Atkore makes the steel and plastic conduit, cable management and metal framing that electrical contractors install inside every data hall, under brands including Allied Tube & Conduit, AFC Cable Systems and Unistrut. Its investment case had one moving part: pandemic-era conduit prices, which collapsed after 2022 and took the margin down with them, would eventually stop falling, and the data-center volume underneath would become visible.

In the quarter ended 26 June it stopped falling. The company's own sales bridge shows average selling prices adding $22.4m and volume adding $65.7m, with revenue up 8.1% to $794.8m. Growth had been negative two quarters earlier. Gross margin fell year on year regardless: input costs rose $48.9m, more than double the price recapture. US hot-rolled coil sat near $947 a ton in mid-2026 with a 50% Section 232 duty on steel articles in force since June 2025. The inflection is in the revenue line, not the margin line: operating margin of 8.1% is a quarter of the 31.6% Atkore earned in fiscal 2022.

What a strategic buyer will pay for conduit

Two days after that print, Prysmian agreed to acquire the company for $95.00 a share in cash, an enterprise value of about $3.8bn and a 30% premium to the prior close, with roughly $150m of expected run-rate synergies. Prysmian bought Encore Wire in 2024 and General Cable before that. Its stated view of what it was buying is unusually blunt: Atkore has not captured data-center growth to the same extent as Encore.

The shares gapped from $72.96 to $93.55 on 8.9m shares — against typical daily volume in the low hundreds of thousands — and have since traded inside a 65-cent range for thirteen sessions, closing at $93.60, some 1.5% under the contract price. Nothing about that price is a market opinion on conduit. It does, though, fix a number: against maintained fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $340-360m, Prysmian paid roughly 10.6-11.2x. EMCOR, the largest US mechanical and electrical contractor, trades at 14.9x trailing EBITDA; IES Holdings at 22.8x; Comfort Systems at 29.0x. A strategic buyer with synergies would not stretch for the material. The installation layer is where the campus money is being priced.

It is also where it is being earned. Comfort Systems grew June-quarter revenue 50.3% with gross margin widening to 25.9% from 23.5%. IES Holdings grew 39.6% at a 27.4% gross margin. EMCOR grew 19.8% and reported record remaining performance obligations of $17.14bn, up 44%, with mechanical data-center revenue more than doubling.

Mueller's copper is running faster than Mueller

Mueller Industries — copper tube, fittings and PEX for plumbing wholesalers, brass rod, and valves and heat exchangers for air-conditioning makers — is the counter-case, and it half-fails. Second-quarter revenue rose 25.5% to $1.43bn with unit volume growth in all three segments, so this is not pure metal inflation. But COMEX copper averaged $6.16 a pound in the quarter, up 30.6%. Gross profit rose only 12.0%, gross margin narrowed 332 basis points to 27.7%, and reported operating income rose 1.9% — 15.7% adjusting for a $36.3m insurance gain a year earlier. One quarter before, the spread was genuinely widening: revenue up 19.3%, gross profit up 31.8%, operating income up 51.4%. The conversion margin now grows at less than half the speed of the metal.

Neither release quantifies any data-center or liquid-cooling revenue; the demand commentary is generic. The shares, adjusted for the two-for-one split effective 1 July, are down 7.1% over three months and 11% from their 10 August high, against copper's roughly 3% retreat from an all-time COMEX record of $6.77 set on 7 August. That is a de-rating with a reason. It leaves Mueller at 16.2x trailing earnings, above roughly 14.6x a year ago, and at 11.0x trailing gross profit against Comfort Systems' 20.2x — cheap against the installer, expensive against its own history.

A final caution on grouping: the electrical balance-of-plant names that rose most over the past year did so on their own accidents. Babcock & Wilcox's 442% twelve-month gain is a $1.51 share round trip, and its 59% three-month fall came with securities class actions and a $200m equity raise at $18.50. There is no shared materials trade here — only one company being bought and one being repriced against copper.

The setup

Where it stands — Atkore is a merger stub at $93.60 under a $95.00 cash bid; Mueller's volumes are growing while its spread over copper narrows.

Would confirm — Mueller's third-quarter gross margin holding at or above 27.7% with revenue growth still above 20%.

Would invalidate — A third straight quarter of gross-profit growth below revenue growth at Mueller, or the Prysmian deal failing antitrust review.

Watch next — Mueller's third-quarter release in late October; Prysmian targets closing the Atkore acquisition by calendar year-end 2026.

Valuation — Mueller 16.2x trailing and 15.2x forward earnings, versus about 14.6x trailing a year ago; Prysmian paid roughly 10.6-11.2x guided EBITDA for Atkore.