Sterling Infrastructure's stock has fallen more than 50% from its June high above $1,000, even as its chief executive says the underlying business has never been stronger.
Wall Street read the stock's collapse as a verdict on the AI data-center buildout. Joseph Cutillo says the opposite is happening inside the company: bigger jobs, longer contracts, and no sign of the slowdown investors are pricing in.
"We are in better shape today than we were when the stock was $1,000."
Cutillo has taken Sterling Infrastructure's stock from about $20 to over $1,000 at its high since pivoting the engineering and construction firm into data-center work, and says a single electrical job can now carry more than $1 billion in revenue on its own.
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👤 Guest: Joseph Cutillo, Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Infrastructure, an engineering and construction firm whose stock has run from about $20 to over $1,000 as it pivoted into data-center construction
🎙️ Host: Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money and manager of the CNBC Investing Club's charitable trust
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on CNBC
🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 8 min
Key Takeaways
Sterling is in better shape now than when its stock was at $1,000, its CEO says
Backlog, outlook and job size have all grown since the stock peaked and then fell more than 50%
Job duration has stretched from 6 months to as long as 10 years
Sites have grown from 10-acre plots to as much as 20,000 acres
Customers are pushing for more, faster, with no sign of a moratorium-driven slowdown
Sterling is targeting more than 20-30% organic growth plus 20-30% from acquisitions, and trying to go faster still
The electrical unit's 140% growth in a year dragged down blended margins, not weakened them
Cutillo expects 300 to 500 basis points of margin improvement there over the next 12 to 18 months
Multiple single electrical jobs now carry more than $1 billion in revenue each
The whole company was worth a couple billion dollars "not too long ago"
1. Stronger Now Than at $1,000
Cramer opened by noting Sterling's stock ran from about $20 four years ago to more than $1,000 at its June high, then fell more than 50% even though he suspects the company is doing better now than it was at the peak. Cutillo agreed.
"We are in better shape today than we were when the stock was $1,000." He said that holds looking ahead too: "And when we look at what's coming at us from our customers over the next six months into 27 and 28, we're going to be even in better shape."
"So yeah, we have not gone backwards in anything. We've gone forward. We've got more backlog, we've got a better outlook. Jobs are getting bigger than they've ever been."
The scale of individual projects has stretched dramatically. "When we started this journey, our average time on a job was six months. We were excited when data centers got big enough that we were on them for 3 to 5 years. The stuff we're working on and the stuff that's coming out, we could be there 8 to 10 years."
2. Sites the Size of a City
Cramer pressed Cutillo on why investors struggle to grasp the scale of what Sterling is now building.
"If you think of Loudoun County and kind of Virginia, where they started, they're on a ten acre site. Then they went to a couple hundred acres. Now these are multi thousand acres going up to ten, 12, 15, 20,000 acres. And as we look forward into 28 and 29, when self power generation starts coming on, these sites get even bigger."
Cutillo said most people, customers included, cannot fully comprehend how large these sites are becoming
3. No Slowdown, Just More
Cramer raised the political overhang on the sector — data-center moratoriums scaring investors — and said his own checks across states suggest orders have if anything accelerated in case moratoriums are imposed or later lifted. Cutillo agreed Sterling has not seen any slowdown, and said its peers and suppliers report the same.
"Every time we sit down with our customers, what we hear is we need to do more, faster. How can you get the more geographies in the U.S.? How can you do more?"
"And we figured if we could continue to grow at 20 to 30% organically and then make acquisitions of another 20 to 30%, we would be on pace with the market. I will tell you, we are working really hard to increase that significantly because we will not keep pace with what our customers are bringing."
4. The Electrician Gap
Cramer pushed on margins, since Sterling's electrical business — built around its CDC acquisition — has grown fast but carries lower margins than its site-development work.
"So we bought the CDC business almost a year, a year ago to the day, and we've grown that 140% in one year."
"But the thing that people don't understand is the margins on the electrical side are lower than the site development. However, we're very confident that over the next 12 to 18 months, we will see those margins improve significantly as we do more data center, more mission critical work. With that business, we'll see 3 to 500 basis points of margin improvement."
The constraint is labor, not demand. "Well, I think the good news for us, Jim, from a society standpoint, there's a lot of people finally valuing trades for what they are." Trade schools and company-run training programs are expanding, but electricians require a roughly four-year apprenticeship under a certified journeyman, and journeymen are the bottleneck: "But the problem is, if we don't have enough journeymen, we can't have enough apprentices, right?"
5. Strongest We've Ever Been
Cramer summarized: no falloff in business despite what the stock says, orders bigger than expected, and margins that should catch up as the company scales into its new size. Cutillo agreed and added a figure.
"We're on multiple electrical jobs now that will have over $1 billion of revenue just from that one job. Our company was a couple billion dollars not too long ago."
"The other piece that's important on the margin is every one of our business units had margin accretion in the quarter. The mix made the total margin look like it came down because our electrical business grew at 140%."
"Strongest we've ever been throwing off more cash than we've ever thrown off. We're very acquisitive, looking for opportunities to add incremental capacity." He said Sterling has also recalibrated its strategy to focus on its existing services rather than add new ones, given the growth already coming at it
Cutillo's bottom line is that Sterling's stock fell alongside the rest of the AI-infrastructure group, but its backlog, job sizes and margins are all still moving in one direction.
Bonus Insights
When Cutillo explained the journeyman-to-apprentice electrician ratio, Cramer reached for a sports comparison and immediately undercut it himself: "Not like in a baseball where journeyman's Triple-A."
Cramer closed the interview by separating the stock from the company for viewers who bought at different points: those who bought two years ago "caught a great run," while those who bought six months ago near the $1,000 high may feel worse — but he said the company itself is, fundamentally, the strongest it has probably ever been
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Sterling Infrastructure (The engineering and construction firm Cutillo runs; its stock ran from about $20 to over $1,000 before falling more than 50% from that high)
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