Andrew Obin — Analyst, Bank of America
Thank you so much. Just a question on D&M. It was very strong performance. How much of the strength was project timing pull forward versus sort of a durable step up in underlying demand, and also cadence of D&M into the back half?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, Andrew. Yeah, good evening. That's a great question. Listen, we're very pleased with the performance we saw in the quarter at D&M. I kind of break it down this way. If I think about the 610 basis point increase, really about half of that was driven by favorable project mix in the quarter relative to the project mix that we had last year. That was something that was known we were expecting coming into the quarter. The balance of it, the majority of that balance really was project timing. We referenced a project that shifted forward into Q2. That actually moved from Q3 into Q2. It was about $15 million in size at a high margin.
That move and that impact, along with what continues to be initiatives around driving synergies across the whole D&M platform, that's really what drove the balance of that 610 basis point beat. I think we talked about this before, particularly with these projects at these revenue levels, when a high margin project kind of moves into a quarter like that, it leverages our fixed cost base very nicely. You see a lot of accretion in the margins with respect to that.
Andrew Obin — Analyst, Bank of America
Got you.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Yeah. Your second question was?
Andrew Obin — Analyst, Bank of America
Just cadence for the rest of the year.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, as I think about the back half of the year, Q4 is probably going to be larger than our Q3 numbers. I would expect the margins across both quarters to be very similar.
Jamie Cook — Analyst, Truist Securities
Hi, congrats on a nice quarter. I guess just two questions. Gene, can you just elaborate on obviously, the data center capacities coming down quicker? I think you said it's up to $1.1 billion versus $750 million. Just color on how you got there, how much incremental is in 2026 versus 2027, and how you think that contributes to the accelerates potentially top line growth, I guess, over the next 12-18 months. Second, Mark, I know we had capacity additions and tariffs that weighed on margins in the second quarter. Can you just call that out? It also looks like you raised your margins a little in the back half for HVAC, so any color on that? Thank you.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Sure. I'll get started, Jamie. Yeah, we're very pleased with the capacity. A couple of things I'll point out here. The capacity is coming from two broad areas, this is our mind to level set, kind of where we are in data center volumes. We're approximately $150 million two years ago, $200 million last year, came out with a plan for $300 million this year. We've seen some very strong demand for our solutions. We raised that to $350 million last quarter, we subsequently raised it again to $430 million for the full-year as of now. That's basically growth of about 115%. Underpinning some of these expansions in revenue is getting more efficiencies through. The two broad areas are, the first is the OlympusMAX. This is a very big, complicated product with very complicated controls.
We've done a lot of work on this product over the past several years. In the production process over the past six months We've done a number of lean projects, we've done some productivity work, we've also done some flow optimization. The punchline is we're getting more throughput than we had anticipated. This will really be seen to benefit us both. As a reminder, we make the OlympusMAX in both Olathe, our core main cooling facility, as well as the new Madison facility, where we've just started assembling there. One is we can get more OlympusMAX throughput, the second area would be really our core cooling business, this is really most commonly our Everest product. We have seen very high demand for that product as well.
We've done a lot of work on blocking and tackling, I'd say more space, better flow, a number of lean projects that have helped, as well as augmented staffing and different ways to basically to get more product out the door. It's really the combination of those two broad categories that have allowed us to really raise the $750 million-$1.1 billion, we have very good conviction about that. Also that has been a contributing factor for why we have been able to get our $300 million up to $430 million this year. The teams have done some really nice work, we feel good about that. Just not as a plug, we are doing an investor relation or IR meeting in November, I believe.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
November 3rd.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
November 3rd in Olathe. If you guys want to come out and see some real-world OlympusMAX and Marley Everest towers, we'd be glad to show you. That's the big thing. Then the second question?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
On margins.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Yeah.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah. I think, Jamie, maybe the easiest way to think about it is the 260 basis point decline year-over-year in the Q2 margins. Really, that was primarily driven by kind of three known items that we sort of contemplated as we forecasted the year. One was the net tariff impact, that actually hadn't changed. It was where we had expected it to be, the startup cost similarly. Then we had a prior year comp, that was a tough one in Q2. All of those equal to about 80 basis points of a decline individually, give or take. Then we did see some modest inflationary headwinds. I'd probably size that around 50 basis points or so that impacted the quarter. With respect to the full-year, really the raise in HVAC was driven by Neptronic. That was the 25 basis points increase. The balance of the forecast within HVAC is unchanged.
