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Prysmian makes the giant cables that carry electricity and internet data around the world.
Prysmian's business has two main parts, and they are very different. The first, and by far the bigger one, is making the actual cables — thick bundles of copper or aluminum wrapped in plastic and metal — that move electricity from power plants to cities and data across oceans through fiber optics. Think of it as the plumbing of the modern world: nobody notices it until it leaks, and somebody has to bury ten thousand kilometers of it under the sea. That somebody is often Prysmian. Roughly two-thirds of its revenue comes from the energy side, sold to utilities, grid operators, and big industrial projects, while the rest comes from telecom and digital products. Its customers are not ordinary people; they are governments, electricity monopolies, and companies like telecom giants or wind farm developers who sign giant multi-year contracts.
The second part is a small but interesting division that sells a lot of its products through distributors and hardware stores, mostly for construction and industrial wiring, though that is a slice of the pie rather than the whole story. What makes Prysmian special is its scale and its technical edge: laying a submarine cable across the Atlantic or connecting an offshore wind farm to shore is not something a small shop can do. It competes with a handful of global outfits like Nexans, and the barriers to entry are high because the factories are huge, the ships that lay cables are expensive, and one botched installation can cost millions. That is why the company is a quiet but crucial player in the energy transition: as the world builds more wind farms, solar plants, and data centers, somebody needs to connect them.
The company is headquartered in Milan, Italy, and it got there by growing through acquisitions, including buying General Cable in 2018 and the energy business of Chiron in more recent deals. It spends its cash on building new cable factories, keeping its fleet of cable-laying ships running, paying dividends, and occasionally buying rivals. The stock trades on the Milan exchange, and its market value has climbed as governments pour money into grid upgrades. If you want a simple way to think about it: Prysmian is not a flashy tech company, it is the unglamorous but indispensable maker of the wires that the flashy tech companies depend on.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Oct 2026