TE Connectivity forecasts upbeat quarterly profit on strong demand for AI products

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By Anshuman Tripathy

(Reuters) -TE Connectivity issued an upbeat first-quarter forecast on Wednesday, after beating Wall Street estimates for profit for the preceding three months, aided by strong demand for its artificial intelligence-focused products.

Shares of the company rose 9% in premarket trading.

Demand for AI-related products and hardware in the U.S. has spurred huge investments from Big Tech companies and Silicon Valley startups as they race to bank on AI technology behind services such as ChatGPT.

“We are going to continue to have the AI momentum next year, we continue to see program ramps there and the energy infrastructure build-out in the United States,” CEO Terrence Curtin told Reuters in an interview.

Adjusted profit per share for the first quarter is projected at about $2.53, compared with analysts’ expectations of $2.17 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Curtin said the company’s annual revenue tripled over fiscal 2025 on AI products alone and that it also had a bump down effect throughout its non AI-cloud products.

Fourth-quarter sales in the company’s industrial solutions segment, which makes electrical connector systems and components used in factory automation and other industrial equipment including data centers, surged more than 34% year over year.

The infrastructure that TE’s customers are trying to put into place to be able to keep up with the software that’s needed by large language models is still in “catch-up” mode, Curtin added.

For the fourth quarter ended September 26, TE Connectivity reported an adjusted profit of $2.44 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $2.29 apiece.

Revenue for the quarter came in at $4.75 billion, compared with estimates of $4.58 billion.

(Reporting by Anshuman Tripathy in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)