Bryan Blair — Analyst, Oppenheimer
Thank you. Good afternoon, congrats on the quarter.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Thanks, Bryan.
Bryan Blair — Analyst, Oppenheimer
Another impressive step up in data center revenue expectations for this year. Given the backlog and project visibility that you have, along with accelerating throughput with the OlympusMAX and Everest, how should we think about your visibility into 2027, realistic growth ranges perhaps? The increase to $1.1 billion in capacity, what's now a realistic timeline for you to ramp to that level of revenue?
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Bryan, why don't I start on the first one, then I'll hand it off to Mark on kind of how to think about the future. I think the punchline is, we feel very good about our competitive position in data centers and the demand profile in data centers. We're both seeing existing or very significantly increasing demand with our existing hyperscalers. We're seeing a lot of activity with a variety of customers. The punchline is, I really think the market is shifting towards our solutions. Basically, a bigger and bigger portion of the market is becoming addressable by our solutions, and I think we have very good solutions here. We are seeing a lot more liquid cooling under the roof. For our products, I'd say probably dry seems to be the most favored solution.
We are also seeing adiabatic, and we're also seeing nice demand for our cooling towers. We have very good relationships with the hyperscalers. We had some nice wins with colos and neo clouds as well. As we look ahead to 2027, I feel very good about 2027. Typically, our hyperscalers give us very good visibility for the forward several years, and the reason is they're nervous that they need our product to turn the data center on. They want to make sure that we can deliver the volumes that they want.
There's a lot of direct feedback back and forth, you'll find these companies in our facilities. You get some in there for two weeks at a time with 10 people. We have very good direct voice of customer. The punchline is, I feel very good about 2027. Going forward, we see a very nice ramp in the forward years. Got to be careful at 2027 guidance. Mark, how do you want to talk about how we're going to scale the capacity?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
I think the way to think about it, Bryan, is, maybe just kind of break it down. When you think about where the data center work is emanating from, Olathe and Springfield have actually performed, I think, better than we initially expected. Clearly, we've been able to deliver more data center revenue this year as a result of that. Gene, I think, kind of referenced, as we've built the OlympusMAX in that facility, there's been a lot of learnings there. We've gotten much more efficient at how we've executed on that. The Tamco business in Nashville, that's on track. We've talked about that being at full production capacity sometime in 2027.
I think as we bring Madison online, and we're manufacturing our first product there now, I feel actually good about the learnings that we've developed in Olathe, in the Springfield facilities, that will ramp smoothly and kind of on track. What we've said to date, I think as you know, we expect that to be at full production capacity, call it in the second half of 2028. Largely, I would say our view hasn't changed with respect to the ramp. That said, I would say there is a bias that it could be earlier, if things continue to go well. I think, from where I sit today, it's probably a little too early to make that call.
Bryan Blair — Analyst, Oppenheimer
Okay. That's fair, I appreciate all the color. With regard to Neptronic, we know modest accretion for this year. How should we think about growth rates going forward? Importantly, the sustainability of very healthy margins. Given the complimentary applications and some of the new technology that you're bringing into the fold, how does Neptronic affect HVAC TAM?
