Vertiv Holdings Co. has captured the title of the best-performing company to go public in a blank-check deal, building a more than $30 billion market value on excitement surrounding artificial intelligence, and thwarting a milestone for Donald Trump’s media startup.
The AI infrastructure firm, which went public through a merger with a Goldman Sachs Group Inc.-backed special purpose acquisition company in 2020, has delivered a 553% return, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The shares have soared from their debut well before the pandemic-era SPAC boom began.
The rise stands out in a sea of losses for SPAC investors and has outpaced the S&P 500 Index’s returns by more than eight times. Shares of former president Trump’s media firm, easily the most talked about among companies that merge with blank-check vehicles, briefly came close to outperforming Vertiv but have since have given back all of their gains since the combination.
Wall Street is optimistic that investments in generative AI will support data center capacity. That’s a major tailwind for Vertiv, which derives the bulk of its revenue from sales of products including power management and IT systems used in data centers.
While analysts have garlanded the company with 12 buy recommendations, one hold and no sells, the average analyst polled by Bloomberg News expects shares to rise less than 1% in the coming year. Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Noah Kaye went further, launching coverage with an outperform rating and assigned a $96 per share price target. In an April 4 note, Kaye touted “AI megatrends” that are expanding the addressable market for data center capacity, with the market for Vertiv’s high-density computing alone reaching $25 billion by 2026.
The company declined to comment, citing a quiet period ahead of first-quarter earnings which are expected later this month.
While Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. has captured the attention of Wall Street and meme stock traders, its now 37% slide to $36.30 per share has sent it tumbling down the list of the best performing so-called de-SPACs. The social media startup hit an intraday peak of $79.38 on March 26, soaring to become the second-best-performing de-SPAC at the time and lagging Vertiv by roughly 4%. However, the decline has sent it back down the list.
The likes of Vertiv, DraftKings Inc. and Symbotic Inc. stand out in a sea of pain for firms that have gone public via SPAC mergers. More than one-fifth of the nearly 500 SPAC deals that have closed since 2019 are trading below $1 each, representing a greater than 90% plunge, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
For Vertiv investors, the ability to deliver on excitement surrounding the rapidly-growing data center market is paramount. Generative AI has lured investment from Corporate America, and Wall Street expects sales to grow in-line with rising demand for more computing power.
Vertiv is “perhaps the best positioned company to benefit from the AI tailwinds” among data center physical infrastructure companies, wrote Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani, who laid out a bull case that shares could trade to $150. For the company to rally that far, it would need to deliver on operating margins and benefit from the transition away from air-based cooling systems for computer equipment to liquid-based ones, Daryanani wrote.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.