This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
NEXTDC is undertaking a $550 million capital raising to further its expansion into Asia, including new data centre development sites.
The capital raising of a fully underwritten $550 million institutional placement of new fully paid ordinary shares and a non-underwritten Share Purchase Plan of up to $200 million.
The Asian development sites are anticipated to expand NEXTDC’s data centre development pipeline in the region, which will add to the group’s planned capacity of more than 1GW.
Back in April, NEXTDC launched a $1.32 billion raising to develop and boost facilities in Sydney and Melbourne.
CBRE’s annual Global Data Centre Investor Survey recently found that 97% of investors are planning to increase their investment into data centres in 2024, with 92% allocating more than $100 million into data centres and 44% planning to allocate more than US$500 million into the sector.
With CBRE’s Q1 Asia Pacific Data Centre Trends report found new Australian data centre supply is now fully contracted, due largely to rapid cloud adoption and AI demand.
Meanwhile in the data centre space, Blackstone recently acquired Asia-Pacific data centre operator AirTrunk for $24 billion, in record takeover deal for the region reflecting the ongoing demand for data centre assets.
Macquarie Asset Management (MAM) and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) sold their 88% interest in AirTrunk to the four Blackstone funds and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
“The AirTrunk story is one of genuine partnership between MAM, PSP Investments and AirTrunk’s world class team. Our journey with AirTrunk, and the drive and foresight of our teams in Asia Pacific, has resulted in AirTrunk expanding its footprint across key markets in the region, achieving a more than eightfold increase in contracted capacity,” said Ani Satchcroft, co-head of infrastructure at MAM, Asia Pacific.
“Today’s transaction demonstrates MAM’s ability to identify, invest in, and nurture digital infrastructure assets that are resilient, scalable and pivotal in meeting today’s burgeoning demand for data, cloud services and the adoption of artificial intelligence.”
MAM and PSP Investments initially acquired the major stake back in 2020, having since expanded from five data centres in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong to 11 sites across the region including in Japan and Malaysia.
With AirTrunk’s capacity across the portfolio has now frown from 450MW to over 1.8GW and worth US$55 billion, including facilities under construction.
“Our successful collaboration with MAM and the AirTrunk management team has enabled AirTrunk to become a market-leading independent hyperscale data centre platform in Asia-Pacific from a customer experience, operational and sustainability standpoint,” said Sandiren Curthan, managing director and global head of infrastructure investments at PSP Investments.
“This partnership has not only delivered outstanding results for our beneficiaries but also validates our investment strategy focused on partnering with top-tier management teams and like-minded investors to support infrastructure businesses globally in their growth ambitions while achieving operational excellence.”
Robin Khuda is set to remain on at AirTrunk as the CEO, after establishing the company in 2015.
“In under a decade, we’ve built the largest platform in the region, with data centres in all major markets operating as essential digital infrastructure underpinning the digital economy,” said Khuda.
“Today’s announcement is a testament to the strength of our platform, vision, execution and team – the experts and innovators, trusted by our customers to deliver and operate, with a passion to ensure sustainability is at the forefront of the finance, design, build and operations of our data centres.”
