- The addition of CommScope to Amphenol is expected to boost growth in its communications network market
- Meanwhile, CommScope's products are already boosting growth in Amphenol's IT datacom market
- Overall, CommScope is expected to contribute $5.1 billion in sales to Amphenol this year
CommScope is now part of the much bigger company Amphenol, and its products serve some of Amphenol’s biggest end-user markets, including IT datacom and communications networks. Amphenol is predicting that CommScope will contribute $5.1 billion in sales to the company this year. And Amphenol CEO Adam Norwitt is thrilled with that number, considering he initially thought CommScope would be a $3.6 billion company.
Yesterday, during its third quarter 2026 earnings call, Amphenol reported record sales of $10.2 billion for the quarter.
Norwitt said on the call that sales in the communications networks market grew from the prior year by 25% in U.S. dollars, driven by the addition of CommScope to the portfolio. However, excluding CommScope’s contributions, organic sales in the market declined by 28% from the prior year, “due in particular to moderations in demand from the broadband market as well as from other communication network operators,” said Norwitt.
On a sequential basis, sales in the communications networks market declined by 13%, which was in line with the company’s expectations. “Looking to the fourth quarter, we expect a further decline in sales from these third quarter levels on continued softness in spending, particularly in broadband,” said Norwitt.
Nevertheless, for the full year 2026, Amphenol expects sales growth of more than 40% in the communications networks market, driven by the CommScope acquisition.
Norwitt said, “We have upgraded our outlook for CommScope, which is included in this full-year guidance. We now expect CommScope to achieve $5.1 billion in sales. I just can't express enough how grateful I am to the entire CommScope team for their amazing work as part of the Amphenol family.”
IT datacom momentum
Amphenol’s largest customer end-market is IT datacom, representing 48% of its sales in the third quarter. Sales to this market grew by 117% in U.S. dollars and 77% organically. This was driven by continued acceleration in demand for products used in AI applications, together with continued strong demand in Amphenol’s base IT datacom business.
AI products now represent about 75% of Amphenol’s IT datacom sales. And Amphenol expects sales to increase again in the mid-single digits in Q4.
Norwitt called out CommScope’s contributions to the IT datacom business, saying, “I just want to note that the team at CommScope continues to make great progress in further penetrating the IT datacom market with their advanced optical interconnect solutions. Accordingly, we now expect CommScope sales in the IT datacom market to more than double for the full year 2026, and we expect that those sales should represent roughly half of their sales for the full year, and that compares to around a third of their sales last year.”
Outlook for the whole company
For its fourth quarter outlook, Amphenol expects sales in the range of $10.3 billion to $10.5 billion. This guidance does not reflect any acquisitions that have not yet closed, including Amphenol’s purchase of Dexgreen, a provider of fiber optic connectivity products primarily for European fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) applications. Headquartered in Ireland, Dexgreen is expected to generate full-year 2026 sales of about $90 million and will be included in the Communications Solutions business after closing in the first quarter of 2027.
Praise for CommScope
During the question-and-answer session of yesterday’s earnings call, Norwitt lavished more praise on CommScope.
He said when Amphenol announced the deal to buy CommScope it talked about signing a $3.6 billion company. “And here we are now, $1.5 billion more than that this year, and I think when we closed, we said we thought it would be $4.1 billion, so $1 billion more than at the beginning of this year. And that is just a direct reflection of the team's ability to execute in the face of the demand opportunity, and that demand opportunity for sure is very strong in the data center market, AI and related.”