We always talk about picks and shovels. The idea of investing in the companies behind the big trends rather than the trends themselves. The boring ones. The ones that don't get the YouTube thumbnails.
A few years ago, I was following a well-known UK stock investor on social media. He was doing a video on the big names in the EV and data centre space — the household names, the ones that get the views and the clicks. I left a comment mentioning Volex and the potential I saw.
He deleted it.
The stock is up 93% since that day.
I've been following Volex for years. Long enough to remember when the share price was bumping around under 200p and the big story was electric vehicles and a Tesla contract that made retail investors' eyes light up. Back then, I was already a fan. Not because it was sexy — it wasn't — but because the man running it clearly knew what he was doing. That hasn't changed. If anything, it's more true today than ever.
So when the RNS dropped this morning and the stock jumped 12% before most people had finished their coffee, I wasn't surprised. Pleased, yes. Classic "I wish I'd bought more." But surprised? Not really. This is what Volex does.
Let me tell you why I think the story is far from over.
What Does Volex Actually Do?
Founded in 1892 — yes, really — Volex is a specialist manufacturer of power cables and high-speed data transmission products. They make the cables and connectors that power and connect the world's most critical infrastructure: data centres, electric vehicles, medical equipment, industrial machinery, and consumer electronics.
I know. Cables. Not exactly the stuff of Reddit threads and meme stocks.
But here's the thing — nobody builds a hyperscale AI data centre without cables. Nobody rolls out an EV charging network without cables. Nobody runs a hospital without cables. Volex sits at the physical infrastructure layer of every major technology trend happening right now, and that's exactly where I want to be invested.
They operate 23 advanced manufacturing facilities across 25 countries, employing over 13,000 people. Revenue is now expected to hit at least $1.22 billion for the year ending March 2026. They serve blue-chip customers you've heard of. And they've grown revenue from $615 million in FY2022 to over $1.2 billion today — a 77% increase in three years.
The Man Behind It: Nat Rothschild
You can't talk about Volex without talking about Nat Rothschild. Lord Rothschild, to give him his full title.
Nat joined Volex as Executive Chairman back in 2015 and has been the driving force behind the transformation ever since. He formally took the CEO title in November 2025 — but make no mistake, this has been his company for a decade. The title changed. The control didn't.
Here's what matters to me as an investor: he owns roughly 25.6% of the company through his investment vehicle NR Holdings. That's not a founder's legacy stake that just sat there — he built that position and he keeps adding to it. In mid-March 2026, his trust was still buying shares in the open market at around 430p. The man is putting his own money on the table at prices not far off where we are today.
That is skin in the game. Proper skin in the game.
And the name? Look, I know it sounds like a cheap observation, but a Rothschild opening doors in boardrooms, securing contracts with the world's largest technology and automotive companies — that matters. In my opinion it's helped Volex punch well above its weight for an AIM-listed manufacturer. You don't land a Tesla licensing deal by accident.
In 2022, Rothschild set out a bold five-year plan: $1.2 billion in revenue by the end of FY2027, with operating margins of 9–10%. The market raised an eyebrow. City analysts were sceptical. He delivered it a year early — with margins running above the top end of the target range. That's not luck. That's execution.
Built to Withstand Anything
I've watched Volex navigate things that would have floored lesser companies. Covid. Global supply chain chaos. The semiconductor shortage. War in Europe. Energy price spikes. Copper price volatility. And through all of it, the company has kept growing. Revenues up, margins resilient, strategy intact.
This morning's update flagged that Volex has minimal direct exposure to the Middle East, which is worth noting given current geopolitical tensions. But honestly, the resilience goes deeper than any single region.
The strategic reason Volex keeps its head above water when the world falls apart is geography. They don't sit in one country and ship globally and hope for the best. They've built a genuinely distributed manufacturing footprint — facilities in Asia, Europe, India, Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia — positioned close to their customers. When supply chains get disrupted, Volex can flex. When a customer needs to near-shore their manufacturing to reduce tariff exposure, Volex is already there. This "local-for-local" model isn't just a line in their annual report — it's the reason they keep winning business when competitors are scrambling.
They've also invested heavily in vertical integration, meaning they control more of their own supply chain. They make the specialist cable used in their EV charging products in-house. That's not just about quality — it's a margin story and a resilience story rolled into one.
Copper, Costs, and Pricing Power
One question I wanted to check before writing this: can Volex actually pass on commodity price increases, or do they eat them?
The answer, straight from their own FY2025 results documentation, is that they can. For most products, copper cost variability is passed through to the end customer via contractual mechanisms. Where contracts don't allow for that directly, they use forward contracts to hedge the exposure. On tariffs, Volex has also shown a consistent ability to manage that exposure through its footprint, customer localisation and pricing mechanisms — and their global manufacturing presence means they're often already on the right side of a tariff before it becomes a problem.
That's real pricing power. Not the flashy kind you get with a brand like Apple, but the structural kind that comes from being embedded in your customers' operations and being genuinely difficult to replace. Volex isn't selling a commodity — they're selling precision-manufactured, safety-certified connectivity products into markets where failure is not an option. That changes the negotiating dynamic considerably.