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Yeah. Bryan, why don't I start with some data about the strategic logic, Mark can dive into how he thinks it's going to affect us financially and the growth rates and so forth. What I find is we're very excited that Neptronic's a part of SPX. The way that I would think about this is pretty simply, about half their business is very close to our core business, almost very similar products. They do electric duct heating. As everyone knows, we invented duct heating with Indeeco. It's a very important part of our electric heat business. They're in humidification. They actually have some very strong technology in humidification. Huge humidification's a very important part of a number of our businesses, particularly the custom air handling. If you look at Air Enterprises and Ingénia, that's a very important part.
Half their business is either our existing business or very close core. I'd say the newest piece would be the controls. While we do a lot of controls, we do controls for our hydronics business, we have controls for our cooling business, we have controls for electric heat. They have a more advanced set of controls, particularly in the configured controls. They have really, really good capability and they win very nicely on the outside market. Our controls really that we have to date and all of our capabilities really for our own equipment. They have a very nice controls business where they work with third-party fan walls and other OEM HVAC equipment, and they can even operate at a higher level there. We think this is a really important part of strengthening our competencies and building our controls capabilities.
I can tell you a lot of our businesses are very excited that they're joining and what they can do and how we can innovate together there. The other thing I would say here is, with both their heating humidification controls, we actually think we can accelerate their growth. The reason being, we have a great channel, we have very good OEM relationships, we have very good data center relationships. We can open a lot of doors and allow them to get more at-bats, which we think would yield more growth. Very much like with Tamco, with Ingénia, with a number of actually Canadian businesses that we've acquired, we think one plus one can equal three. Mark, you want to talk about how we should think about this going forward?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah. Bryan, I think, from a growth rate perspective, when you think about everything Gene said and across all the capabilities they have, I think this business is going to grow above our medium-term growth targets that we'll put out there. I would probably put it at high single-digit growth rate. It'll be different depending on the components that they sell and the business they sell. Obviously, I think most people have gathered from the information that we provided that it does have a nice high sustainable margin profile that is higher than the segment average, kind of on a segment income basis, I would say it's kind of in the low 40%. The EBITDA basis, kind of mid-40%.
Amit Mehrotra — Analyst, UBS
Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. I wanted to ask if you can just talk about contribution margins as the data center revenue sort of increasingly scales and the contribution margin profile of that revenue relative to broader HVAC portfolio, just given, obviously, the capacity investment and incremental engineering costs. Then just related to that, how much of Neptronic's current revenue is exposed to data centers, and is there an opportunity to kind of expand that penetration through sort of your existing customer relationships? Thank you.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, Amit, thanks. Good evening. With respect to the data center business, what we've said, we don't really talk about it from a contribution margin perspective. We really talk about it from a segment margin incrementals perspective. We would expect those incrementals to be similar or consistent with the balance of the HVAC business. We typically identify those as sort of high 20% to low 30% incrementals.
Amit Mehrotra — Analyst, UBS
Do you want to talk about the Neptronic? Yep, sorry, go ahead.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, the Neptronic, they do have some nice data center presence. I would say they're very similar to our HVAC data center percentage. If you look at this year, I'd say actually maybe a tad higher there. Similar, they've had some good success, and we actually see some very nice opportunities for growth there going forward.
Amit Mehrotra — Analyst, UBS
Okay, after Neptronic, you still have a nice amount of capacity and net leverage is sort of under 1x. You guys have a very good track record of kind of identifying and paying the right multiple for these types of quality assets. Does the pipeline look good? Just be curious in terms of how you think about the go-forward opportunities after what you just did.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, sure. Well, the first thing, I believe it was 0.7x at quarter end, but pro forma with Neptronic, I believe we're 1.4x.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
1.4x, yeah.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
You're right. That's still below our target of 1.5x-2.5x, and we generate so much cash that that will be very low by the year-end. You're right, we have a lot of capacity here. We actually see a lot of very attractive opportunities. I'd say the areas that we see a lot of activity right now would be in Detection & Measurement on location and inspection. We think there's some very nice opportunities there, as well as Comtech and transportation. I would say electric heat. We've obviously just added Thermolec and Neptronic to electric heat, so that's actually been very nice additions that really strengthens that business and provides some very complementary products. I would say if you look across HVAC, where do we see the opportunities? The biggest number of active opportunities would be in engineered air movement.
