Celestica’s AI Data-Center Story Gains Momentum at Taipei Summit; Shares Are 36% Below Fair Value

Celestica (TSX:CLS) recently presented at the OCP APAC Summit 2026 in Taipei, using the event to reinforce its position in open compute and data-center hardware. For a stock that has become one of the more watched AI and cloud infrastructure plays, the appearance was a useful reminder of the company’s role in the buildout now shaping the technology sector.

The shares have been under pressure lately. Celestica fell 8.38% in a single session to CA$431.98, and the stock has dropped 9.14% over the past 90 days. That near-term weakness masks a much stronger record: the one-year total shareholder return stands at 68.72%, and the five-year return remains a large multiple of the initial investment. In other words, the recent pullback looks more like a pause after a long rally than a break in the underlying trend.

The valuation question is central to the debate. Simply Wall St’s fair-value estimate for Celestica is CA$677.38, which means the current price sits roughly 36% below that level. The bullish narrative assumes the company can continue delivering rapid revenue expansion, higher earnings, and improving profit margins as its data-center and AI-related business scales. If those assumptions hold, the market is still pricing in a meaningful discount.

There are, however, two important caveats. Celestica relies heavily on a small group of hyperscale customers, and the Communications and Cloud Solutions segment dominates its revenue mix. That concentration has been a tailwind during the AI capex boom, but it also leaves the company unusually exposed to any shift in cloud spending plans. If hyperscalers decide to slow data-center expansion or push out AI hardware upgrades, even a strong technical positioning may not protect the stock from a sharp de-rating.

The Taipei presentation also highlighted why Celestica is more than a conventional electronics manufacturing services vendor. Open compute standards are becoming the default architecture for next-generation data centers, and Celestica’s involvement in that ecosystem gives it a deeper role in system design and component selection. That, in turn, could open the door to more recurring revenue and larger orders over the medium term.

Simply Wall St’s framework flags four key rewards in the Celestica story: revenue growth, rising earnings, margin expansion, and a strategic foothold in AI-focused infrastructure. It also points to two warning signs: customer concentration and the dominance of the CCS segment. Investors will need to decide whether the rewards are enough to offset the exposure to a handful of very large buyers.

For now, the market is caught between a strong long-term growth story and near-term valuation concerns. Celestica’s presentation at the OCP APAC Summit strengthens the narrative, but the next leg of the share price may depend less on conference stage time and more on what the largest cloud operators say about their spending plans through the rest of 2026.

This article is general in nature and should not be taken as financial advice.