Vent Electric announced a $1.75 billion cash-and-stock acquisition of Maverick Power, a move that adds 18 gigawatts of annual distribution capacity and plants the company inside the hyperscaler procurement chain. Maverick operates 43 distribution facilities across North America and holds long-term service contracts with 11 of the top 20 datacenter operators by rack count. The transaction closes in Q2 2025, subject to regulatory clearance.
Vent has been a second-tier electrical components manufacturer with $890 million in trailing revenue and exposure to commercial construction and light industrial. Maverick's business is narrower and faster: power distribution units, busway systems, and modular switchgear tailored to datacenter loads above 10 megawatts per facility. Maverick posted $620 million in revenue over the last twelve months with EBITDA margins near 22%, roughly 600 basis points above Vent's core business. The acquisition was financed with $950 million in term debt arranged through JP Morgan and Barclays, plus $800 million in Vent equity at a 14% discount to the 30-day volume-weighted average price.
The timing reflects a structural shift in datacenter buildouts. Hyperscalers are no longer waiting for utility upgrades or multi-year interconnection queues. They are buying or co-locating with facilities that have power already online, and they are pre-purchasing distribution infrastructure to eliminate schedule risk. Maverick's contract backlog sits at $1.1 billion, with 68% tied to projects breaking ground in the next 18 months. That backlog includes named commitments from Microsoft, Google, and Oracle, all of whom are racing to secure physical capacity for frontier model training and inference clusters. Vent gains access to those relationships and inherits Maverick's engineering staff, which has become a scarce resource as electrical contractors struggle to hire for datacenter-specific loads.
The deal also exposes Vent to a different risk profile. Datacenter capex is cyclical and tied to chipset availability, model release schedules, and enterprise AI adoption curves. If hyperscaler buildouts slow or if inference moves to edge deployments, Maverick's backlog converts more slowly and margin compression follows. Vent is betting that the next 36 months will see accelerating construction, not deceleration, and that its combined scale will let it underbid on large procurement packages. The company has already announced plans to open two new fabrication lines in Texas and Nevada, targeting delivery windows in late 2025.
Operators should watch Vent's debt covenants and whether the company can maintain Maverick's 22% EBITDA margins as it integrates procurement and back-office functions. The term loan includes a leverage cap of 4.5x net debt to EBITDA, and Vent will need to hit $115 million in annual synergies by year three to stay inside that threshold. Pricing pressure from hyperscaler procurement teams is real, and Oracle in particular has been squeezing suppliers on modular switchgear contracts. Any margin miss in the first 12 months post-close will show up in Vent's refinancing costs when the bridge converts in Q3 2026.
Maverick's CEO will join Vent's board and retain operational control of the datacenter division. That structure keeps customer relationships intact and signals that Vent is buying capability, not just revenue. The company's equity is up 9% since the announcement, and the bond market is pricing the term debt at 375 basis points over SOFR, which is tight for a levered industrial acquisition in this rate environment.