Summary

  • Celestica’s first 2027 outlook calls for $40bn in revenue, 90% growth and $1.5bn–$2bn in capital spending.
  • The company says 2028 customer demand forecasts are higher still; the next test is execution, not another impressive percentage.

Celestica has set a target that makes the next factory expansion part of the earnings story. Its first 2027 outlook calls for $40bn in revenue, up 90%, with a 9% adjusted operating margin and $21.50 in adjusted earnings per share. It plans $1.5bn–$2bn in capital spending that year. The company says its customers’ 2028 demand forecasts are “meaningfully higher” than the 2027 revenue target.

That is a striking sentence, but it is a forecast about forecasts. It is not an order book. Celestica’s own release lists the steps between customer appetite and reported sales: programs must progress through qualification and production ramps; materials, components, labour, utilities and facilities must arrive on schedule; customers must keep their plans intact. In contract manufacturing, a demand curve does not assemble itself. People and machines do.

The latest quarter gives the target some momentum. Revenue reached $5.83bn, 83% above the year-earlier quarter. Connectivity & Cloud Solutions (CCS) generated $4.87bn, up 102%; Advanced Technology Solutions (ATS) reached $960m, up 23%. The gap shows where the acceleration is concentrated inside Celestica: CCS is doing the sprinting, while ATS is growing at a less breathless pace.

Celestica raised its 2026 revenue outlook to $21bn, from $20.5bn. But its free-cash-flow outlook fell to $460m from $600m, primarily because of targeted working-capital investment to support 2027 growth. That is the bridge between a customer forecast and a factory: inventory and receivables can consume cash before the corresponding production is billed and collected. The company has also guided to higher capital spending next year. The growth plan therefore arrives with a bill, as growth plans tend to do when they leave PowerPoint.

The margin target matters too. Celestica is aiming for a 9% adjusted operating margin in 2027, against 8.5% in Q3 2026. Delivering 90% more revenue while nudging up the margin requires more than adding floor space: the production mix, ramp speed and operating discipline must all cooperate. The Q3 adjusted margin was a record for the company, a useful starting point but not proof that a much larger footprint will behave just as politely.

The investment case now rests on a chain of conversions: customer forecasts into qualified programs, programs into capacity commitments, capacity into shipments, and shipments into cash at the promised margin. Celestica has put numbers against the first and last steps. The middle ones are where 2027 will earn its keep. Official source: Celestica’s Q3 2026 results and outlook.