When a caller from Tennessee phoned into Jim Cramer’s Mad Money Lightning Round and described nVent Electric (NYSE:NVT | NVT Price Prediction) as a “picks and shovels” play for data centers, Cramer didn’t hesitate.
“Yep. You got it. That’s absolutely right. That’s exactly how I describe that. It’s like a mini Vertiv.”
That one line tells you everything about the thesis. If you’ve watched the data center infrastructure trade play out through Vertiv Holdings (NYSE:VRT), nVent is worth understanding as its smaller, less-covered cousin operating in the same neighborhood.
What nVent Actually Does
nVent makes the unglamorous but essential infrastructure that keeps data centers running: electrical enclosures, rack systems, power distribution, and protection equipment. Think of it as the skeleton and nervous system of a data center facility. When hyperscalers build out AI compute capacity, they need nVent’s products before the servers ever get racked.
The company’s brands include nVent CADDY, ERICO, HOFFMAN, ILSCO, SCHROFF, and TRACHTE — each targeting specific infrastructure niches. The Systems Protection segment is where the data center story lives.
The Numbers Back the Story
nVent’s Systems Protection segment posted $737.1 million in Q4 2025 revenue, up 58% year-over-year, with 34% organic growth driven directly by data centers and power utilities. That’s not a rounding error — that’s a business being pulled forward by AI infrastructure demand.
Full-year 2025 revenue came in at $3.893 billion, up 29.5% year-over-year, with adjusted EPS of $3.35, up 35%. The company has now posted two consecutive billion-dollar sales quarters — a milestone that would have seemed ambitious not long ago.
CEO Beth Wozniak put it plainly: “We are well positioned for continued growth in 2026, led by the infrastructure vertical, particularly data centers and power utilities.”
For 2026, management is guiding for adjusted EPS of $4.00-$4.15, with Q1 2026 organic growth expected at 17-19%.
Mini Vertiv — But How Mini?
Vertiv’s 2025 revenue was $10.23 billion against nVent’s $3.893 billion. Vertiv’s market cap sits around $92.5 billion while nVent’s is roughly $17.1 billion. Vertiv trades at a forward P/E around 44x; nVent at roughly 26x.
Vertiv also carries a $15 billion backlog, up 109% year-over-year, with Q4 organic orders up 252% — the strongest order quarter in its history. nVent is growing fast, but Vertiv is the established giant with the deeper AI infrastructure moat.
The “mini” label is accurate in scale, but the thematic exposure is genuinely similar. Both companies sell infrastructure that data centers cannot be built without, and Cramer’s framing positions Vertiv as the established leader while nVent operates as a smaller name in the same essential infrastructure space.
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