The companies that build the electrical room of a data center, the medium-voltage switchgear and substation transformers that sit between the grid and the racks, spent election week being repriced for a rule that has not been written.

On 5 November the Korea Composite Stock Price Index fell 4.46% on heavy foreign selling of chip and power-equipment shares after the American result, with HD Hyundai Electric down 8.10% and Hyosung Heavy Industries down 12.59%; the stated concern was that tighter oversight of data-center construction, particularly restrictions on electricity and water consumption, could delay new projects. The next session the index fell a further 6.02% and a trading halt was triggered. In the United States, Eaton, the Dublin-domiciled power-management group whose Electrical Americas unit sells switchgear and power distribution, fell 7.4% on 5 November as the Nasdaq entered correction.

Six listed makers of this equipment fell an equal-weighted 26.7% over the thirty days to 6 November, against 5.4% for the S&P 500. The implied reading is that the scarcity these firms have been charging for since 2023 is about to be curtailed by policy, or cured by the capacity their own windfall financed. In the window the market marked them down, neither happened.

Nothing in the queue got shorter

Large power transformers still quote beyond 120 weeks, substation units above 160 weeks and the largest high-voltage units out to four years, while 15-kilovolt medium-voltage switchgear runs 52 to 80 weeks on June 2026 procurement data, with some manufacturers' capacity committed into 2028. American transformer demand is projected to exceed domestic manufacturing capacity by 30% to 40% through at least 2028.

The relief is dated, and the dates are not soon. Eaton's new three-phase transformer facility arrives in the first half of 2027. HD Hyundai Electric's second Montgomery, Alabama plant completes in April 2027, lifting extra-high-voltage transformer capacity by half, and LS Electric is spending KRW250bn to expand its Cedar City, Utah switchboard plant to about six times its current footprint.

Transformer prices stopped; switchgear prices did not

Where the hypothesis of a cure has purchase is narrower than the selloff. Transformer producer prices are up 91.4% since January 2020 but rose only 8.7% year-on-year in July 2026, while switchgear prices accelerated to 13.3% year-on-year in August.

That split shows up in guidance. Hubbell, the Shelton, Connecticut maker of electrical and utility distribution products, raised full-year guidance on 27 October to adjusted earnings of $20.40 to $20.60 a share, lifted Electrical Solutions organic growth to 17-18% and cut Utility Solutions, the transformer and substation segment, to 6-7%. "We're anticipating PCP to be in the neutral to dollar positive next year, with incrementals in line with our long-term algo at 25%-30%," chief financial officer Joe Capozzoli said on the call, meaning price-cost-productivity is no longer expected to add to margin in 2027. Hubbell's Utility sales rose 9% to $1,028m, about 4.9% of it organic. Data-center sales grew over 80% organically.

Eaton, meanwhile, has announced general price increases for Electrical Americas effective 2 January 2027, and ABB's third-quarter pricing contributed three percentage points to Electrification growth.

One income statement rolled, and it is the transformer house

HD Hyundai Electric reported September-quarter sales of KRW1.18tn and operating profit of KRW284.5bn, up 18.5% and 15.1% respectively, with margin at 24.1% against 25.1% in June and net income down 3.6%. Order backlog grew 4.2% in the quarter to $8.84bn, against a 23% build over the prior six months. Group operating margin had climbed from 0.55% in 2021 to 24.40% in 2025; the September quarter interrupts that arc.

The same morning it reported, the company approved a KRW198bn second phase at its Cheongju distribution campus running to June 2029, explicitly for AI data-center package demand. Its shares, at 15.0x forward earnings against 15.7x trailing on consensus 2026 earnings growth of 25.7%, carry almost no gap between the two: the market has stopped expecting growth to compress the multiple.

Powell has said nothing since August

Powell Industries, the Houston builder of custom switchgear and modular E-House substations, last spoke on 4 August, when it booked a record $934m of orders, a 3.0x quarterly book-to-bill and backlog near $2.4bn against $1.4bn a year earlier, with gross margin at 30.6%. Asked whether margins had peaked, chief executive Brett Cope said they had not. The stock has since fallen 32.4% from 7 October to 6 November, two-thirds of that before any vote was counted, and trades at 19.3x forward earnings against roughly 35x forward in May.

The business evidence accounts for part of this month and not most of it. At the transformer end the markdown has a cause in kind, though HD Hyundai's 74% fall from its May peak is a long way past a 100-basis-point margin slip. At the switchgear end the results point the other way: nVent Electric, which closed its $700m-revenue Maverick Power switchgear acquisition on 1 October, raised full-year organic growth guidance to 38-39% on 30 October and fell 41.3% anyway. Powell's own mix has tilted toward commercial buyers, 40% of backlog at the end of June against 29% in March, which makes its order book more sensitive to financing costs than to switchgear capacity. What the last two sessions added was a political risk to the buyer's permit, not a supplier's price concession.

Powell releases fiscal fourth-quarter results after the close on 16 November, the first of these companies to speak since the election. Whatever backlog it reports was booked before anyone voted.