TL;DR · 30-second read
The Short Version
SPX, a North Carolina maker of heating and cooling equipment, grew sales by about a fifth this summer and has spent roughly $1.29 billion buying other companies this year.
The surprise: the growth tied to data centers did not come from those purchases. It came from factories SPX is expanding to build giant cooling systems for data centers, the warehouse-sized buildings full of computers that power artificial intelligence and give off enormous heat.
Growing that fast is expensive. On its heating and cooling business, the slice of each sale kept as profit shrank, and the company now expects slightly less profit this year even as sales rise.
SPX Technologies (NYSE: SPXC) reported on October 29, 2026, that revenue for the third quarter ended September 26 rose 20.5% to $714.5 million from $592.8 million a year earlier. Net income climbed to $81.9 million from $62.7 million, and diluted earnings per share rose to $1.62 from $1.28. The company raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $2.745 billion to $2.805 billion, while trimming its adjusted EBITDA range to $625 million to $645 million.
Stock Titan reported, citing SPX’s quarterly 10-Q filed October 30, that the company used $1,286.6 million of net cash on business acquisitions in the first nine months of 2026, including $428.4 million for Neptronic and $405.0 million for FIS Water, and ended the quarter with $1,334.7 million of total debt and $737.3 million of available revolving-credit capacity.
Executive Summary
SPX Technologies delivered a strong third quarter: revenue of $714.5 million, up 20.5%; GAAP net income of $81.9 million, up 30.6%; and adjusted EPS of $2.21, up 20.1%. Over nine months it spent $1,286.6 million net on acquisitions, closing two of its largest, Neptronic and FIS Water, during the quarter itself.
The more useful signal is how the data center growth was produced. SPX attributes its higher data center cooling volume to capacity it has added in-house, and says its expansion projects remain on track to support roughly $1.1 billion of annual data center revenue capacity at full production. That same ramp is why HVAC segment margin fell: the company cites labor and supply chain inefficiencies tied to its volume increases and capacity expansion, plus higher input costs. Its full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint dropped by $10 million even as revenue guidance rose by $40 million.
For data center developers, the takeaway is that cooling equipment supply is a manufacturing ramp with real costs, not a switch that flips when demand arrives. For investors, a year in which acquisition spending ran at roughly seven times operating cash flow leaves SPX absorbing both a string of deals and a factory expansion at the same time.
Built, Not Bought: Where the Data Center Volume Came From
At first glance, $1.29 billion of net acquisition spending in nine months, sitting next to a 20.5% revenue jump, looks like a cooling supplier buying its way into the data center boom. SPX’s own account of the quarter points somewhere else. In the results release furnished with its October 29 8-K, the company split HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) growth into two buckets: an organic increase driven by “higher volumes of cooling equipment, mainly associated with increased data center demand, resulting from increased capacity,” and a separate inorganic increase from the Thermolec, Crawford, Neptronic and FIS Water acquisitions.
That distinction matters. The data center volume is credited to factory capacity SPX has been adding itself, and chief executive Gene Lowe said those projects “remain on track to support approximately $1.1 billion of annual data center revenue capacity at full production.” The acquisitions, by contrast, are described as broadening the portfolio. Lowe said FIS Water expanded SPX’s cooling platform into “attractive adjacent markets”: adjacent, not core.
For buyers of data center cooling, the practical implication is that the SPX supply they care about is gated by the pace of its own plant ramp, not by deal closings. For investors, it means two growth engines with very different risk profiles, organic capacity expansion and serial acquisition, are reported inside a single segment.
The Cost of the Ramp Arrives Before the Capacity Does
SPX is direct about the price of that expansion. HVAC segment margin declined in the quarter, which the company attributed primarily to “higher growth-related costs, largely labor and supply chain inefficiencies, associated with our volume increases and capacity expansion initiatives,” along with elevated input costs. In plain terms, making more cooling equipment faster means hiring and training workers, qualifying suppliers and running new production lines before they reach full efficiency, and those costs hit the income statement before the extra output does.
The guidance carries the same message in numbers. SPX raised its 2026 revenue range by $40 million at both ends, to $2.745 billion to $2.805 billion. But it lowered its adjusted EBITDA range (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, excluding certain items) to $625 million to $645 million from $630 million to $660 million, moving the midpoint from $645 million to $635 million. The adjusted EPS midpoint slips from $8.40 to $8.35. The release does not tie the trim to a single cause, and part of the higher revenue comes from acquisitions. Still, more expected sales paired with less expected profit is consistent with the margin pressure the company describes.
The squeeze is specific to HVAC, where the data center demand sits. Company-wide adjusted EBITDA rose 21.7% in the quarter, slightly faster than revenue, because Detection and Measurement margins improved. One supplier’s quarter is not proof of an industry-wide cooling shortage. It does show the mechanism plainly: each added unit of data center cooling output carries a startup cost, borne first by the manufacturer’s margin, and any supplier expanding on a similar schedule is drawing on the same labor and supply chain inputs.
Seven Dollars of Deals for Every Dollar of Operating Cash
The acquisition pace is large relative to the cash the business generates. Net cash used for acquisitions of $1,286.6 million compares with $179.5 million of operating cash flow over the same nine months, roughly seven to one. Neptronic ($428.4 million, closed in July) and FIS Water ($405.0 million, closed in September) account for about $833 million of that total. Total debt stood at $1,334.7 million at quarter end, with $737.3 million of revolver capacity still available and SPX reporting compliance with all senior credit facility covenants. The company also issued shares in an underwritten offering at $188 each in August 2025, which diluted existing holders’ percentage ownership.
The Crawford United transaction shows the deal model at work: SPX acquired the company in February, then sold its non-core businesses in March for $60.0 million, receiving $59.2 million in net proceeds and recording a $5.7 million loss. It bought the whole company, kept the pieces that fit HVAC and divested the rest. Integration remains the open variable. SPX cautions that its acquisition-adjusted pro forma figures are not representative of actual or future results and exclude both anticipated integration savings and integration expenses.
One number that will not settle the question is remaining performance obligations, an accounting measure of contracted revenue not yet delivered. SPX reported $152.9 million, about half to be recognized within 12 months and 71% within 24 months. At roughly 5.5% of the 2026 revenue guidance midpoint, it is a narrow slice of the business and says little about the size of the data center order book behind the $1.1 billion capacity target.
Background
SPX Technologies is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based supplier of engineered products with operations in more than 16 countries, listed on the New York Stock Exchange as SPXC. It reports two segments: HVAC, which makes heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment including the cooling systems used in commercial buildings and data centers, and Detection and Measurement, which serves markets such as transportation, communications and infrastructure inspection.
The company has grown through a steady sequence of acquisitions. Its latest 10-Q carries accounting for earlier deals such as Kranze Technology Solutions in January 2025 and Sigma & Omega in April 2025, alongside the four HVAC acquisitions completed in 2026. That deal activity runs in parallel with an organic push into data center cooling, a market that has grown as artificial intelligence workloads drive the construction of power-dense facilities whose heat must be removed continuously. Source: Q3 revenue rises as SPX Technologies (SPXC) spends $1.29B net on acquisitions over nine months. Stock Titan’s summary of SPX Technologies’ third-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q. Primary sources: SPX Technologies, Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 26, 2026 (filed October 30, 2026); SPX Technologies, Inc. Form 8-K (filed October 29, 2026); SPX Reports Third Quarter 2026 Results (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, October 29, 2026).Sources