The number of very attractive opportunities that I would say we're talking to or we have on the board. The punchline to your question is, we've done a lot in the first six months if you look at the amount of capital we've deployed, but there's still a very attractive strategic set of opportunities even over the next six months. We would expect to continue growing here.
Brad Hewitt — Analyst, Wolfe Research
Hey, good afternoon, guys.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Hey, Brad.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Hey.
Brad Hewitt — Analyst, Wolfe Research
As we think about D&M margins in the next year, I know they can be a little bit lumpy based on the project mix and the software attach, but is the base case expectation that D&M margins should be up year-over-year next year?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, Brad, let me talk to you a little bit about that. I think when you think about where we're forecasting for the year, I think our guide is generally for 26% is 26.5%. There's a couple kind of discrete elements that set us at that point. If you back out that scope expansion we talked about in the first quarter in that software project, and you kind of normalize for what has been sort of a favorable mix for the year back to kind of what we'd call a more normal mix, you're kind of left with, I think, a structural improvement in margins based on a lot of the work that we've done to drive synergies across the D&M platform, kind of around 25%.
Those margins can obviously be impacted by the mix of project volume that we have in a certain year and the types of projects. I want to be careful. I don't really provide guidance for 2027. Not prepared to do that, but I think that's a framework to think about it.
Brad Hewitt — Analyst, Wolfe Research
Okay, that's helpful. Maybe switching back to the HVAC side of things, you mentioned that you expect to be at the $1.1 billion of data center capacity probably by second half of 2028. I guess curious as we stand today, how much visibility do you have to that $1.1 billion from a demand perspective?
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
I would say we see a lot of visibility. We feel very good about the demand profile, and feel good about our value prop. Yeah, I would say we feel very good about sustained continued growth there, Brad.
Joe Giordano — Analyst, TD Cowen
Okay, thanks, guys. Good afternoon.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Hey, Joe.
Joe Giordano — Analyst, TD Cowen
Just quick, what do you have for book-to-bill in the quarter?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Are you talking about for which business?
Joe Giordano — Analyst, TD Cowen
I guess for both.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
I think if you did the math around both segments, which you guys can do, I think you'd find that book-to-bill in HVAC was about 1.4x, and D&M was maybe just a hair below 1x.
Joe Giordano — Analyst, TD Cowen
Okay. With Neptronic, how much are you adding into the guidance just from that specifically on the revenue and EBITDA side? Then with the EBITDA margins in that mid-40%, obviously extremely attractive, but how do you stress test that in your own diligence? Right? Because it's like double what you guys are doing as a company. How much of that margin do you feel like was priced over the last couple of years, kind of getting crazy and scarcity for some of this stuff, and versus how sustainable is that into the tenure of your ownership here?
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
One comment I'll make, Joe, I'll throw it over to Mark, is right now, if you look at segment income for HVAC, we're at 25%, right? This is probably low 40%-41%. It's not double. We know the electric heat business and the humidification business quite well, and margins. I guess what I would say is we spent a lot of time on that question. I feel very good. I don't think these are anomalous. I think these are real, and frankly, sustainable as we go going forward. I also think there's a lot of growth here that we can help support.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
I think maybe just to dovetail off of what Gene said, then I can kind of walk you through a little bit of the contribution math for the year, if that's helpful. I think when you think about some of these products like controls, they're a high-value, high-consequence piece of equipment within these systems and very to how they function. We obviously disclosed the revenue, kind of $75 million full-year. We're going to own this for about five months in 2026.
