.2 billion, a 1.19:1 book-to-bill and a 29.7% adjusted operating margin against TE's 22% 4.
Amphenol's reported growth ran more than five times TE's, and its board raised the dividend 20% and approved a new $4 billion buyback the day before 4. TE beat its estimates; the market simply repriced the gap between a company where AI is the whole engine and one where AI sits inside a diversified industrial portfolio.
Amphenol grew more than five times as fast as TE in the September quarter, at a higher margin
- Sales growth, September quarter
- Adjusted operating margin
Data
| Sales growth, September quarter | Adjusted operating margin | |
|---|---|---|
| TE Connectivity | 12% | 22% |
| Amphenol | 65% | 29.7% |
What to watch next
The tell is the January quarter, when TE's $5.35 billion guidance meets a bar Amphenol has already set at $10.3 to $10.5 billion 14.
Watch whether digital data networks keeps compounding above 40% and whether TE's $22.2 billion order book converts on schedule. TE is already reshaping for the pivot: as The Inference reported on October 5, the company put 630 German jobs on a 2028 expiry date and redirected $1.4 billion into AI power (our earlier coverage). Investors are pricing the AI mix shift rather than headline records, so TE now has to show the mix improving every quarter.
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