Prysmian Talking to Atkore … Done Deal?

David Gordon Posted On August 2, 2026

Back in June Atkore settled its legal issues and The reason for the question is:

Bill Waltz announced his retirement last year, after starting a succession process.
The company announced it was going through a strategic review and then asked Bill to stay.
While unsaid, perhaps one of the reasons to stay was to address the lawsuits.

During this same period, the company has been selling off some extraneous parts of the business … acquisitions that didn’t pan out. In one of the divestitures the company essentially gave the business away, plus money, and in return received 10% of the resulting company (sounds like a baseball trade … paying some of a traded player’s salary and getting a Double AA player who is batting below .250!)

Given the state of the company, the fact that it was becoming singularly focused on electrical, and the interest of strategic players to become broader as well as private equity’s interest in the electrical / power generation / data center market, we’ve theorized with clients about “whom” could be an acquirer and for how much.

We’ve suggested

Wire manufacturers (and there are only two that made sense)
Blackstone as an add-on to its Arlington / MacLean acquisitions
Other PE firms … which is natural
And some others.

And with a strategic review the BOD was either going to sell or buy.

As of Sunday night, multiple sources (Seeking Alpha, Fidelity, Reuters) are reporting that Prysmian (Encore) is in the final stages of negotiating the acquisition of Atkore whose marketing cap is essentially $2.5 billion. Will if go for much of a premium? They are all saying “coming in the next few days” with the caveat that it could fall apart.

This acquisition is after Prysmian acquired Channell about a year ago for between $950-1.15 billion (if earn-outs are achieved.)

Prysmian management has indicated that it is seeking about $4 billion euros worth of acquisitions, so Atkore fits in with about $2.8 – 2.9 billion in projected 2026 sales (Q2 sales annualized.

What Could This Mean?

For distributors, not much but there could be interesting incentives or leverage, as well as other benefits. Could it help grow the wire business? Maybe but that depends upon Encore’s capacity.
For reps, I’d expect change for core elements of Atkore that may compete with a line that an Encore rep has (i.e., Wheatland). Atkore reps that have some of its industrial applications (Calbrite, Calbond, maybe some others)
For Atkore sales management, I would expect Encore to eventually identify synergies. Atkore was known for being “sales management heavy.”
For the Atkore offering, it could be interesting to unbundle the Atkore offering into its components (product categories). Some elements could be considered “commodities” such as Allied Tube and Conduit and their Konkore line. AFC, being MC, is a little different and is covered by Encore so it could be interesting how these competing elements are handled. Then there are the Atkore lines that are more dependent upon demand generation, which can also be construed as generating a named spec (FRE, Calbrite, Calbond, LiquidTight, Cope, UniStrut to name a few.)

It then gets interesting to think about:

Southwire moves?
Nexans’ moves? They just bought Republic. Could they top Prysmian’s bid (it would be surprising.)
Alan Wire … they would probably stay focused as they have a winning model from what I’ve heard.
Wheatland / Western Tube (Zekelman)? I’d expect no change unless they seek to expand their offering (see Robroy below.)
Nucor? I’d expect no change.
Robroy? Do they get acquired by a conduit manufacturer (who may already be selling them the conduit for the PVC-coated?) It helps round out a package

But, for Wheatland or Nucor, could they develop a creative partnership with a wire manufacturer?

Food for Thought

Oh, and at the same time, Bill Waltz was announced as a new BOD member for a company in the asphalt industry as of October 29^th.
Did you know that, according to Reuters, about 40% of Prysmian’s business is in North America? Given the consolidation trends that have occurred in the electrical industry, many of the manufacturers, as well as three of the national distributors, are overseas (mainly Europe). How does this change channel dynamics? From conversations, all feel that they need to be in the US, and be bigger in the US, as the growth rate is significantly higher, and the market is bigger, than Europe or wherever else they could invest. What percentage of the electrical distribution revenues will be EU owned?