Data‑Centre Demand Lifts ABB

ABB raised its 2026 outlook on April 22 after a first quarter lifted by data-centre orders, sending its shares to a record high. (abb.com) (reuters.com) The Swiss industrial group said it now expects high single-digit to low double-digit comparable revenue growth for 2026, up from an earlier 6% to 9% range. It also said operational EBITA margin should improve year on year, even excluding a first-quarter real-estate gain. (abb.com) (bloomberg.com) ABB reported first-quarter revenue up 18% to $8.94 billion, or 11% on a comparable basis, with operational EBITA up 37% to $2.10 billion and margin at 23.5%. Orders rose 24% to $11.19 billion, pushing book-to-bill to 1.29 and backlog to a record $27.5 billion. (abb.com) (global.abb/group/en/investors/quarterly-results) Data centres buy the electrical gear that keeps servers running: switchgear, breakers, busways, motors, drives and backup power controls. ABB sells those systems through its Electrification and Motion businesses, which posted comparable order growth of 44% and 9% in the quarter. (abb.com) (powertalk.electrification.us.abb.com) That demand is tied to the artificial-intelligence buildout, which is forcing operators to pack more chips into each building and draw more power per rack. ABB said market momentum was strongest in the data-centre segment and also positive for grid investments. (abb.com) (reuters.com) Investors treated the update as evidence that the AI spending wave is reaching suppliers beyond chipmakers and cloud companies. Reuters reported ABB shares rose as much as 5.1% on April 22 to an all-time high, helping lift other European electrical and semiconductor stocks. (reuters.com) (kfgo.com) ABB’s chief executive, Morten Wierod, said demand had remained “overall resilient” despite added uncertainty from the Middle East conflict and the broader trading climate. The company said first-quarter performance progressed largely according to plan even as geopolitical tension escalated. (abb.com) The company has been leaning harder into data-centre power systems as operators redesign facilities for denser computing loads and tighter uptime requirements. ABB’s U.S. electrification unit has been marketing medium- and low-voltage distribution systems for data-centre builders, including packaged power-control systems aimed at cutting cost and supply-chain complexity. (powertalk.electrification.us.abb.com) (powertalk.campaigns.abb.com) The quarter also showed how concentrated that spending has become around power hardware that can be delivered fast enough for new AI sites. ABB’s record backlog and raised forecast suggest that, for now, the bottleneck is not only chips but the electrical equipment needed to turn a shell of a building into a working data centre. (global.abb/group/en/investors/quarterly-results) (reuters.com)