Bill Waltz announced that he wanted to retire. Then he stayed. In August 2025, Atkore’s president and chief executive told the board he planned to leave once a successor was appointed. By November, the company was considering a wider set of strategic alternatives, including a sale. Waltz committed to remain at least until that review was finished. The farewell had acquired a substantial item of unfinished business.
On October 19, 2026, Prysmian completed its acquisition of Atkore. Waltz’s service as its CEO and a director ended at closing. Later that day came a new assignment: strategic adviser, helping the businesses integrate. A retirement announcement, in this instance, needed a rather generous calendar.
The transition supplies a useful way to look at his career. Waltz has worked in businesses that make the things other businesses need to function: flow technologies, recycled glass, electrical conduit. His work has also involved the less tangible connections between factories, distributors, information systems and people. Follow those connections and the succession of executive titles becomes a more interesting story.
A career in the spaces between things
Start with his education. Waltz earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at Pennsylvania State University, a master’s in computer science at Villanova and an MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg school. He also completed General Electric’s Information Systems Management Program. The combination puts the factory floor, the information system and the balance sheet on the same academic transcript.
His early career included General Electric and management consulting at Deloitte. He subsequently spent fifteen years in various Pentair divisions, including a turn as president of Pentair Flow Technologies. From 2009 to 2013, he was chairman and CEO of Strategic Materials, the glass recycling business. These were different products, with different customers and processes. They belonged to the same broad industrial world, where making something is only part of getting it into use.
When Waltz joined Atkore in 2013, the assignment was specific: president of Plastic Pipe and Conduit. He became president of Conduit and Fittings in September 2015, then group president of Electrical Raceway in September 2017. The job grew through the products. Before he ran the company, he had worked through substantial parts of what it sold.
and Conduit
and Fittings
Raceway
and CEO
adviser
The predecessor who brought him in
In May 2018, Atkore announced that John Williamson would retire at the end of its fiscal year. Waltz became president and chief operating officer immediately, with the CEO handover to follow. It was a staged succession, giving the incoming leader a period alongside the outgoing one.
At the time, the board pointed to Waltz’s contributions to the electrical raceway business: developing its team, working on pricing and improving how products reached customers. That is a more concrete introduction than the usual collection of executive adjectives. It describes the operating work behind the promotion.
Waltz’s own acknowledgment was personal and precise. He thanked Williamson for bringing him aboard and for five years of mentorship. He also emphasized the team and the business system already in place. He was taking responsibility for an organization whose methods and relationships he had helped develop, with a predecessor he explicitly credited for teaching him.
Succession is often told from the moment a new name appears on the office door. Here, the five preceding years deserve equal billing. They explain how an executive responsible for one product business became the person chosen to run the whole company. The handover began well before the announcement.
A computer science degree meets the catalog
The electrical industry has an information problem alongside its manufacturing problems. Manufacturers have products to describe; distributors need information they can use. Waltz served as a board officer at the Industry Data Exchange Association, known as IDEA, which works on that exchange. His interest was practical: a shared platform makes communication between trading partners easier.
That work sits comfortably beside his computer science education, although a degree alone does not explain a career. The connection is in the subject matter. A factory produces a physical object. A distributor also needs the information attached to that object. The two have to travel together, even when they pass through different systems.
“I enjoy helping and giving back to the industry.”
Bill Waltz, on his IDEA board service
His industry service extended to NEMA and NAED, representing manufacturers and electrical distributors. He has also served on Manufacturers Alliance’s board of trustees. These organizations put a company executive in contact with questions larger than one manufacturer’s product range. In February 2026, IDEA announced that Waltz and United Electric Supply’s George Vorwick had stepped away from its board as they approached retirement.
There is something pleasingly concrete about an executive discussing product information. The catalog is rarely invited to the glamorous end of the business conversation. Yet it has an excellent attendance record wherever somebody is trying to place an order.
A trophy with a crowded acceptance speech
In June 2023, Waltz was named an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Midwest award winner. The judges assessed long-term value, growth, purpose and impact, among other criteria. Waltz responded by directing credit to Atkore’s board, leadership team and the 5,000 employees then working across the organization. An award addressed to one executive received a reply with a much longer distribution list.
His public LinkedIn posts carry a similar emphasis. Writing about an NYSE visit marking Atkore’s listing anniversary, he began with the pleasure of the occasion, then returned to working with fellow employees and serving customers. His posts also thanked suppliers and shareholders. The recurring subject was the network of people around the business.
NAED gave him its Associate Distinguished Service Award in 2024. Two years later, he was among its Honorary Life Achievement Award recipients, recognized at the association’s national meeting in May. The sequence adds industry service to the corporate record. It also brings the retirement theme back into view, even while he was still running Atkore.
The less tidy part of the record
Running a manufacturer means the financial results continue arriving while the longer story is being written. Atkore’s fiscal second quarter of 2026 brought sales of $731.4 million and a net loss of $124.1 million. The company’s adjusted EBITDA was $81.1 million, down from the prior year. Growing sales and a difficult profit result occupied the same release.
By the third quarter, sales were $794.8 million, up 8.1% from a year earlier. Net income was $0.7 million, compared with roughly $43 million in the corresponding prior-year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA rose to $104.7 million. These are different measures, and the distinctions matter: improvement in an adjusted operating measure does not turn a small net profit into a large one.
The strategic review also involved decisions about what Atkore should keep. During 2026, it divested its HDPE pipe and conduit business and its Belgian surface protection and powder coatings operations. The company said those actions helped focus its portfolio. This was an operating transition as well as a transaction process, with plants, product lines and employees inside the decisions.
The value of the path
Prysmian’s acquisition carried an implied enterprise value of approximately $3.8 billion, with Atkore shareholders receiving $95 per share in cash. The buyer described the fit through complementary products: its cables alongside Atkore’s conduits, cable management and metal framing. The business logic runs along the route electricity takes through a building.
That route reaches markets including data centers, utilities, and commercial and industrial infrastructure. A server may attract the photograph, but its electrical installation requires a supporting cast. Conduit has never been particularly demanding about its billing. It still has to be there.
At closing, Andrea Pirondini became president and CEO of the legal subsidiary. Prysmian separately announced Brian Moriarty as president leading the Atkore business, alongside his existing industrial and construction responsibilities. Waltz’s next role was advisory. The distinction marks an actual handover: the responsibility to run the business moved, while his knowledge of it remained available.
Leaving the office, keeping a role
When he first announced his retirement plans, Waltz said he looked forward to more time with his family. The intervening year brought a broader strategic review, a buyer, a completed transaction and an integration assignment. His original intention remained part of the story, alongside the duties that kept him involved.
Another appointment was already on the calendar. In July 2026, Astec announced that he would join its board as an independent director on October 29 and serve on its Compensation Committee. Astec makes equipment for road building, aggregate processing and concrete production. The products change again; the industrial setting remains familiar.
Waltz’s career now has a clear Atkore arc: an operating appointment in 2013, the CEO role in 2018, and a handover in 2026. What connects those dates is the work between them: developing a team, moving products through distribution, sharing information, and preparing an organization for its next owner. Even the exit has a connection to manage. For an executive who spent years in the infrastructure business, that seems an appropriate final assignment.