Amphenol Q3 2026: sales up 65% to $10.23B on 37% organic growth, with orders still 19% ahead of shipments

Amphenol's third quarter of 2026 (the three months to September 30, 2026) brought net sales of $10,229.7 million, up 65% from $6,194.4 million a year earlier, and GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.79 against $0.49. Amphenol makes the connectors, cables, antennas and sensors that carry power and signals inside and between electronic systems, and the biggest single source of demand right now is AI data-center hardware. About 28 points of the growth came from businesses it bought, mainly the CommScope connectivity and cable unit acquired in January; the other 37 points were organic growth, meaning growth of the businesses it already owned, with currency moves and acquisitions stripped out. That organic rate is faster than the 30% we reported for the second quarter. Sales beat the top of management's own guidance by about $830 million.

These figures come from the earnings release furnished with the 8-K on October 28, 2026. The full 10-Q is not filed yet, so this report has no end-market or regional breakdown and no management discussion of individual segments beyond what the release states.

All per-share figures reflect the 2-for-1 stock split that took effect on September 3, 2026, and the release restates the prior year on the same basis. Our second-quarter report used pre-split figures; halve those to compare.

The numbers

Operating margin is the share of sales left after the costs of making and selling the products, before interest and tax. "Adjusted" figures are Amphenol's own non-GAAP versions, which remove acquisition costs and some tax items; GAAP figures follow the standard accounting rules.

The quarter also beat guidance by a wide margin. In July Amphenol guided Q3 sales to $9.3–9.4 billion and adjusted EPS to $1.40–1.42 before the split, or $0.70–0.71 after it. It delivered $10.23 billion and $0.80. Sales rose 16.8% from the second quarter's $8,758.1 million. Only a small part of that came from deals: Empire Electronics, an automotive-lighting assembly maker expected to have about $320 million of 2026 sales, closed at the beginning of September, so it contributed about a month.

Where the growth came from

Segment margins are measured before company-wide costs such as stock-based pay and acquisition expenses, so they don't add up to the consolidated figure.

Communications Solutions now accounts for 64% of sales, up from about 62% in Q2. It contains CommScope and most of the data-center business. Organic growth rose from 42% in Q2 to 51%: the business Amphenol owned before CommScope grew by half in a year, and its operating profit rose from $1,081.3 million to $2,180.4 million. The release credits "continued exceptional organic growth in the IT datacom market", Amphenol's term for servers, networking and data-center equipment. Its margin held at 33.1% even though CommScope, which the company has described as lower-margin than the group average, makes up much of the segment's revenue.

Harsh Environment Solutions sells ruggedised connectors to defence, aerospace and industrial customers. Its organic growth rose to 29% from 22% in Q2, and its margin rose 3 points to 30.1%. Strength outside AI is therefore broader than our Q2 read assumed, at least in this segment.

Interconnect and Sensor Systems, which holds most of the automotive and sensor business, slowed to 11% organic from 13% in Q2, and its margin was flat at 20.0%. Empire Electronics and the pending Humanetics Sensors deal will both go into this segment.

Management says growth was strong in "most" of its end markets. The release doesn't say which ones lagged; the 10-Q will.

Takeaway: In the second quarter, the question was whether the margin depended on an $80 million tariff refund and whether AI orders were being pulled forward. Q3 answered both. Adjusted margin rose to 29.7% with only $15 million of refunds in it, and orders of $12.2 billion kept running 19% ahead of shipments while sales jumped 17% in a single quarter. What doesn't fit is the guidance: it implies only 1–3% sequential growth in Q4.

What the headline numbers hide

Gross margin did not drive the improvement; overhead did. Gross margin (sales minus the direct cost of the goods sold, as a share of sales) was 39.3%, up from 38.1% a year ago but below Q2's 40.5%. Even if all of Q2's roughly 0.9 points of tariff refund sat in cost of sales, gross margin still slipped slightly from Q2 to Q3. Selling, general and administrative costs rose 49% to $979.9 million while sales rose 65%, so those costs fell from 10.6% to 9.6% of sales. That is fixed overhead being spread over more volume. This kind of gain holds up as long as volume does, and reverses quickly if it doesn't.

GAAP EPS understates the quarter a little. GAAP EPS rose 61% and adjusted EPS rose 74%. Three items explain the gap:

• This year's quarter carried a $60.0 million tax charge for settling foreign tax matters ($0.02 a share) and $15.5 million of acquisition costs ($0.01).
• Both years had a tax benefit from employees exercising stock options, which Amphenol removes from adjusted results: $52.2 million this year and $57.1 million last year, about $0.02 each time.
• On an adjusted basis, the tax rate was 27.0% in both years.

