Operator
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Celestica Q1 2026 Financial Results and Conference Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Matthew Pallotta, Head of Investor Relations. Matthew, please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us on Celestica's Q1 2026 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 second 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 as of april 27th 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 cedar plus 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-gap financial measures we've 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 kicked off the year with solid results in the first quarter as revenue surpassed $4 billion with adjusted operating margin of 8%, a new high for Celestica. This performance drove adjusted EPS of $2.16 for the quarter, which exceeded the high end of our guidance range. Our awarded backlog and the opportunity pipeline with both existing and new customers are the strongest they have ever been during my tenure as ceo we continue to see exceptionally strong and accelerating demand from a hyperscaler customer base complemented by a steadily strengthening outlook in our ats segment this momentum underpins our expectation for sustained growth in both revenue and adjusted eps throughout 2026 while our outlook for 2027 has strengthened compared to just 90 days ago. I'll discuss our latest 2026 outlook in a moment, but first I'll hand it over to Mandeep to walk through the Q1 details and our Q2 guidance. Mandeep, over to you.
Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Revenue in the first quarter was $4.05 billion, up 53%, just above the midpoint of our guidance range driven by very strong demand in our CCS segment. Our non-gap operating margin was 8.0 percent, up 90 basis points, driven by solid margin improvement in both of our segments. Our adjusted earnings per share was $2.16 in the first quarter, exceeding the high end of our guidance range, and an increase of 96 cents, or 80 percent. Moving on to some additional metrics. Adjusted gross margin was 11.3 percent, up 30 basis points, driven by improved mix and strong productivity. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 19%. And finally, strong profitability and disciplined working capital management led to an adjusted ROIC of approximately 50%, up more than 18 percentage points versus the prior year. Moving on to our segment performance. Revenue in our ATS segment for the quarter was $806 million, dollars flat year over year and higher than our guidance of a low single digit percentage decline the performance was driven by higher revenue in health tech offset by tougher comps due to previously communicated portfolio reshaping in our and business and softness in capital equipment our ats segment accounted for 20 percent of total company revenue in the first quarter Revenue in our CCS segment was $3.24 billion, up 76%, driven by very strong growth in both our communications and enterprise and markets. The CCS segment accounted for 80% of total company revenue in the first quarter. Revenue in our communications and market increased by 69%, better than our outlook of low 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 101%, driven by the planned ramping of a next-generation AI ML compute program with a hyperscaler customer. This result was modestly lower than our outlook of 100 high-teens percentage increase as the timing of the planned ramp was partially gated by select component constraints. Our HPS business generated revenue of $1.7 billion, representing growth of 63% and accounted for 42% of total company revenue. The growth was driven by ramping 800G switch programs with multiple hyperscaler customers. Moving on to segment margins. ATS segment margin was 6.0%, up 100 basis points, driven by improved mix and higher profitability as a result of our portfolio optimization activities. CCS segment margin in the first quarter was 8.6%, an improvement of 60 basis points, driven by strong mix and operating leverage from higher volumes. During the first quarter we had three customers that each accounted for at least 10 percent of total revenue representing 35 percent 15 percent and 15 percent of revenue respectively moving on to working capital at the end of the first quarter our inventory balance was 2.67 billion dollars a sequential increase of 485 million dollars and higher by 885 million dollars compared to the prior year as we support significant growth in our ccs segment cash cycle days during the first quarter were 55 representing an improvement of 14 days versus the prior year and six days better sequentially turning to cash flows we generated 138 million dollars of free cash flow in the first quarter our capital expenditures were 230 million dollars or 5.7 percent of revenue an increase of 135 million dollars sequentially and 193 million dollars versus the prior year consistent with our prior communication our full year 2026 capital expenditure guidance remains unchanged at approximately 1 billion dollars to enable significant growth in our ccs segment this investment is supported by awarded programs and our increased level of visibility to a multi-year capacity alignment with our key customers. At the end of the quarter, our cash balance was $378 million, while our gross debt was $719 million, resulting in a net debt position of $341 million. We had no draw outstanding on our revolver at the end of the quarter. Our gross debt to non-GAAP trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 0.6 turns, an improvement of 0.1 turns sequentially, and 0.5 turns versus the prior year period. As of March 31st, we were in compliance with all financial covenants under our credit agreement. