New York, Feb 11, 2026, 18:18 EST — After-hours
- Generac shares rose about 18% near $215, extending a sharp regular-session jump
- Company forecast mid-teens 2026 net sales growth, with commercial and industrial sales seen up about 30%
- Fourth-quarter results missed Wall Street estimates as residential generator demand softened
Generac Holdings Inc shares jumped about 18% on Wednesday and held most of the gains in after-hours trading after the company laid out a 2026 growth outlook tied to data-center demand.
The move matters now because Generac’s core residential generator business has been pinned down by a quieter outage backdrop, and investors have been waiting for something other than storms to do the heavy lifting.
Management is pointing to commercial-and-industrial backup power — including for data centers — as that driver, even as the latest quarter undershot expectations.
Generac closed up 17.8% at $214.73 and was last trading around $215.4 after hours. The stock swung between roughly $190 and $221 during the regular session. Investing
Fourth-quarter net sales fell 12% to $1.09 billion and adjusted earnings were $1.61 per share, the company said. Generac posted a net loss of $24 million after booking a $104.5 million provision tied to a settlement-in-principle in a portable generator product liability case. Globenewswire
Adjusted earnings per share missed analysts’ estimates of $1.77 and revenue fell short of the $1.16 billion consensus, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. Reuters also pointed to fewer power outages and inflation that has made households more cautious on upgrades. Reuters
Residential product sales fell about 23% to $572 million, while commercial and industrial product sales rose about 10% to $400 million, helped by products sold to data-center customers. CEO Aaron Jagdfeld said “momentum in the data center end market has further accelerated,” and he flagged “hyperscale” customers — the biggest cloud-data-center operators — as a source of orders.
Generac also projected 2026 net sales growth in the mid-teens percentage range, with commercial and industrial sales up in the 30% range and residential sales up in the 10% range. It forecast an adjusted EBITDA margin of about 18% to 19% — a profit metric that strips out interest, taxes and some items management views as non-core — and said net income margin should be about 8% to 9%.
On the earnings call, CFO York Ragen said the company expects about $350 million of free cash flow in 2026 and capital spending of roughly 3.5% of forecast net sales. Jagdfeld said an investor day on March 25 will give “a lot more context” on capacity plans, while the company also pointed to first-quarter results in late April. Investing
Generac’s push into larger megawatt units for data centers puts it closer to heavyweight power equipment rivals in parts of the market, including Cummins and Caterpillar, where lead times and service networks can matter as much as price.
But the 2026 setup leans on assumptions that could break. A prolonged lull in outage activity would keep pressure on residential demand, and data-center orders can slip if developers delay builds or push out deliveries.
A Form 8-K filed on Wednesday attached the earnings release and spelled out the company’s use of non-GAAP metrics, the filing showed. Traders now focus on whether the data-center backlog turns into shipments — and whether management’s March 25 investor day provides numbers that stick. Sec
