Dive brief:
- Schneider Electric informed record quarterly revenue thanks to strong data center demand in North America and other regions, the company said in an April 30 earnings call on its first-quarter 2026 earnings.
- Revenues from its energy management segment, which provides equipment and services to data centers and other energy-intensive facilities, increased by almost 13% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026 “despite an elevated comparison base” from the first quarter of 2025, the company said.
- In a statement, CEO Olivier Blum said the rise of AI and rising geopolitical tensions “accelerate the existing structural growth engines of electrification” and could further increase demand for Schneider’s electrical equipment and building systems.
Diving knowledge:
“Energy transition is now increasingly central to energy security and sovereignty … along with the rapid adoption of digital and AI-enabled technologies,” Blum said.
Schneider said demand for data centers, a subset of power management, grew “by double digits” as customers expanded “AI-ready” edge computing architectures and traditional architectures.
North America drove most of the end-market growth, but demand was also strong in other regions, Schneider said. The company pointed to customer demand for liquid cooling, a necessity for high-density server racks running the next generations of AI chipsas a headwind for the data center market and its energy management business in general.
11.4 million dollars
Quarterly revenue, an organic increase of 11.2% year-on-year
12.8%
Year-over-year revenue growth in the energy management segment, led by data centers
15.9%
Year-over-year growth in energy management revenue in North America, the leading data center region
Schneider also saw strong end-market demand for its buildings, particularly in “technical building categories” such as government facilities and healthcare.
“Investments in modernization, building management systems and energy management solutions” – all consistent themes from what Schneider has said are a multi-year growth cycle – boosted demand, the company said.
Speaking to investors and stock analysts on Thursday, Blum touted the broader “energy intelligence” strategy behind Schneider’s building automation and energy management solutions.
Blum said Schneider is helping customers transition from siled systems that require time-consuming manual decision-making processes to more “preemptive” unified frameworks that can monitor and act on their own. This transition could unlock lower energy costs, less equipment downtime, faster incident response and extended asset life, according to a presentation shared with the audience.
For data centers in particular, Schneider’s presentation touted full-lifecycle solutions that begin with a “digital twinning.” partnership with NVIDIA and ETAP; continue through liquid and air cooling solutions from its recently acquired the Motivair subsidiary and other product lines; unified operational support of its AVEVA software line; and building management through its EcoStruxure platform, among other offerings.
While Schneider reaffirmed his financial targets for 2026, he sounded notes of caution about geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty.
Revenue in the Middle East and Africa fell, bucking the broader trend, due to “geopolitical and macroeconomic tensions,” Schneider said. That part of the world could affect the company’s overall growth, he said.