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we amended our credit facility, increasing our revolver by $1 billion to $1.75 billion. In addition, we received more favorable terms regarding certain covenants and interest rates, and the maturities of both the term loan A and revolver were extended to 2031. The upsized revolver on the amended facility, along with our cash balance, provides us with more than $2 billion of available liquidity, which we believe is sufficient to meet our current operating needs. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 73,000 shares for cancellation under our normal course issuer bid at a cost of $20 million. We continue to be opportunistic with respect to share repurchases. Now moving on to our guidance for the second quarter of 2026. Second quarter revenue is projected to be between $4.15 billion and $4.45 billion, representing growth of 49% at the midpoint. Adjusted earnings per share are anticipated to be between $2.14 and $2.34, representing an increase of $0.85 at the midpoint, or 61% 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 is expected to be 8.0%, which would represent an increase of 60 basis points. We anticipate our adjusted effective tax rate for the second 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 up in the mid single digit percentage range fueled by program ramps across our health tech and industrial businesses alongside strengthening market demand driving a return to growth in our capital equipment business in our CCS segment we expect revenue in our communications and market to grow by approximately 50% driven by ongoing hyperscaler ramps and multiple 800g programs complemented by continued strength in 400g programs in our enterprise end market we expect growth of approximately 130 supported by the continued ramp in an aiml compute program with a hyperscaler customer as well as ramping volumes in storage with that i will now turn the call back over to rob to provide an update on our 2026 annual financial outlook and additional color on the latest developments in our business. Thank you, Mandeep. Driven by the continued
strengthening of our demand pipeline and enhanced visibility as we progress through the year, we are raising our full-year 2026 annual financial outlook. We are raising our revenue outlook from $17 billion to $19 billion, representing very strong growth of 53%. This latest outlook reflects accelerating demand in the second half of 2026, fueled by production ramps for awarded programs. We are also raising our outlook for adjusted DPS from $8.75 to $10.15, which if achieved would represent growth of 68%. Included in our forecast is an adjusted operating margin outlook of 8.1%, higher than our previous outlook of 7.8%. Finally, we are reaffirming our free cash flow outlook of $500 million, which fully incorporates our $1 billion in planned capital investments in 2026. This outlook represents our high confidence view for 2026. And while the supply environment remains highly dynamic, our outlook is informed by a measured assessment of component availability. Building on my earlier remarks, our longer-term customer demand outlook has continued to solidify over the past 90 days, posted by additional new program wins and enhanced forecast visibility. We expect to grow revenue by over $6.5 billion in 2026, based on our latest outlook, and now we expect to grow revenue significantly more than this in 2027. As the year progresses and our visibility continues to improve we will continue to update our outlook now moving on to our businesses and beginning with our ccs segment based on our latest 2026 annual outlook we now anticipate approximately 70 revenue growth in our ccs segment even as demand across our customer base remains exceptionally strong and continues to accelerate the unprecedented growth throughout the data center ecosystem has created a tighter supplier environment, effectively pacing our growth. As we navigate extended lead times and supply chain constraints for certain advanced components, we view our overall demand as durable and cumulative, underpinning a sustained growth runway as supply and capacity align through the second half of 2026 and into 2027 moving on to our end markets in communications accelerating volumes from the ramping of multiple 800g ethernet switch programs are driving very strong and sustained growth in addition we are expecting to begin mass production on 1.6t switch programs with two hyperscale customers which will contribute to additional growth in the second half of the year During the quarter, we also secured two important new program wins, further bolstering our networking demand pipeline into 2027 and 2028. First, we announced in March we are collaborating with AMD on the design and manufacturing of a scale-up networking switch for the Helios RackScale AI architecture. This collaboration leverages our leading-edge Ethernet networking expertise to support deployments of the Helios platform. Development is in progress, and we expect initial units to be available by year-end. Additionally, we have secured a landmark program award for the design and manufacturing of a 1.6T co-packaged optics Ethernet switch with a hyperscaler customer. This win serves as a critical validation of our ability to execute complex next-generation networking designs at scale. We expect mass production to commence in 2027. Within our enterprise end market, the growth outlook remains very strong into 2027. As anticipated, volumes for our next-generation AI ML compute program with a