So adjusted EPS growth comes from operations, less higher interest. Interest expense rose to $212.3 million from $80.7 million because of the debt that funded CommScope, which took about $132 million off pretax profit.

Buybacks didn't help. Diluted shares rose 0.7% from a year ago. The $244.7 million of repurchases (3.0 million shares) was smaller than the shares issued through option exercises, which brought in $97.1 million of proceeds. All of the per-share growth came from profit growth.

Cash conversion was fine but below earnings growth. Operating cash flow of $2,078.5 million roughly matched net income of $2,054.7 million. Free cash flow (operating cash flow minus capital spending) grew 33.5%, about half as fast as net income, for two reasons:

• Capital spending rose to $457.2 million, 4.5% of sales, from $257.2 million. That is spending on capacity, presumably for data-center products, though the release doesn't say what it bought.
• Working capital absorbed $415.9 million, against $60.9 million a year ago.

Receivables of $7,782.0 million equal about 70 days of this quarter's sales by our arithmetic, roughly where they were at the half year. They are not running away.

The balance sheet is still digesting CommScope. Long-term debt plus its current portion was $17,870.8 million at September 30. Amphenol repaid $937.9 million in the quarter. Cash and short-term investments were $5,301.4 million, down from $11,434.2 million at the end of 2025 after $11,055.8 million was spent on acquisitions this year. The four deals announced or closed this quarter cost about $1.6 billion combined, funded by cash and debt.

On balance the quarter is understated: GAAP EPS growth of 61% trails the 74% adjusted rate because of a $60 million foreign tax settlement and deal costs, and nothing flattered it. The tariff refund was $15 million, buybacks did nothing, and the adjusted tax rate was flat.

Did last time's read hold up?

Our Q2 report named book-to-bill as the figure to watch. Above 1.1 would mean "the current growth rate has runway into 2027"; below 1.0 would suggest AI orders had been pulled forward. It came in at 1.19, down from 1.23 but on sales 17% larger, so orders themselves rose to $12.2 billion from $10.7 billion. Q2 also flagged that the 29.8% adjusted margin included an $80 million one-off. Without it, the underlying margin was about 28.9%. Q3's 29.7% includes only about $15 million of refunds, so the underlying margin improved. The one Q2 concern that held is concentration. Communications Solutions grew its share of sales again, and Interconnect and Sensor Systems slowed.

Guidance and outlook

Assuming current market conditions and constant exchange rates, management expects:

• Q4 2026: sales of $10.3–10.5 billion (about +60% year on year) and adjusted EPS of $0.81–0.83 (+65% to +69%).
• Full year 2026: sales of $36.9–37.1 billion (about +60%) and adjusted EPS of $2.82–2.84 (about +70%).

The guidance leaves out AdvancedPCB (about $270 million of 2026 sales, defence and industrial circuit boards), Dexgreen (about $90 million, European fiber-to-the-home products) and Humanetics Sensors (about $70 million), because none of them has closed. CommScope is now expected to deliver $5.1 billion of 2026 sales and $0.18 of adjusted EPS, up from $4.6 billion and $0.15 three months ago. Capital returns rise too: the quarterly dividend goes up 20% to $0.15, and a new three-year, $4 billion buyback program starts January 1, 2027, twice the size of the current $2 billion program.

Our read. A Q4 midpoint of $10.4 billion would be only 1.7% above Q3. That would be a sharp slowdown after quarter-on-quarter growth of about 7% guided last time and 16.8% delivered. Amphenol has a long habit of guiding below what it delivers, and this quarter's $830 million beat over the top of the range is the latest example. A backlog that grew by about $2 billion also argues against a sudden stall. Even so, the guidance is what management is willing to put its name to.

Three things to watch in Q4:

• Book-to-bill. Below 1.0 would be the first sign that data-center orders are cooling.
• Gross margin. It has drifted down since Q2 even as operating margin rose.
• The new buyback. Whether its larger size actually starts reducing the share count, which has crept up over the past year despite repurchases.

The 10-Q, which should add end-market detail, has not been filed yet.

Source: Amphenol Corporation earnings release for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, furnished as Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K dated October 28, 2026. Dollar figures in millions unless stated otherwise. This is analysis of a public filing, not investment advice.