Will the Hanley Energy Buyout Fuel JBL's Prospects in AI Data Center?

Jabil, Inc.JBL recently announced that it has completed the acquisition of Hanley Energy Group for $725 million in an all-cash transaction. The company is a leading provider of energy management and critical power solutions in the data center market.

Organizations across industries, such as manufacturing, retail, financial services, healthcare and others, are rapidly integrating AI across their operations to streamline workflow, expand portfolio and gain a competitive edge over rivals. The surging AI workloads are pushing hyperscalers such as Amazon and Microsoft to expand their AI data center footprint. AI data centers consume a lot more energy than legacy ones. Hence, power optimization has become a critical component of data center operations.

Hanley excels in the design, development, supply and deployment of mission-critical power management solutions. Integration of these capabilities with Jabil’s data center expertise, global manufacturing footprint and supply chain network will significantly boost Jabil’s portfolio strength.

Per Grandview Research, the AI data center market is expected to reach $60.49 billion in 2030 from $13.62 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 28.3%. Jabil aims to position itself at the forefront of the AI hardware supply chain. The company is investing $500 million over the next several years in the Southeast U.S. region. The investment is focused on expanding manufacturing capabilities and workforce development for the cloud and AI data center infrastructure market. 

In 2024, Jabil acquired Mikros Technologies, a major player in liquid cooling and thermal management. Such initiatives underscore Jabil’s strong emphasis on expanding its capabilities across multiple fronts within the expanding AI data center domain.

Other Tech Players Expanding Into AI Data Center Market

Jabil faces fierce competition from Celestica, Inc.CLS and Flex Ltd.FLEX. Recently, Flex announced a partnership with LG Electronics to co-develop integrated modular cooling systems designed to tackle the growing thermal challenges of AI-driven data centers. Flex is also collaborating with NVIDIA to build modular, high-performance, energy-efficient AI data centers at scale. Leveraging Flex’s advanced manufacturing and integration capabilities, the partnership aims to address power, heat and scalability challenges in modern data centers. Such developments indicate Flex is also rapidly gaining ground in the AI data center space.

The growing proliferation of AI-based applications and generative AI tools across industries presents a solid growth opportunity for Celestica. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the company announced the launch of its latest storage platform, the SD6300 ultra-dense storage expansion system, to cater to the exponential AI data growth across traditional enterprise and hyperscale data centers. With a compact footprint of only 1125 mm (including cable management assembly), the SD6300 maximizes utilization of existing data center floor space as it can be accommodated within standard 1200 mm racks.

JBL’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Jabil has gained 47% in the past year compared with the Electronic-Manufacturing Services industry’s growth of 97.6%.

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Going by the price/earnings ratio, the company’s shares currently trade at 18.31 forward earnings, lower than 24.54 for the industry.

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Earnings estimates for Jabil for 2025 have moved up 4.52% to $11.55 per share over the past 60 days, while the same for 2026 has increased 2.52% to $13.41. 

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Jabil sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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