Generac reported record third-quarter sales on 28 October: $1.29 billion, up 16% on a year earlier, with net income of $109 million. For anyone ordering large backup generators, the figure that matters sits further down the release. The company's data center backlog is now about $4.5 billion, nearly three times the level of 90 days ago, and the supply agreement with Amazon that Generac disclosed during the quarter explains much of the jump.
Where the growth came from
Commercial and industrial sales rose about 28% to $552 million, led by data center products, while domestic industrial distributor and telecom shipments went down. Home standby and portable units lifted residential sales about 9% to $743 million. Adjusted EBITDA came to $256 million, 19.8% of sales, and the full-year margin forecast was raised to about 20.5% to 21.0%.
Data center revenue was above $100 million in the quarter. Management now expects close to $500 million for 2026, up from about $450 million, and well over $2 billion in 2027, weighted roughly one third to the first half and two thirds to the second. The first deliveries under the Amazon agreement add up to about $2.4 billion across 2027 and 2028. According to a summary of the call, more than half of the backlog is scheduled for 2027 and the rest for 2028.
A factory ramp and a quoted lead time
A new plant for large generators in Sussex, Wisconsin, started initial production at the end of the quarter, and output is meant to climb sharply in the fourth quarter. The company wants to roughly triple its capacity for this work, from about $1.25 billion a year at the end of 2026 to nearly $4 billion a year in the second half of 2027, and says it is studying what a further step to about $6 billion would take. A packaging facility in Belvidere, Illinois, is due to start in early 2027.
Lead times for data center orders are quoted at about 45 to 50 weeks, according to the call summary. They lengthened in the quarter while production was moved into a plant in Beaver Dam, and Generac expects them to come back to normal in the first quarter of 2027. The same summary has management saying that an order placed after about the end of that quarter would be hard to deliver within 2027.
The company dual-sources or triple-sources major components where it can. The exception named on the call is the high-horsepower diesel engine, because world supply is limited. On gas, Generac says it has no product for the large behind-the-meter prime power that hyperscale customers ask for, is not bidding for it, and sees gas engines there as a short-term bridge. Its stated focus is more capacity for high-power diesel backup sets.
Reading the schedule as a buyer
A quoted lead time is a snapshot, and this one comes with a reason and a date by which the maker expects it to ease. Even so, a project that reaches the order stage in 2027 should plan on the supplier's slot, not the site date, deciding the calendar. The generator is only one of the items on that critical path; the enclosure, exhaust and fuel storage need their own delivery dates, and sets that arrive before the site is ready end up in a yard waiting for them. We discuss the housing side on our generator containers page, and the same slot pressure at another engine maker is covered in our INNIO report.
Ask which engine sits under the offered set, and whether a second one is approved.
Sources: Generac results release (via GlobeNewswire), TradingKey, earnings call summary, Yahoo Finance, earnings call summary