Electrical equipment manufacturing

This is one of the few manufacturing groups where the demand story is real, and the screen should say so. Hammond Power Solutions of Guelph — the listed Canadian dry-type transformer maker — reported record 2025 sales of C$898.3M, up 13.9%, and a year-end backlog 122% higher than a year earlier, driven by US data-centre, infrastructure and electrification work [A]. Roughly C$632M of that was sold into the US and Mexico against C$234M in Canada [A], so a Canadian plant can reach the continental market. Lead times are long and buyers are short of supply. The cut is what has to be sunk before a utility, an OEM or an electrical distributor will place the first order. Every design must be type-tested and certified to CSA and UL standards; custom-engineered units — the part Hammond says is outgrowing standard product — are sold on an engineering record the entrant does not have; and the channel is a small number of electrical distributors and private-label partners who already have a supplier. Hammond itself spent C$35.6M on capacity in 2025, 'at the low end' of its plan, while gross margin fell from 32.8% to 30.3% [A] — the incumbents are adding the capacity the shortage invites. This is not a clean kill. The size bands — 156 of 359 establishments under ten people — point at a reachable end the screen did not test: the certified control-panel and switchboard shop (335315), which assembles bought components to a customer's drawing and needs a shop listing rather than a plant. A full study should start there.