NEW YORK, January 2, 2026, 13:40 ET — Regular session
- Vertiv shares climb about 8% after a Barclays upgrade and a $200 price target
- Barclays flags upside to 2026–27 earnings expectations as AI data-center demand drives sentiment
- Traders now watch for Vertiv’s next results and 2026 guidance signals
Vertiv Holdings Co shares were up 8.2% at $175.33 in afternoon trading on Friday after Barclays upgraded the data-center power and cooling supplier and raised its price target to $200. Barclays analyst Julian Mitchell said the stock had “substantial upside potential” to consensus earnings estimates in 2026 and 2027. 1
The call matters because investors have been treating data-center infrastructure as a front-line trade on artificial intelligence spending, and small shifts in expected demand can swing valuations. Vertiv sells the power and thermal gear that keeps high-density servers running.
Barclays’ move lands as the stock tries to recover from a recent slide, with traders weighing rapid growth against the kind of valuation scrutiny that tends to hit momentum names first. The upgrade also refocuses attention on how quickly liquid cooling becomes a bigger contributor to results.
An “overweight” rating is Wall Street shorthand for expecting a stock to outperform peers or a benchmark, while a price target is an analyst’s estimate of fair value over the next year. Both can move positioning fast, especially in heavily traded growth stories.
In a note, Barclays said its rating change reflected higher earnings expectations for 2026 and 2027 and lifted its 2026 adjusted earnings-per-share forecast to $5.68, above a Bloomberg consensus of $5.24. The bank said about 80% of Vertiv’s sales come from data centers and pointed to liquid cooling as a smaller slice of revenue alongside its larger thermal management segment. Barclays said the stock has traded between $53.60 and $202.45 over the past 52 weeks and that its $200 target reflects a blend of valuation methods. 2
Barclays framed the upgrade partly as a catch-up trade, arguing Vertiv has lagged other AI-linked industrial names such as GE Vernova and nVent Electric. That relative-performance lens can influence how investors value the group when money rotates into, or out of, AI infrastructure. 3
For Vertiv, the key question is whether orders tied to new data-center builds translate into margin gains as production ramps. Cooling and power delivery can become bottlenecks as server racks draw more electricity and generate more heat.
Investors will look for updates on order momentum, pricing and operating margins at the next earnings report, when companies typically lay out early guideposts for the year ahead. Any sign that customers are delaying projects can hit the stock quickly.
The upside case rests on sustained spending by cloud and colocation operators and broader adoption of liquid cooling, which uses fluids to pull heat off high-powered equipment more efficiently than air alone. The risk is that a pause in construction or a shift in build plans leaves suppliers with excess capacity.
Technically, traders will be watching whether Vertiv can hold Friday’s breakout and push back toward the $200 level highlighted by Barclays. A failure to maintain gains would reignite the debate over how much growth is already priced in.
