nVent Electric plc NVT

The business

nVent makes the unglamorous hardware that houses, connects, and protects electrical systems: enclosures and cabinets, cable connections, fasteners, and now a fast-growing line of data-center power distribution and liquid-cooling products. It sells into industrial, commercial, infrastructure, and utility customers, and since the 2018 spin from Pentair it has run two reporting segments. The engine is the Enclosures franchise, renamed Systems Protection in 2026, which was 67% of 2025 revenue at $2.59B and had climbed to 72% of revenue by the first quarter of 2026, because it holds the data-center enclosure and liquid-cooling portfolios. That segment grew 76% year on year in Q1 2026 (about 50% organically), and the infrastructure sub-vertical inside it grew more than 100% organically on AI data-center demand. The other segment, Electrical Connections (formerly Electrical and Fastening), was $1.30B and about 28% of revenue, a steadier mid-single-digit grower. So the concentration is clear: the data-center-levered half of nVent is both the larger and by far the faster part today.

The qualitative fact the financials do not show is how much the portfolio has been reshaped. In January 2025 nVent sold its Thermal Management business (the RAYCHEM and TRACER electric-heat-trace brands, about $595M of 2023 sales) to Brookfield for $1.7B, roughly $1.4B net after tax, exiting a slower, oil-and-gas-exposed line. It then redeployed into higher-growth electrical: ECM Industries in 2023 (≈$1.1B), Trachte utility enclosures in 2024 (≈$0.7B), and the Avail Infrastructure Solutions electrical products group in May 2025 for $979.6M, which added switchgear, bus systems, and enclosures aimed at power utilities and data centers. The result is a cleaner, higher-growth company, but it also means the recent revenue line is heavily acquisition-assisted, and the standout number to anchor on is leading, not trailing: the company entered 2026 with a $2.3B backlog, about three times the prior year, built primarily from large hyperscale liquid-cooling orders.