France's Legrand beats Q1 expectations on strong data centre demand in the US (updated)

Legrand SA

07/05/2025 08:36

Legrand Q1 sales top forecast on U.S. data centre demand

Strength in North and Central America offsets weak Europe

Sees late 2025 recovery in European residential market

Shares up almost 2%

Adds European residential market outlook in paragraph 12

By Anna Peverieri

May 7 (Reuters) - French electrical and digital building infrastructure group  Legrand LEGD.PA beat first-quarter sales forecasts on Wednesday, driven by strong demand from U.S. data centres.

Shares in the company, which sells products such as electrical junctions and EV chargers to commercial, industrial and residential customers, were up almost 2% at 0850 GMT.

Quarterly sales rose to 2.28 billion euros ($2.58 billion), just ahead of analysts' consensus forecast of 2.24 billion euros in a company poll.

"The 7.6% organic (sales) growth is coming entirely from data centre," CEO Benoît Coquart told Reuters in an interview.

Tech companies, led by those in the U.S., are investing heavily in data centres to meet surging demand for data-hungry artificial intelligence models.

Legrand reiterated its full-year outlook and said it was taking action to respond to shifting U.S. trade policies, including targeted price hikes, cost savings and supply chain adjustments.

"We are impressed with Legrand's first quarter results, which comfortably beat consensus estimates," Morningstar analyst Matthew Donen said, highlighting the strong data centre performance.

Coquart said the group expected annual data centre sales to account for 20-25% of total sales, versus 20% last fiscal year.

In North and Central America, which represent about 40% of group revenue, sales rose 18.7%, with a 20.2% increase in the United States.

However, in Europe, which accounts for a similar proportion of total revenue, sales dipped 0.3%, weighed down by a broadly sluggish construction market.

Rival Schneider Electric SCHN.PA last week flagged a sequential deterioration in the European residential building market.

Still, Legrand expects recovery in the European residential market late in 2025, Coquart told an analyst call.

The company posted first-quarter adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of 470 million euros, beating analysts' consensus forecast of 456 million.

($1 = 0.8821 euros)

Legrand Q1 sales growth in North and Central America from 2020 to 2025 https://reut.rs/3SmXWCH

 (Reporting by Anna Peverieri in Gdansk. Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Mark Potter)

 ((Anna.Peverieri@thomsonreuters.com;
 +48 58 746 90 23))