Publicly-listed data center firms Digital Realty, Equinix, and Iron Mountain have posted their quarterly earnings results for Q4 2022.
All three companies posted revenue growth, and in their earnings calls suggested confidence about the year ahead despite slowing growth from cloud providers.
Digital Realty acquired land in Rome, Accra, and Zagreb, while acquiring a building in Texas.
Equinix approved plans for new data centers in Istanbul and Seoul. It acquired two of its previously leased facilities and exited two facilities in Paris and Milan. However, it pushed back the go-live date for several of its hyperscaler-focused xScale facilities.
Iron Mountain closed the year beating its 2022 leasing target.
American Tower posted steady revenue and profit from its data center division, though the wider compay saw a loss for the quarter due to impairment charges.
Cyxtera is due to publish its quarterly results in the near future. Switch Inc’s acquisition by DigitalBridge has closed, taking the company private.
Digital Realty: Revenues up, new facilities planned in Rome and Croatia
Colo giant Digital Realty posted revenues of $1.2 billion for Q4 2022, a three percent increase from the previous quarter and an 11 percent increase from the same quarter last year.
Net income for the quarter was net income of $1 million, down from $239 million in Q3 2022. Adjusted EBITDA of $639 million, a three percent increase from the previous quarter and a nine percent increase over the same quarter last year.
"Our fourth quarter results demonstrate the strengthening value proposition of PlatformDIGITAL and the growing momentum in our core business," said Digital Realty CEO Andy Power. "The Digital Realty team will continue to focus on delivering innovative and sustainable data center solutions while evolving to efficiently enable our customers to transform their businesses and succeed in the digital world."
The company signed a total of $117 million of new leases in the fourth quarter – totaling 59.4MW and 663,000 sq ft – and signed $195 million of renewal leases. For the full year, Digital renewed nearly $700 million of existing business.
Digital Realty acquired four sites totaling 65 acres that will support the future development of up to 84MW of IT load for $55 million. The company acquires land in Rome, Italy; Accrea, Ghana; Zagreb, Croatia; and Paris, France. The company also acquired 1122 Alma in Richardson, Texas.
In the earnings call, CEO Power said the Rome site was an ‘ideal interconnection point for future subsea cables’ that land in the city.
During the earnings calls, Corey Dyer, chief revenue officer, said demand was “as strong as ever,” especially with regard to hyperscale customers.
On supply chain issues, CEO Power said: “I'd say there's a loosening, but I would say we're not back to normal. And the production slots that become available seem to get gobbled up quickly.”
Equinix: Revenues up slightly, xScale facilities facing delays
Q4 2022 saw Equinix post revenues of $1.87 billion, the company's 80th quarter of consecutive growth, and a two percent increase on Q4 2021. Q3 2022 revenue was $1. bn.
Adjusted EBITDA was $839 million. Net Income was $129 million.
The company announced revues of $7.263 billion for the whole of 2022, a nine percent increase on 2021 and breaking the $7 billion mark for the first time. For 2023, the company is projecting revues of $8.1-$8.2bn.
Operating Income for the year was $1.201 billion, an 8 percent increase while Net Income was $705 million. Adjusted EBTIDA was $3.37 billion; for 2023 the company is projecting Adjusted EBITDA of $3.61-$3.69bn.
Charles Meyers, CEO and president of Equinix, said: “Our customers are validating the increasing demand for comprehensive solutions that offer ‘the right cloud for them’ with flexibility to place their workloads across multiple public clouds, private clouds, and on-prem—and they are finding Equinix’s global platform and interconnected ecosystems a unique environment to architect this customizable infrastructure.”
On its xScale hyperscale unit, Equinix saw its São Paulo 5x-2, Dublin 6x-1, and Osaksa 2x-2 facilities open. The company has 139MW of capacity live under xScale, 117MW of which is leased. The company leased a total 10MW of additional capacity during Q4 2022; 117MW is live, and 64MW is under development.
The company's Mexico City 3x-1 has seen its opening date pushed back from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023. Madrid 3x-1 was pushed back from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023, while Madrid 7x-1 and Warsaw 4x-1 have been pushed back from Q1 2023 to Q4.
During the quarter, the company approved plans for new data centers in Istanbul (IL4 phase 1 – 1,125 cabinets due Q3 2024), and Seoul (SL4 phase 1 – 475 cabinets due Q2 2024). SL4 is set to be partly leased from Equinix’s upcoming Seoul 2x hyperscale facility.
Equinix’s SP4 facility in Sao Paulo Brazil and GV2 facility in Geneva, Switzerland, both previously leased, are now owned by the company. Equinix also exited two facilities; PA1 in Paris, and ML4 in Milan.
During the earnings call, Meyers was optimistic about the coming year, saying that slowing growth amongst the cloud providers could play into the company’s hands.
Iron Mountain: Revenue stable, company leases 14MW
Iron Mountain’s data center business posted revenues of $103.7 million for the quarter, up 15 percent year-on-year, but only a $3 million increase on Q3 2022. Adjusted EBITDA was $48.67 million.
