XP Power Limited: 5 Things You Should Know About This $300M Power Company

Most people have never heard of XP Power Limited. And honestly, that makes sense. The company doesn’t sell anything you’d pick up at a store, and its name doesn’t pop up in everyday conversation. But here’s the thing — a lot of the technology people depend on every single day wouldn’t function without what XP Power builds.

Think about it this way. The MRI machine a doctor uses to scan a patient’s spine. The equipment in a chip-making factory that makes processors for computers and phones. The robotic systems being used in factories around the world. All of these need a very specific kind of power — clean, stable, precisely controlled. That’s wha”XP Power Limited” provides. Not glamorous, but absolutely necessary.

How the Company Got Started

“XP Power Limited” goes back to 1988. James Peters founded it in the United Kingdom, and at the time it was a fairly straightforward business — sourcing power conversion products from manufacturers and selling them on to customers who needed them. A classic distribution model.

That worked for a while, but Peters and his team eventually saw that there was more value in actually designing and making products rather than just moving them along the supply chain. The shift happened gradually, through acquisitions and internal development. One of the bigger moves was buying a California-based company called Switching Systems International, which brought real engineering talent and a proper product line into the fold.

From there, XP Power kept building. It set up manufacturing in China, then opened a production facility in Vietnam that was designed from the ground up to be environmentally efficient. It picked up specialist companies in Europe to expand into high-voltage applications. And over the years, the headquarters moved to Singapore, where the company is still based today.

It’s listed on the London Stock Exchange, part of the FTSE 250, and operates across 17 countries with around 2,000 employees. Not bad for a company that started as a distributor.

What They Actually Make

The bread and butter of “XP Power Limited” business is power conversion. What that means in practice is taking electricity — from a wall socket, from a generator, from whatever source is available — and turning it into the exact form a piece of equipment needs to run properly.

That sounds simple, but it isn’t. Different devices need different voltages. Some need extremely stable power with almost no fluctuation. Others need very high voltages that most standard equipment couldn’t handle. Getting this wrong doesn’t just mean the device doesn’t work — in industries like healthcare or semiconductor manufacturing, the consequences can be serious and expensive.

XP Power makes AC-DC power supplies, which is the most common type of conversion. It makes DC-DC converters for stepping power up or down within a system. It makes high-voltage power supplies that can go up to 500 kilovolts — used in some of the most advanced manufacturing processes on the planet. It also makes RF power systems, which are used in processes that involve plasma.

And for customers who need something completely bespoke, XP Power has engineering teams that will work through a custom solution from scratch. That side of the business has been growing, partly because the industries XP Power serves are getting more technically demanding over time.

Three Industries, One Focus

“XP Power Limited” deliberately focuses on three sectors. Healthcare. Semiconductor manufacturing equipment.Industrial technology. These three may seem like quite a wide spread, but they actually have a lot in common – they all need power meeting strict specifications, often under regulatory scrutiny, and where failure is not really an option. In healthcare, XP Power’s products go into equipment that clinicians and patients depend on – scanners, surgical robots, infusion pumps, laboratory systems.

Medical power supplies have to pass rigorous safety certifications, and they have to keep working reliably over years of use. These three appear to be quite widespread, but they have so much in common at first glance. All of them need power that meets very strict specifications, and is often under regulatory scrutiny. Failure is not really an option.

XP Power products are in the equipment that clinicians and patients rely on in healthcare – scanners, surgical robots, infusion pumps, laboratory systems. Medical power supplies must achieve stringent safety certifications and continue to work reliably over years of use.

XP Power has built a strong reputation in this space and counts a number of major medical device manufacturers among its long-term customers.

In semiconductor manufacturing, the precision required is almost hard to imagine. You’re talking about processes happening at the scale of a few atoms, where even tiny variations in power can ruin an entire batch of wafers. XP Power supplies power solutions for processes like etching, deposition, and lithography — including the extreme ultraviolet lithography used for the most advanced chips being made today. 

Industrial technology is the most varied of the three. It covers everything from 3D printing and robotics to analytical instruments and process automation. The European market in particular is full of smaller, specialized industrial companies, and XP Power’s footprint there is well-established.

The Last Few Years Haven’t Been Easy

It would be dishonest to write about XP Power without mentioning the rough patch the company has been through. After strong growth in 2021 and 2022, things got harder. Customers — particularly in the semiconductor and industrial sectors — had built up a lot of inventory during the supply chain disruptions of the pandemic era. When things normalized, they stopped ordering and worked through what they already had. That process took longer than most people expected.

Revenue dropped significantly. The company had to make cost cuts. It was a difficult period.

But the management team made a deliberate decision not to cut the parts of the business that matter most for the long term — the engineers, the product development teams, the innovation capacity. And while dealing with the downturn, they actually used the time productively. Supply chain operations improved. The company opened a Customer Innovation Centre in Silicon Valley to work more closely with North American customers. New products were developed and scheduled for launch.

By the end of 2024 there were real signs the worst was behind us. Some customers started ordering again after two years. The semiconductor market seemed to promise better prospects. The recovery was not instant, but the path was emerging. 

Taking Sustainability Seriously

One thing that stands out when you look at XP Power more closely is that sustainability isn’t just something they talk about in an annual report. They’ve had their emissions reduction targets validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative — which is a proper external verification process, not self-certification. Across their European operations, they now run entirely on renewable electricity. They introduced a Product Carbon Rating system so customers can actually see the environmental footprint of the components they’re choosing.

For a manufacturer operating in multiple countries with factories in Asia, this level of commitment takes real effort.

The Bigger Picture

“XP Power Limited”operates in a part of the economy that doesn’t get much attention, but it matters more than people realize. As the world becomes more dependent on electronics — for healthcare, for computing, for manufacturing, for energy — the demand for reliable, precise, efficient power conversion only goes in one direction.

“XP Power Limited” has spent nearly four decades building knowledge, relationships, and infrastructure in exactly this space. It isn’t the biggest name in the industry, and it isn’t trying to be. What it is trying to be is the best technical partner for customers who need power solutions they can depend on — and that’s a position that’s hard to build and even harder to take away.

For anyone following industrial technology, healthcare infrastructure, or the semiconductor supply chain,”XP Power Limited” is a company worth paying attention to.

XP Power Limited (LSE: XPP) is headquartered in Singapore and has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since 2000.