- What Rogers Communications is selling its data centre portfolio
- Why The telecom hopes to raise $1b to pay off debt
- What next Listings for the 12 sites are expected to be made available in the coming months
Rogers Communications is putting its 12 Canadian data centres on the market, a sign that it may exit the sector.
The telecommunications giant is looking to raise around $1b via the sale. Given the sharp interest in data centres from tech companies investing heavily in AI and cloud computing, market watchers believe the properties could fetch as much as $2,700/sf. The properties, leased to third-party operators, are in Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax, London, Toronto and Hamilton.
Proceeds are slated to go towards paying off debt incurred as a result of the company’s $26b merger with Shaw Communications last year.
The listing is expected to attract interest from data management companies like Vantage Data Centers, which recently announced it would expand its existing portfolio of North American sites. Tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, which have invested heavily in AI-focused facilities across Canada, also would have the operational capacity to absorb the Rogers facilities.
“[Rogers is] going to be looking for operators to come in and take the business they have,” a market watcher said. “It’s not just data centres, there are offices, so it’s likely these are multi-use facilities.”
Scotiabank has been recruited to handle the sale. In 2023, the bank, with CBRE, brokered Allied Properties’ sale of three enterprise data centres in downtown Toronto to KDDI Corp. for $1.35b.
It took some eight months to close the Allied sale, and market watchers think a deal for the Rogers data centres could take longer given the amount of due diligence required for a portfolio that size.
In moving to divest its data centres, Rogers follows other Canadian telecom companies that have sold left the space to high operating costs. Data centres are expensive to operate, due in large part due to their enormous power needs. Bell Canada, for example, sold all 13 of its facilities to Equinix for just over $1b in 2020.
“It’s just too expensive to operate from a capital standpoint,” a broker with experience in the data centre sector said.
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