From EVs to Data Centres: The Story Evolves
When I first started following Volex, the exciting narrative was electric vehicles. Tesla was the name everyone wanted to hear. And fair enough — Volex became a licensed manufacturing partner for Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector, the standard that has since swept the board in North America, with Ford, GM, Rivian and others all adopting it. When Nat Rothschild announced that deal in 2023, he called Volex "the trusted manufacturing partner of Tesla's charging system technology." That wasn't a small thing.
But the story has shifted. Not away from EVs — that segment is still growing and the contracts are still there — but the new engine is data centres.
This year, Volex's data centre revenues are expected to roughly double from the $118 million achieved last year. Double. In one year. Driven by surging demand for high-speed data transmission products from the companies building out AI infrastructure at breakneck speed.
The broader picture is staggering. According to industry forecasts, nearly 100 gigawatts of new data centre capacity will be built between now and 2030 — effectively doubling global capacity — with total investment in the sector potentially reaching into the trillions over the same period. Every one of those facilities needs power cables and data transmission products. Volex, sitting at the physical infrastructure layer of all of it, is well placed to keep winning.
There's also a structural shift coming that most people haven't clocked yet. Right now AI is still largely in the training phase — building the models. From 2027, the weight is expected to shift toward inference — actually running those models at scale, billions of times a day, for billions of users. Training is lumpy and one-off. Inference is ongoing, recurring, structural demand. The infrastructure supporting it doesn't get switched off. For a business like Volex, that's a very important distinction.
Who Else Is Buying
It's not just Rothschild with skin in the game. COO John Molloy bought 31,620 shares in February 2026 on the open market. When the people actually running the company are spending their own money on the stock — not receiving options, actually buying — that tells you something about how they see the next few years.
On the institutional side, Volex is well supported. Around 60% of the company is held by institutions, including Fidelity funds, iShares, Dimensional Fund Advisors and WisdomTree. These are not hot money or momentum chasers — they're long-term, fundamentals-driven owners. Retail investors hold around 14%. The point is there's a solid base of patient, serious money already in this stock.
The Capital Markets Day: 22 April 2026 — This Is the One to Watch
Mark this date.
On 22 April, Volex is hosting a Capital Markets Day in London — CEO, CFO and COO presenting to institutional investors and analysts — where they will set out an entirely new set of medium-term growth targets.
Here's the context that makes this genuinely significant. The old five-year plan, set in 2022, was $1.2 billion in revenue by FY2027. They've hit it in FY2026 — a full year early, with margins above target. So on 22 April, they're not walking in to defend missed targets or explain a disappointing year. They're walking in having smashed their own plan ahead of schedule, in one of the hottest sectors in global technology, and saying: here's what comes next.
The question everyone wants answered: what is the new number? $1.5 billion? $2 billion? Over what timeframe? The size and ambition of that answer will move this stock.
There's also the Main Market question. The board is currently consulting major shareholders on moving from AIM to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange. If confirmed, that move could make Volex eligible for FTSE 250 inclusion — which would broaden the shareholder base significantly and potentially attract index-related demand from funds that currently can't or don't hold AIM stocks.
One thing I half-remember: I'm fairly sure Nat floated the idea of a US listing — possibly Nasdaq — at some point a few years back, but I can't pin down the details. If anyone knows what happened there, drop it in the comments. Either way, it clearly went quiet, and the direction of travel now is firmly toward the Main Market.
Is the Stock Extended?
Up 12% today, pulling back slightly as I write this. Up roughly 140% from its 52-week low of 192p. Trading around 472–480p as at 25 March 2026, with analyst price targets that were set before today's upgrade — so those are already being revised upward.
Is it extended? It's had a big run, no question. But I don't think the story is over. Not even close.
A forward P/E of around 15x for a business growing organically at 13%+, with a return on capital employed of 20%, a CEO with over 25% skin in the game, a data centre tailwind that has years of runway, and now a potential re-rating catalyst from a Main Market move — that's not an expensive stock. That's a fairly valued stock with a genuine upside case.
The crowd hasn't fully caught up yet. Volex is still an AIM stock. It doesn't turn up in hot tips on social media. Most retail investors chasing AI exposure are buying Nvidia or the Magnificent Seven. They haven't clocked that a 130-year-old British cable manufacturer is one of the quiet picks-and-shovels plays of the AI buildout, sitting on a market cap of under £900 million.
When they do — and I think they will, especially post-Capital Markets Day — the re-rating could be meaningful.
I've been around long enough in this market to get burned by hype and to learn to value the boring stuff. Companies that just keep delivering. Management that does what they say. Businesses with structural tailwinds rather than narrative ones.
Volex ticks every one of those boxes for me. It's not a get-rich-quick story — it never has been. But it's a keep-getting-richer-slowly story, backed by one of the most credible operators on AIM, in a sector that's only getting bigger.
The future is electric, and it's digital, and it all runs on cables.
Volex makes the cables.
I'll be watching the 22 April Capital Markets Day very closely. If the new targets are as ambitious as I think they'll be, there could be another leg up from here.
Not financial advice. Do your own research. I'm just some bloke following the markets.