hyperscaler customer continue to scale through 2026. We continue to expect this strong momentum to sustain in 2027, supported by the launch of mass production for our digital native RackScale program, as well as higher demand from our hyperscaler programs, driven by ramps in next-generation platforms. Moving on to our ATS segment, we are increasing our full-year revenue outlook, which now calls for mid- to high single-digit percentage growth. The strengthening growth outlook relative to prior quarters is boasted by a re-acceleration of customer demand in our capital equipment business, as the market forecast for waive of fab equipment spending is strengthening in the second half of 2026 and into 2027. We also continue to expect solid growth in both our industrial and health tech businesses, supported by new program wraps. We are also very encouraged by the strengthening margin profile of our ATS segment portfolio, as we see the benefits of our strategic portfolio reshaping activities. We expect that these dynamics, along with improving operating leverage, will continue to lead to stronger segment margins as we progress throughout the year. The fundamentals and visibility supporting our long-term demand outlook through 2026 and into next year are stronger than ever. The intensifying need for leading-edge AI compute and networking infrastructure is driving an unprecedented level of customer demand. Today, as we scale our global operations to meet this accelerating demand, our primary focus remains on execution. We are confident that we are incredibly well-positioned to execute and deliver on the growth opportunity in front of us. With that, I will now turn the call back over to the operator to begin with the Q&A.
Operator
We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Samick Chatterjee with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. Hope you can hear me. Maybe for the first question, you did mention the next generation programs that you have with your enterprise customer on AI ML compute programs. And there's been a lot of discussion around share. So maybe if you can just dive in a bit into what you're seeing relative to your market share with your customer on that front, particularly on these next generation programs, and what level of visibility are they providing you, particularly as their demand sort of increases on that front? Are they looking for additional vendors or suppliers to help them with that ramp? And I have a follow-up.
thank you hi samick uh yes um you know based on the long lead times that there is for silicon these days the the visibility that we have into next generation programs is quite long and we are supporting that customer on all the future generation programs ones in production now and several are in the pipeline to start ramping in subsequent periods we haven't seen a significant change in market share shifts or things along those lines and we continue to execute well. In the first quarter, by the way, not that you asked, we did have a little bit of a component issue relative to our AI ML compute issue. It wasn't a demand issue, it was actually a material supply issue. That has been resolved and will be catching up in subsequent quarters
and the program remains on track got it got it interesting and maybe for my follow-up the announcement of the win around the CPU Ethernet switch just trying to get a bit more visibility in terms of what it means in terms of your content related to a maybe a sort of a typical 1.60 switch what does the content for Celestica look like and what would be the margin profile and what are you're seeing in terms of engagement beyond this one hyperscaler that you've won in terms of CPO Ethernet switches?
Yeah, good question. So this is not just another switch award. We actually believe it's the first major production scale deployment of co-packaged optics using Broadcom's Tomahawk 6 Davison module and designing that directly into our system. And winning this award validates our multi-year investment in developing this capability ahead of the market. we talked about that in the last call the transition to 1.6 requires managing unprecedented thermal and signal integrity challenges and the fact that we're able to do this further demonstrate that we've actually moved up the value chain and we are now a sophisticated co-design partner for the most advanced hyperscalers it also sets us up well for the 3.2 adoption where we think this will kick in so we think at this stage of the game we're a market leader in terms a margin profile because of the high value add this will be on the higher end of what we typically
do and are you seeing more hyperscalers interested beyond this one hyperscaler that you want i think
each of the hyperscalers will have their own adoption for cpl some are choosing to do cpx before cpo but the end of the day we'll think the major adoption will be at the 3.2 dot t node Thank you, Smeek.
Operator
Thank you for your questions. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question. If you would like to ask a follow-up, please feel free to reenter the queue. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Ng with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. You talked about the CCS revenue growth of 70% for 2026 and the 2027 outlook getting better relative to the last 90 days. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your 2027 CCS revenue growth expectations relative to where you got this last time And any way to size or help think about the, you know, order contributions from some of the key programs that you mentioned between, you know, scale up Helio, CPO, and digital native?
