Is Amphenol Stock Really Expensive?
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Amphenol (APH) stock trades at 32.2 times its adjusted earnings over the last twelve months, which leave the after-tax cost of stock-based pay out of normalized net income. That is a steep price for one year of profit, but the price looks different once you set it against the profit analysts expect for fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027. So are you overpaying for Amphenol shares today?
What Do You Pay For Amphenol’s Forecast Profit?
You overpay only in part. At the November 9 close of $80.71, Amphenol stock costs 27.3 times the analyst consensus forecast for its fiscal 2026 earnings. Based on the forecast for fiscal 2027, the same price equates to 21.2 times earnings, compared with 32.2 times on the last twelve months. The forecasts are average analyst estimates, and it is not clear whether they use the same adjusted measure.
So you pay a steep price for the profit Amphenol has already earned. The stock also costs 6.0 times its trailing twelve-month sales, against 3.1 times for the S&P 500 as a whole. The lower multiple on profit still to come holds only if the fiscal 2027 forecast arrives.
What Amphenol Must Deliver Over The Forecast Years
Fiscal 2026 is close to settled, with one quarter left to report. The consensus forecast for the year’s revenue sits at $37.1 billion. That matches the top of the $36.9 billion to $37.1 billion range management gave on October 28.
Fiscal 2027 is where Amphenol has more to prove. The consensus forecast expects sales to grow 23.3% over fiscal 2026, slower than the 57.6% growth Amphenol delivered over the last twelve months. That twelve-month growth includes sales from acquisitions, among them CommScope, which management now expects to bring in $5.1 billion of sales in 2026.
The consensus forecast also has profit growing faster than sales, which means a wider margin: a net margin of 20.5% for fiscal 2027, against 19.7% for fiscal 2026. That wider margin is an assumption, not a result, though management said on the October 28 call that it expects its adjusted operating margin to keep widening as revenue grows.
Where Amphenol’s Forecast Could Prove Wrong
The likeliest place is Amphenol’s sales tied to AI. IT Datacom made up 48% of Amphenol’s sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2026, and management said AI now accounts for about three-quarters of those IT Datacom sales. Management expects IT Datacom sales to rise again by a mid-single-digit percentage in the fourth quarter from the third quarter’s level, yet a slowdown in AI spending would leave the consensus forecast for fiscal 2027 sales too high, and the profit forecast with it.
Demand has already weakened in one of Amphenol’s markets. In communications networks, sales fell 28% from a year earlier on an organic basis in the third quarter, on softer demand from broadband, and management expects a further decline in the fourth quarter, from third-quarter levels. That market was 8% of the company’s third-quarter sales. The consensus forecast for fiscal 2027 is also far from settled: the gap between the highest and lowest estimates of earnings per share is 15.6% of the forecast itself.
If the consensus forecast arrives, the price on fiscal 2027 profit offers a fair picture of what you pay for Amphenol today. If AI-related sales slow, the forecast falls short where it is most exposed, and the stock becomes a riskier bet priced for profit Amphenol has not yet earned. IT Datacom sales are the measure to watch in Amphenol’s fourth-quarter report, expected in January 2027.
Not Sure Amphenol Is Worth It At This Price?
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