France's Legrand beats Q1 expectations on strong US data centre demand

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)