It's Mandy Pierre. Yeah. Thanks for the question. Look, we're very pleased with the accelerated growth that we're seeing across the business, and we have no indications right now that it's slowing down. of. When we're looking at that area that we shared, we're growing by about 6.5 billion this year, and we think we're going to grow significantly more than that, which means the floor would be somewhere around 25.5. But we do see revenue higher than that, and that's on programs that we've won. As you know, we're seeing really great networking dynamics this year. 400G continues to be strong. 800G is accelerating materially, and we're ramping. We're seeing some contribution towards the back end of the year from the 1.6T program when you start looking at 2027 800 G demand continues to be strong 1.6 T is now ramping across the programs that we've already started plus additional programs I'll be coming online and then we have the very large program the rack scale system that we're doing for the digital native customer and then in addition to that as Rob talked about on the AI ML compute programs we're continuing to see strong growth including next generation programs and I on and you know with other things as well but the with the program that we've won with the material that we are in line to secure with the capacity that is coming online um we have strong confidence in 2027 and you know we'll we'll give more specificity around the number as we go through
Operator
the year thank you for your question your next question comes from the line of tim long with barclays your line is open please go ahead thank you um yeah i was hoping you could talk a little
bit about the HPS business, so off to a pretty good start, $1.7 billion in the quarter. If you can talk about kind of the progression of the HPS business, I know that's been part of the capex and increased investment is more of HPS centers as well. And particularly into next year, I think some of the, I think all three of these large programs, the digital native, AMD, and CTO should be HPS as well. So, if you could just give us a little color on how you see the glide path for that piece of business in the mix.
Great. Look, the HPS business and specifically the design work that we're doing with our customers is really underpinning the majority of the growth that we're seeing, or a significant portion of it. You've already mentioned a few of them. We're seeing very good traction on the switching side. The CPO program that Rob just talked about is an HPS program. 1.60 programs are are predominantly hps as well as our 800g and 400g programs and so we have a very strong competitive position when it comes to networking as we grow this digital native program into next year it really starts to expand extend ourselves into compute as well and you know all of this is underpinned by investments that we're making you'll notice that our R&D spend is up materially and it's where we want it to be. We have about 1,350 design engineers right now. That's much higher than we had this time last year. And by the time we end this year, we're going to have even more. And the benefit of that is, is that if they're working on not this year's programs, but they're really working on programs for next year and the year after. And so because of the programs that we've been winning and the pipeline that we have, we're very comfortable making the investments that we are in R&D, which is specifically HPS.
Operator
Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Carl Ackerman with BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Two questions for me, please. First, as you think about the drivers for your upward-level advised outlook for 2026 and 2027, I was hoping you could bucket the relative growth drivers between some of the new switch programs versus the AI servers and how that might influence your marginal trajectory throughout the balance of 26 and 27. I'll get started
and Rob can feel free to add on for anything that I may miss. Look as we look into 2027 what we are seeing right now is very strong growth coming in particular from CCS although ATS will also be growing. I'll just quickly touch on ATS because often we miss it on the call. It's very nice to see the performance that's underway right now in ATS, which is a return to growth and strong margins, and that's really being underpinned by capital equipment. Capital equipment, we believe now, is entering into a very nice cycle where there is a very strong order book from our major customers, and that will take us through this year and next year. So ATS will be contributing to the growth, but the growth is overwhelmingly being driven by CCS, and it is being driven by both communications of the enterprise we're not going to split out the details yet again more to come but yeah just to go talk about the specifics a little bit more on the enterprise side we are growing a new storage program that we've just launched and is in ramp we have the aiml compute program that is going strong through this year and then the next generation program two programs to be to be specific are going to be ramping in 27 and then on the networking side as we talked about we have a couple of 1.60 programs that are coming online towards the end of this year and then we have a lot more that are coming online next year and then you know we never want to lose sight of this digital native uh win which is a completely integrated rack system which has compute and networking in it highly complex not easy to do at scale and that will be entering production next year as well and so those are really driving the growth across ccs and i would just add uh
carl that in terms of 1.6 we have 10 active programs they'll be ramping heavily in 2027 on top of that 800g remains strong and as mandeep mentioned we have the digital native we have the helios rack so lots of new programs and also our aml compute program that has very strong end customer demand for those programs so that will end up ramping very nicely into 2027 as well so overall a very strong demand environment in 2027 thank
Operator
you for your question as a reminder if you would like to ask a follow-up question please press star 1 to raise your hand and re-enter the queue your next question comes from the line of Mehdi Hosseini with Susquehanna
financial group your line is open please go ahead yes thanks for taking my question i want to follow on a helios project to what extent actually can you size the opportunities associated with helios over the next 18 months and to what extent some of those opportunities are now embedded into your
Yeah, with respect to Helios, the program is in development right now, and we'll be shipping samples this year. We view the overall market as a multi-billion dollar market, and as we get into next year, I think revenue would probably be based more by silicon availability than by end market demand. At this stage of the game, things are on track with the development, and it has a lot of market interest.