That kind of gets you into the low 30% contribution for revenue. Then segment income's in the low 40%. I will tell you, we paid about 12.5x for the business, which should help you back into where the EBITDA ultimately is. Sort of netting all the way down, really, it's probably about $0.05-$0.06 of addition or accretion to the 2026 numbers. That's obviously built into the guide raise.
Walter Liptak — Analyst, Seaport Research
Hey, thanks. Great quarter, guys.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Thanks.
Walter Liptak — Analyst, Seaport Research
I wanted to ask, thanks for the detail about Neptronic that you just gave. I wanted to ask about the CapEx and the guidance for this year, $135 million-$165 million. What does it take to get to the high end of that? What are you thinking about for CapEx to get to that $1.1 billion? How much of it do you have to get in place in 2027?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Walt, with respect to the kind of the back half of your second part of your question, that CapEx related to all these plant expansions was contemplated. Some of it fell in 2025, the balance of it will fall into 2026. It could be that some of it slips into 2027, right now we're forecasting it to be in 2026, just given what we're seeing today. When I think about the CapEx for this year and the guide range we had, at the midpoint, that contemplates the CapEx required to support the expansions within the year. It is going to be back half weighted.
If you're looking at kind of the first half of the year and feeling like it's maybe a little bit behind on that guide, we always expected it to be back half weighted. The balance of it's really our regular way CapEx, which we've always said is sort of in the 1.5%-2% range, I expect we'll be right there.
Walter Liptak — Analyst, Seaport Research
Okay, great. As we're thinking about you ramping for the hyperscalers, the data center customers. It sounds like the capacity can be put in place, that you're going to be there mostly by the end of the year. What becomes the heavy lift to make sure that you can deliver everything into 2027, 2028?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, it's a great question. I think as we think about ramping up those plants, I feel really good about the team that we've got in place. They've been kind of overseeing all these site expansions, plant expansions that we've got underway. They clearly have done a really nice job so far as we've kind of met or, in some cases, exceeded our expectations.
As I look out into 2027, I think a lot of it is going to be a function of making sure we get the right employees in place and the right team up to speed and begin to ramp up into what our expectations are for 2027. That's just one example. Bringing a plant online is always complicated, and there's a lot of things that need to fall into place. I feel good about that we've got a plan, and that we'll deliver on the expectations we've laid out.
Piyush Khaitan — Analyst, JPMorgan
Hey, thanks for taking the question. Good afternoon, guys.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Hey.
Piyush Khaitan — Analyst, JPMorgan
Hi. Just on HVAC maybe, can you help me with the cadence of the growth in the back half of the year? Correct me if I'm wrong, if we take out the data center growth that you're embedding, the rest of the segment is tracking right in that 5%-6% range.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, I think to your second point that you're absolutely right. With respect to thinking about gating in the back half of the year, the way I would think about it is Q3 and Q4 will have kind of similar revenue growth rates. I would expect margins will be higher in Q4 than in Q3.
Piyush Khaitan — Analyst, JPMorgan
Yeah. On that margins, is there any particular reasons because the incrementals go way above, I think 40% more than up. If you can provide some color on that one?
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Are you talking about in sort of the back half of the year?
Piyush Khaitan — Analyst, JPMorgan
Yep.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
I think you've got a handful of things going on there, depending on how you've modeled it, right? You got the operating volume and the leverage off of that. You also have the contribution from Neptronic and the M&A contribution there. Remember the startup costs and the tariffs that were kind of a headwind in the first half, those will moderate. I think if you kind of think through all those elements, that really helps explain that sort of first half, second half ramp.
Jeff Van Sinderen — Analyst, B. Riley Securities
Hi, everyone. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the really strong demand you're seeing in data center cooling solutions. I'm just wondering how you're thinking about potential for long-term agreements there. Maybe it's too early. Any thoughts around long-term agreements?