For Q4 2022, the whole of Iron Mountain posted revenues of $1.28 billion, Net Income of $126 million, and Adjusted EBITDA of $472 million. For the year company posted revenues of $5.1 billion, net income of $562 million, and revenues of $5.1 billion.
“Our record performance reflects the continued strength and resilience of our business model, and we are pleased to report a set of very strong results for the fourth quarter and full year, including all-time record Adjusted EBITDA and continued strength in AFFO,” said William L. Meaney, president and CEO of Iron Mountain. “Looking ahead to 2023, we are energized by our growth plans and we are confident in our extraordinary team’s ability to continue our mission of delivering value for our customers.”
The company leased 14MW of data center capacity in the quarter. For the year Iron Mountain leased 139MW in total. Q4 saw the company sign 56 new or expansion leases, and renew 128.
During the earnings call, Meany said of data centers: “This area of our business has gone from strength to strength over the past several years, and we continue to see tremendous opportunity in serving both hyperscale and colocation customers, and significant growth potential for our data center footprint.”
He noted the company had secured a 6MW expansion lease at its Phoenix campus with an existing Global Fortune 100 customer.
American Tower: Slight revenue increase
American Tower, which acquired CoreSite in 2021, posted $198 million in revenue from its data center business for the quarter. The unit posted a profit of $99 million for Q4. For Q3 the company saw revenues of $194 million and operating profit was $94 million.
For the year American Tower’s data center business, which includes CoreSite plus a number of facilities previously owned by AT, posted $767 million in revenue and $381 million in profit.
The entire company posted total revenues of $2.705 billion, a 10.6 percent increase. Net income decreased 262.4 percent to a net loss of $717 million; the company said this was down to impairment charges, primarily in India. Adjusted EBITDA increased 12.6 percent to $1.707 billion.
For the whole of 2022, the company saw total revenues of $10.711 billion, net income of $1.697 billion (a drop of 33.9 percent), and Adjusted EBITDA increase 11.1 percent to $6.644 billion
Tom Bartlett, American Tower CEO, said: “We closed out 2022 with another quarter of strong performance, including double digit AFFO per Share and common stock dividend growth. Throughout the year, we saw compelling organic leasing trends, accelerated new site construction and achieved a record year of signed new business within our CoreSite business. We also prudently managed our investment grade balance sheet, successfully executed on the permanent financing plan for our CoreSite acquisition and maintained a disciplined approach to capital allocation.
The has acquired land in Denver and New Jersey to support its data center roll-out. The company currently has 31MW under construction, totaling around 235,650 sq ft (21,900 sqm) that is around one-third pre-leased at this point. A further 224MW totaling more than 2 million sq ft (185,800 sqm) is being held for future development.
In the earnings call, Bartlett added: “In our data centers business, where we're entering 2023 with record backlog, we'll continue to focus on driving increasing growth, both on an organic basis and through high-yield development opportunities that are ongoing today.”
“Demand trends in the data center space remain robust driven by digital platforms, leveraging distributed computing and by the early stages of a sustained enterprise migration from on-prem to hybrid IT and multi-cloud architectures. As a result, we see a long runway of opportunity to drive strong returns by investing in the expansion of our existing CoreSite campuses and leveraging the open cloud exchange to extend their interconnection-rich ecosystem.”
The company didn’t add anything new with regards to its planned Edge rollout at tower sites.
DigitalBridge: DataBank and Vantage stakes up for grabs
DigitalBridge, which owns a large number of data centers and data center companies, reported fourth quarter 2022 total revenues of $301 million, and GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders of $19 million.
The company posted full-year 2022 total revenues of $1.1 billion, and a GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders of $382 million.
DigitalBridge, which owns or has major stakes in the likes of DataBank, Switch, and Vantage, doesn’t break out revenue by unit. But during the earnings call, CEO Marc Ganzi said DataBank had ‘its best quarter of leasing and company history in the fourth quarter’. He also claimed that Switch ‘out-leased Equinix and outleased Digital Realty last year on the public cloud side.'
Ganzi also said the company aims to raise more funds while also getting the ‘operating segment deconsolidated’ akin to how the company recently recapitalized DataBank.
“Our plan is to raise more than $8-plus billion of net new capital across our platforms,” he said. “My priority continues to be advancing the simplification of our corporate profile, which will ultimately result in the deconsolidation of our operating segment; What will ultimately emerge as a lean, profitable asset manager serving secular growth markets, devoid of the complexity of assembling and then pulling apart two business models.”
Later this year DigitalBridge aims to reduce its ownership of DataBank further, raising another $600 million and diluting its ownership to around eight percent. Likewise, the company could reduce its ownership of Vantage from 13 percent to just under 10 percent.
Ganzi also said that the company has been ‘looking at the notion’ of entering the private equity space in digital infrastructure and how to expand more into renewable energy.
“We're spending a lot of time around thinking about how we can grow the InfraBridge platform and continue to add strength in the renewable space,” he added.
Cyxtera: Goodwill charge sees company extend losses for 2024
After publishing its quarterly results weeks later than other colo firms, Cyxtera posted a loss for Q4 and 2022 as a whole.
Ongoing efforts to extend debt maturities saw the company cancel plans for an earnings call.