Operator
Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of David Vogt with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks, guys. So maybe, Manteep, I have a question regarding the revenue ramp versus the trade-off on gross margin. So obviously, TPU sounds like it was capacity-constrained this quarter, and that's going to ramp stronger as we go into Q2 in the second half of this year, and it certainly sounds like strength in calendar 27. How should we think about the gross margin progression of the business, particularly with TPU ramping and also what sounds like a really strong start to the DNC relationship, potentially in the second half of this year into next year thanks yeah hey david um look we're
pleased that we saw this gross margin expansion uh in the quarter on a year-over-year basis uh we think that the gross margin dynamics uh that we're seeing are going to play in a similar way uh there there are going to be mixed impacts along the way uh but we definitely are looking to maintain if not grow our gross margins as we go forward um two things i'll talk about the first one is is that uh you know longer term there are some headwinds on the gross margin side and it really has nothing to do with pricing because we're not we have capacities at a premium our execution is a real differentiator and so we have choice on where we apply our focus and so we're not giving up price in the marketplace but the reality is is that there's some input costs that are going up materially uh whether it be memory or whether it be silicon and so there those are some headwinds that we're working through on the gross market side. But more specifically, what I'll talk about is the operating profit. We're seeing very nice operating leverage right now in the company. And we think that there's more opportunity in front of us as well. We're pleased to be able to raise the full year to 8.1%. That's up from the 7-8 that we had just 90 days ago. It's a reflection of mix, but it's a reflection of operating leverage because we're being very disciplined on the operating expenditure side. And although we are very pleased to make investments along the way to fund growth. And so as you look into 2027, there will continue to be an opportunity on, I would say, operating leverage. And we are very focused on ultimately translating that to EPS growth. We are a management team that is very focused on long-term sustainable growth in EPS. And so the levers that are being pulled are driving that
Operator
outcome. Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of George Nauter with Wolf Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much. I guess I wanted to come back to the CPO when you announced here. Is that an existing customer for networking infrastructure? Is that a brand new customer? And then also I'm wondering if it's an existing customer. Is it likely that that cannibalizes an existing revenue run rate for you? And then anything you could say about the potential size of that deal would be great and then also you said 2027 would be the ramp is it any more specifics there is it early 27 is it late 27 any help would be great thanks a lot
hi george yes it's an existing customer we have multiple 1.60 awards with this customer and programs that's why they felt comfortable in giving us this one as well we don't feel it cannibalizes uh the current programs the current demand that we have on those programs is actually going up and uh with respect to timing this will be second half of 2027.
Operator
thank you for your question your next question comes from the line of john chow
with td cowan your line is open please go ahead good morning guys uh thanks for taking my question So regarding Google's new BorderFly architecture for TPUVA, could you maybe talk about implication to your business? And do you see an ongoing trend towards more complex data center interconnect? And as a result, you're going to be there to benefit as ODM. Thanks.
