5 Data Center Power Stocks to Watch Before Earnings

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 TomorrowGE 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 InstallQuanta 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 InEaton (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.Sales hit a record $8.53 billion in the second quarter, but earnings fell to $2.11 a share from $2.51 as interest expense nearly tripled and long-term debt more than doubled to $18.5 billion, which is what closing $11 billion of acquisitions in a single quarter will do. Eaton’s own guidance has GAAP earnings flat for the year and adjusted earnings up 12%, and the roughly $3 a share separating the two is acquisition costs, restructuring and amortization. Anyone quoting only the adjusted number is leaving that out.Eaton agreed in June to hand its Mobility business to Dana in a Reverse Morris Trust, due to close in the first quarter of 2027, and the roughly $1.1 billion in cash it expects from the deal can go toward debt. The company reports Nov. 3.Powell Industries, the One You Probably Haven’t Heard OfPowell Industries (NASDAQ: POWL) has been building electrical distribution gear in Houston for 79 years, mostly for oil and gas, petrochemical and utility customers, and in the quarter ended June 30 its backlog passed $2 billion for the first time, reaching $2.4 billion. Helping get it there was a single order worth more than $400 million for a data center built around its own on-site power generation, the same behind-the-meter idea Venture Global is chasing with GE Vernova’s turbines.CEO Brett Cope says “commercial momentum across our key end markets continues to accelerate,” and he has the numbers to say it, with a record $934 million in new orders against revenue of $312 million. At that pace the backlog is nearly two years of sales, so the question is how fast Powell can build, which is why it is expanding its Jacintoport fabrication yard and weighing new plants. Oil and gas customers are still buying too, including a roughly $60 million order tied to LNG export on the Gulf Coast.Petrochemical revenue fell 49% in the quarter, though, and earnings of $1.42 a share missed the $1.49 analysts expected. Powell is expected to report fiscal fourth-quarter results in November.Fluence Energy Has a Houston ProblemFluence Energy (NASDAQ: FLNC), the battery storage maker AES and Siemens started in 2018, booked $1.44 billion in orders in the June quarter, nearly triple a year earlier, and ended it with a record $6.4 billion backlog. It says it has also secured about $850 million of data center business through July, roughly $550 million of it from a hyperscaler. Building what it has sold is another matter.Fluence’s new contract manufacturing plant in Houston was supposed to average 11 battery units a day in August and September. It averaged less than one in August and about three in early September, according to Latitude Media, because a customized automated welding process ran far below target and crews had to switch to slower manual welding, and as of the Sept. 16 call the plant still wasn’t connected to the grid and was running on generators. CEO Julian Nebreda told investors the company had “underestimated the complexity of the ramp-up of the Houston facility,” which is one way to put it.That is how a company that began the fiscal year guiding to $3.2 billion to $3.6 billion in revenue ended up at about $2.4 billion after two cuts in six weeks, with an adjusted EBITDA forecast that swung from a $50 million profit to a loss of about $200 million. The stock fell about 15% the day after the second cut, and law firms have since filed a securities class action covering shares bought between Nov. 24, 2025 and Sept. 16. Those are allegations, not findings.It is also the second year in a row that a new U.S. factory has dragged Fluence down: revenue fell 16% last year on what S&P Global Market Intelligence described as weaker-than-expected production ramps at new U.S. plants, along with project delays and tariff uncertainty.The timing is awkward because the data center customers Fluence wants most move fast. Nebreda has acknowledged the delay creates problems for them, since they go from lead to contract in under three months, compared with about 18 months for everyone else. Meanwhile the company burned about $299 million of free cash flow in the first nine months of its fiscal year and had $863 million of liquidity at June 30, and CFO Ahmed Pasha says the goal for fiscal 2027 is neutral to positive operating cash flow without outside capital. That plan arrives with full-year results later this fall.Wall Street can debate whether the AI build-out is a bubble for as long as it likes, but a plant that can’t weld fast enough is a much simpler problem to understand.By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com18.4 TW by 2035: IRENA Raises Renewables Goal as Power Demand ClimbsOPEC+ Set to Keep Oil Quotas UnchangedWhy Saudi Just Abandoned Its Core Oil Rule