DuPont Fabros, one of the largest data center wholesalers in the US, is preparing for an offering of preferred stock priced at US$25 per share.

Including both 2.6m shares offered and the optional 390,000 shares on top, the company potentially stands to gain up to $72m in capital. It said it would use proceeds of the sale to repay outstanding debt under its $100m credit facility.

The offering commenced on 12 January and will close on 19 January.

DuPont reported $0.22 earnings per share on $73.8m in revenue for the third quarter of 2011 (latest reported). Revenue was up 22% year over year.

The company has recently expanded its live data center floor inventory in two US markets.

It brought a brand new data center in Santa Clara, California, online in October. As of the end of the third quarter of 2011, 13% of the 18.2MW first phase was leased out.

When it reported earnings for Q3 2011, the company announced that it had lowered rent expectations for the new Silicon Valley facility. Its CEO Hossein Fateh attributed this to moves competitors in the market had taken.

“In Santa Clara we did lower, slightly, our rental assumptions, because like I've said before, there are a couple of private players on the market that I felt had done deals that we wouldn't want to do,” Fateh said in November. “I wanted to be tempered with our rental rates in that market.”

The company’s competition in the Silicon Valley is substantial, including heavyweights like Digital Realty Trust, CoreSite and Vantage.

DuPont has also recently brought a new data center online in Ashburn, Virginia. The company considers this region its strongest market. Phase I launched with 13MW of capacity and was 8% leased as of the third quarter’s end. This is the company’s fifth data center in Ashburn.