Yeah, you know, as the architecture becomes more critical and as our hyperscale customers continue to innovate, What's becoming more and more evident is that systems levels, manufacturing, design is becoming more and more important for these customers, especially in liquid cooling, advanced rack scale infrastructure, thermal management. So these customers are looking for us to continue to innovate with them and design with them on multiple notes moving forward. so we're pleased to be able to continue to support them as they continue to innovate and advance their architecture you know through all the the versions that you mentioned thank you
Operator
for your question your next question comes from the line of ruben roy with stiefel your line is
open please go ahead yes thank you uh rob i wanted to come back to the supply um commentary you characterized the environment as highly dynamic and it sounded like there was a specific issue around aiml uh in q1 so i'm just wondering if you could maybe expand on you know how you're thinking about supply relative to the guidance and the demand dynamic um you know as you think about both q2 and the second half of the year are there caps on sort of what you're able to ship as a broader base than the aiml uh program that you talked about for q1 any detail on that would be
helpful. Thank you. Good question. We are experiencing more component shortages now than 90 days ago. Two main factors. One is the demand really continues to grow and as a result the suppliers are a little bit behind on adding capacity. The good news is that all of our key suppliers are currently in in the works of adding capacity and we expect the situation uh to improve uh the constrained commodities right now on allocation are custom silicon and memory that's probably not a news flash for you we are seeing challenges in um in pcbs the 40 plus layer ones power components optical components the positive news is that we have commitments from all our suppliers to uh secure the outlook that we just gave so we think the outlook that we just gave factors all these in we think it's prudent we think it's conservative and that's why we marked it as high confidence we have capacity in 26 coming online ourselves also in 2027 so if things continue to improve in the back half of the year we'll have the opportunity to get it out the door and also into next year but we think we factored it all in but it is more constrained now than it was 90 days ago and the lead times are extending and one last positive thing is with the extended lead times we are getting unprecedented visibility from our customers end item demand so that's actually a very positive thing for us as we do long-term planning thank you for your question your next
Operator
question comes from the line of ruplu batacharya with bank of america your line is open please go
ahead hi thanks for taking the question rob mandeep you're projecting strong growth for next year i think you said significantly more than six and a half billion year over year in fiscal 27 how should we think about free cash flow in that context looks like you did not take up the free cash flow guide for fiscal 26 what are some of the puts and takes impacting free cash flow for fiscal 26 and 27 and how should we think about the working capital as you see this strong growth and just another clarification i think rob the amd opportunity is a scale up opportunity whereas the one you announced in the press release that the switch is ppo switch is a scale out opportunity can you help us size how much of that six and a half billion plus growth next year is from scale up and scale out and which is a longer term opportunity thanks for taking the question
hey bruvlu i love you because you find a way to find three questions in one experience talking there um funding sun elect rob talk about uh some of the uh program specifics that you brought up so um look we're very happy that we were able to raise the revenue outlook for 2026 by two billion dollars and yet maintain our free cash flow outlook of 500 million dollars and then just as a reminder that's including funding a billion dollars of capex the balance sheet is incredibly strong but we are we believe we are very disciplined when it comes to capital allocation we'll assess our needs as we go through uh 2020 as we get closer to 2027 and as the forecast starts to solidify but i'll say just a few things you know again the balance sheet is very, very strong. We have ample capacity to target to use it as we need to. We're very comfortable investing to support customer growth. But one thing you'll know is that we will always remain very disciplined. And so we are a free cash flow focused management team. But at the same time, the growth is really unprecedented right now. And so if that requires additional
funding. We have no hesitation to do that. And regarding scale-up versus scale-out, correct, the CPO win is scale-out and the Heliosrack is a scale-up opportunity. We have been very strong on scale-out, as you noted, so we view scale-up as a huge opportunity. But frankly, we're supporting both very strongly in our system-level architectures. Thank you for your question.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Robert Young with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. Back to the component constraints. If we look back to the supply constraints and the pandemic, Sleska took a lot of share because of its execution, its relationships. And so I'm curious if you'd see the current issues as strengthening your hand competitively. And then I was wondering if you could talk about relative impact on compute and networking or if
it's relatively a similar supply chain impact. Thanks. Yeah one of our key strengths is execution. So once we get the parts and securing the parts you know wherever it happens to be in the quarter were able to execute that at scale very quickly so in the land of very dynamic supply constraints we do advanced planning very well and typically we gain share through that environment because we find that peers or competitors have a hard time executing through turbulent times so that is an opportunity we haven't necessarily seen that as of yet as a result of the supply chain the constraints but frankly the constraints are just starting right the thicker things right now I think it will get better or at least more dynamic as the year gets so long and with respect to compute versus networking so on the networking side it's not very memory centric so there the constraints are really around PCBs or silicon but we think we have a good handle on that on compute it's all about memory but our customers have very strong presence with the main memory suppliers and and we have secured at least in the near term what we think we need to do to support
