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Vertiv VRT and Super Micro Computer SMCI are well-known providers of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in the data center market. While Vertiv offers power and thermal management products Super Micro Computer provides rack-scale solutions optimized for various AI and HPC workloads as well as IT solutions. Per IDC estimates, AI infrastructure is poised to surpass $200 billion in spending by 2028, offering solid opportunity for both the stocks.
However, both Vertiv and Super Micro Computer shares have suffered from tech sell-off year-to-date (YTD) due to the uncertainties resulting from higher tariffs. While Vertiv shares have lost 24.2% YTD, Super Micro Computer shares have appreciated 21.7%. Since the 90-day tariff pause came into being on April 9, VRT shares have appreciated 18.3% compared with SMCI’s 1.1%.
So, Vertiv or Super Micro Computer, which is a better stock to invest in now?
Vertiv has been benefiting from an extensive product portfolio, which spans thermal systems, liquid cooling, UPS, switchgear, busbar and modular solutions. In the trailing 12 months, organic orders grew approximately 20%, with a book-to-bill of 1.4 times for the first quarter of 2025, which suggests a strong prospect. Backlog grew 10% sequentially and 25% year over year to $7.9 billion.
VRT’s expanding portfolio is a positive. In March, VRT launched four new systems — Vertiv Unify software, Vertiv SmartRun, Vertiv CoolLoop RDHx and Vertiv PowerDirect Rack — which expanded capabilities in infrastructure management, prefabricated modular deployment, advanced thermal management, and DC power distribution.
Strong capital expenditure spending plans by hyperscalers on data center capacity expansion bode well for Vertiv. VRT’s rich partner base, which includes the likes of Ballard Power Systems, Compass Datacenters, NVIDIA, Intel, and ZincFive, is a key catalyst.
Net sales for 2025 are now expected to be $9.325-$9.575 billion, up from the original guidance of $9.13-$9.28 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for VRT’s 2025 revenues is pegged at $9.23 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 15.14%.
Super Micro Computer’s is benefiting from growing deployment of AI and HPC workloads. As an increasing number of data centers are proliferating and existing ones are scaling up their capacity, the demand for SMCI’s high-performance and energy-efficient servers is rising.
SMCI’s liquid-cooled and modular servers have been gaining from solid adoption among cloud service providers, federal customers and enterprises as these can handle AI at scale. Super Micro Computer is also leading the Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) market and has shipped more than 3,000 DLC racks in 2024, which is estimated to be approximately 70% of the global DLC market. To expand its capacity, SMCI is rapidly ramping up its production facilities across Malaysia, Taiwan, Europe, and the United States.
Super Micro Computer is benefiting from an expanding partner base that includes the likes of Intel and AMD. SMCI has leveraged Intel Gaudi 3 accelerators in its offerings for scalable AI training and inference tasks. Super Micro Computer’s H14 Series servers use AMD’s EPYC 9005 CPUs and its GPU-Accelerated Systems utilize AMD’s Instinct MI325X GPUs.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Vertiv’s 2025 earnings is pegged at $3.55 per share, down by 1.11% over the past 30 days, indicating a 24.56% increase over 2024’s reported figure.
Vertiv Holdings Co. price-consensus-chart | Vertiv Holdings Co. Quote
However, the consensus mark for Super Micro Computer’s fiscal 2025 earnings has declined 1.2% to $2.52 per share over the past 30 days, suggesting 14.03% growth over fiscal 2024.
Super Micro Computer, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Super Micro Computer, Inc. Quote
While Vertiv’s earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all of the trailing four quarters, Super Micro Computer’s beat twice and missed once. VRT’s average surprise of 10.42% is better than SMCI’s negative surprise of 1.82%, reflecting a good quality of earnings beat on a consistent basis. (Find the latest EPS estimates and surprises on Zacks Earnings Calendar.)
Valuation-wise, both Vertiv and Super Micro Computer are overvalued, as suggested by the Value Score of D.
In terms of forward 12-month Price/Earnings, Vertiv shares are trading at 22.57X, higher than Super Micro Computer’s 11.84X.
Super Micro Computer benefits from the strong momentum from its data center and cloud computing clients and is less exposed to tariff concerns in comparison to Vertiv.
Currently, Super Micro Computer has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), making the stock a stronger pick compared with Vertiv, which has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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