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Yeah. Jeff, we actually have long-term agreements with several customers in place. It's just not something we typically talk about. Yeah, I think long-term agreements, I think works very well. You get alignment on demand. As you well know, that's not a purchase order per se, right? We don't put things into the backlog until they are kind of formal purchase orders. It's a good way to get alignment with our, particularly our hyperscaler customers, about demand.
We always have the appropriate protections in there, such that if the demand is not there, the POs are not placed within a year or an advanced period of time, that capacity frees up such that we fill that capacity with other customers. Yeah, we actually have very good. A lot of our customers we've been working. We do have some new large customers, we have some old large customers. I think we have very good relationships, very open, very direct sharing of what we're seeing and what they're planning on doing.
Jeff Van Sinderen — Analyst, B. Riley Securities
Good to hear. As far as supply chain, what's the latest you're seeing there, and then any steps you're taking to procure what you need without interruption?
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
That's a great question. With this type of growth and volume, you've got to be very careful with supply chain. Any bill of materials item. I'd say one of the good things about our strategy is really all of the components are our own. For example, we engineer our own fans, we engineer our own gear reducers, we engineer our own bill or heat exchangers, it's always our design, and we own it typically for the vast bulk of what we provide. That gives us supply chain flexibility.
We could either, in some cases, do it ourselves or have outside third parties. The point you bring up is very important, and we have seen some people fall down on the supply chain side. One of the things we're very careful about and before we take on a large order, we actually have a very strong supply chain team that will scrub every bill of material item and validate that we believe we can fulfill those items, so we're not flying blind. We know we have the capacity, and we know we can fulfill that order.
We're very careful about that because at the end of the day, our experience, particularly in the data center realm, customers are very engineering intensive, and that aligns very well because I do believe we have the best engineering in the world for cooling, and I think we can satisfy their needs. You got to deliver. If you fall down and you're late, you have bad quality, that could be very problematic. As we know, there's a smaller number of customers here. There's some level of customer concentration with a number of hyperscalers. You want to be sure you can deliver and meet your commitments. We're very careful about that. I think it's a very good question in a world where there's some tremendous scaling going on in a variety of different areas.
Zachary Schechtman — Analyst, Wells Fargo
Hey, good evening.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Hey, Zach.
Zachary Schechtman — Analyst, Wells Fargo
I was just wondering if we could shift back to D&M and just maybe talk about the mix in Comtech and AtoN navigation, maybe the type of products that drove margins up so much. The reason for that pull forward from 3Q to 2Q, and then maybe anything to note that's on the horizon, military opportunities in your Comtech business, like drone detection demand, anything of that nature. Just curious.
Mark Carano — CFO, SPX Technologies
Yeah. Maybe I'll start with the project that moved forward. That was just driven by the customer. It moved up from the first half of Q3 into Q2. We talk about this often. We sometimes have this dynamic. We're pretty good about getting it in the year, but sometimes these projects can move from quarter-to-quarter. Comtech is largely a project business, and depending on kind of the mix of where those projects are within the types of products that they provide, that can drive the margin profile. The AtoN business is a mix of run rate and project businesses. We've just seen some nice project activity, some large orders in certain markets that have been just very profitable.
Gene Lowe — President and CEO, SPX Technologies
Yeah, I think we feel good about the projects. When you think projects for Detection & Measurement, you're really talking about half of Comtech. That's really the TCI half. I'd say there's a lot of good activity going on there. There's a lot of good innovation going on there, so we feel good about that. Transportation. Transportation has had nice, sustained growth over the past maybe several years. We'd expect that to continue. Then the smaller portion is in AtoN, where they also have some very nice innovation coming out, in particular one at the end of next year that we think is going to drive more demand. Yeah, I'd say overall, when we look at this year, this year is relatively flattish for D&M. We would expect to return to our normal growth path going forward next year and beyond.
Johann Rawlinson — VP of Investor Relations, SPX Technologies
Great. Well, thank you all for joining today's call. We look forward to updating you again next quarter. Thank you, operator. We can end the call.