Operator
our customers thank you for your question your next question comes from the line of thanos muskopoulos with bmo capital markets your line is open please go ahead as a reminder please remember to unmute your device please go ahead please press star one to re-enter the queue your next question comes from the line of paul triber with rbc capital markets your line is open please go ahead good morning and thanks for taking the question just you
you mentioned you know unprecedented visibility long-term visibility uh and then and then also you mentioned in the slide deck capacity alignment with customers. Can you elaborate on both of those and specifically what's fundamentally changed to give you far better long-term visibility in the past? And is there anything contractual that gives you better visibility
than you may have had in the past? Thank you. Yeah, I would say a quarter or so ago, our key customers, the main hyperscalers had very, very strong demand. They loaded in the system just to try to figure out where the constraints would be. At this stage of the game, I think the entire supply chain knows where the constraints are, and we've aligned our physical capacity with our supply chain capacity, with our capital CapEx plans, and that's the current state that we're in. And because the lead times are very long, specifically custom silicon lead times are so long, we've not just done this for 26 or 27. We're actually dipping into 2028 and actually booking awards right now that ship into 2028. So the unprecedented visibility is really just making sure that we're aligning long-term material supply with long-term capacity agreements. And a lot of the orders that we're placing supported by our customers are NCNR. so there are contractual terms protecting us through ups and downs. So we feel very comfortable in a long-term growth trajectory at the stage of the game. It's all about execution and that's what
Operator
we do very well. Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Todd
Coupland with CIBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Oh thanks and good morning everyone. So I wanted to ask about the switch ramps in the second half of the year. I'm wondering if they are coming in as expected, or have some of them been pushed into 2027, which gives you the higher confidence in that year. Can you just talk about the dynamics between 26 and 27? Thanks.
I would say the switch ramps that are coming in the back half of the year are going as planned. In the back half of the year, we have two customers ramping 1.60 and several more coming online in 2027. We've secured the silicon that is required to complete the development processes. And we also have commitments to support the ramps. And 800G remains very strong throughout the year. So I would think things are going as planned on the networking side.
Operator
Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Ng with Goldman
and Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you very much for the follow-up. I was just wondering if you could give us some updated thoughts on capital intensity and the outlook for CapEx beyond this year. Obviously, you've got a lot of new program awards and some new wins. But should we expect, you know, CapEx to ramp up beyond that $1 billion that you laid out for this year in 2027? You know, how are you thinking about additional capacity that you need to put in to support these new wins?
Hey, Mike, it's Mandeep here. So a billion dollars of CapEx this year, as you're aware, we will be doing that or more next year. And I think the way to think about it right now would be, I'm just going to give you a rough number of a billion and a half as a placeholder for now. And we're very comfortable with that. The way to build on the comments that Rob shared just recently, we're having very long-term conversations with our customers, A, as it relates to supply, because we need to get in line on their behalf. And lead times have extended, in some cases, beyond a year for certain types of materials, but then really around capacity. And the majority of our capacity investments right now are in Southeast Asia, Thailand specifically, and in the United States, and I would say Texas specifically. And we have a number that are going to come online this year. We have some that are coming online next year. And then there's other ones that we're evaluating still. But that's the support growth in 2028 and 2029. And so when we make our capacity decision, it's tied to a business case. It's tied to program level specifics. It's tied to programs that we are winning or we intend to win by the time we make that decision to go forward with the CapEx. And the business cases are strong, strong ROI, strong paybacks. And so when we continue to have business cases like that brought forward, we don't hesitate to invest. And so right now, I would say we will see an elevated level of CapEx bend into 2027. And we'll take it one year at a time.
Operator
Thank you for your question. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. Your next question comes from the line of Thanos Moskopoulos with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Sorry about that earlier. With respect to your large digital native customer, is that still on track to ramp in early 2027, or has it been any change in changing number of times at all?
Hi, Sanoff. Yes, that's still on track. We're shipping sample systems this year and production should start in the first quarter, late in the first quarter. Next year, that is on track. We've been having very close meetings with all the key suppliers here to make sure we've secured the material across the supply chain and things look very positive at this stage of the game. Great. Thanks.
Operator
okay thank you for your question there are no further questions at this time i will now hand i will now turn the call back to rob mionis for closing remarks
thank you all thank you for your support and for joining us this quarter we have great momentum across our business and we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter have a great day
Operator
this concludes today's call thank you for attending you may now disconnect