The Chinese data center giant GDS increases its value

Shanghai-based GDS Holdings, with a market cap of $7 billion, is the largest publicly traded carrier-neutral data center provider in China. Developer and operator of high-performance data centers in China, GDS Holdings must access capital markets regularly, to fund its sizeable development and acquisition pipeline. Last week, the company demonstrated to investors an ability to fund asset purchases in Beijing, where data center capacity is scarce. The company raised a total of approximately US$276.7 million in proceeds from the public offering after the underwriters’ exercise in full of their option to purchase additional ADSs.

Acquisition of data center campus in Beijing

On December 4, GDS announced an equity purchase agreement for three data centers located in the Shunyi district of Beijing, close to its existing Beijing 5 (“BJ5”) data center. Around 67% of the aggregate capacity of BJ10, BJ11, and BJ12 is committed or pre-committed by a leading short video streaming company, an existing hyperscale customer of GDS since earlier and around 33% by one of China’s largest internet companies, a top-five customer by net revenue of GDS for several years.

“Data center capacity in Beijing is scarce. The addition of this data center campus adds substantially to our presence in China’s largest Tier 1 data center market and expands our relationship with two key hyperscale customers. We have established a successful track record of acquiring data centers that match our criteria and we will continue to pursue opportunities in a disciplined way,”

said William Huang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of GDS.

Last month, Huang said about third-quarter earnings that in the past few months, customer sentiment has become a lot more positive. Cloud adoption continues on a steep upward path, with market leaders reporting 65 to 100-percent growth.

Source: 1  2