Al Root

Things are good for electrical components maker TE Connectivity right now. The numbers and guidance issued Wednesday showed that.

TE Connectivity reported fiscal first-quarter earnings per share of $2.72 on sales of $4.7 billion. Wall Street was looking for profit of $2.54 a share from sales of $4.5 billion. A year ago, TE reported earnings of $1.95 a share from sales of $3.8 billion.

Operating profit margins in the fiscal first quarter were 22.2%, up 2.6 percentage points year over year. Orders totaled $5.1 billion, a record and above quarterly sales. Investors tend to like it when orders, a sign of what's to come, exceed current revenue.

"We continue to benefit from a broadening of growth from our investments in data and power connectivity in key applications such as AI, energy grid hardening, and next-generation vehicles," said CEO Terrence Curtin in a news release. "We expect double-digit sales and adjusted earnings growth again in our second quarter."

TE's AI-related data center business amounted to $700 million, up 70% year over year. Growth was strong across beyond AI, with comparable sales up 15% year over year. Orders were up double digits across all geographic regions, said Curtin.

Even the relatively slow-growth car business was a positive. Content gains from electrified vehicles and cars with more driver-assistance technology kept TE's auto business growing, despite flat global light-vehicle production. The world manufactured about 88 million light vehicles in 2025. That should be a similar number in 2026.

Looking ahead to the coming quarter, TE expects earnings per share of approximately $2.65 from sales of $4.7 billion. Wall Street projects profit of $2.63 a share from sales of $4.7 billion.

TE typically beats its guidance. Over the past three years, the company has topped its estimate every time by an average of about 5%, according to Bloomberg.

This first-quarter beat was about 8% ahead of guidance, which should be good enough to keep investors happy Wednesday. To be sure, multiple factors play a role in how a stock reacts to earnings, including guidance and what the broader stock market is doing, but TE stock has tended to drop after earnings when the beat versus guidance is by less than 3%.

A 5% average beat for the coming quarter would put per-share earnings at $2.78, up about 33% year over year. That strong earnings growth is a reason TE stock has risen 60% over the past year heading into Wednesday's session.

Shares dropped 3.2% on Tuesday, along with the market. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.1% and 1.8% on fears of new tariffs introduced by President Donald Trump to aid in his bid for Greenland.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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January 21, 2026 06:00 ET (11:00 GMT)

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