CapitaLand to acquire its first hyperscale data centre campus in China for 3.66b yuan

CAPITALAND announced on Wednesday that it will be investing 3.66 billion yuan (S$757.7 million) to acquire its first hyperscale data centre campus in China, the world's second-largest data-centre market and the largest in the Asia-Pacific.

The potential acquisition is via the purchase of 100 per cent equity interest in two companies registered in China, the property giant said in a statement.

Located in Minhang District, an established data centre hub in Shanghai, the operating data-centre campus serves two of China's largest telecommunications companies.

The hyperscale data-centre campus comprises four buildings with a gross floor area of up to 75,000 square metres and up to 55 megawatts of IT power capacity, CapitaLand said.

CapitaLand is looking to acquire the data-centre campus from AVIC Trust, an investment arm of Shanghai-listed AVIC Capital, and from an unrelated third-party vendor. The property giant expects the acquisition to be completed by Q3 2021, subject to fulfilment of certain conditions precedent.

RHB analyst Vijay Natarajan believes that CapitaLand has acquired the data centre to undertake asset enhancement and may inject the building into one of CapitaLand's private funds or Reits post yield stabilisation.

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"Generally, if the asset is mature with stabilised yields and fits within the mandate it will be ideal for the Reit to acquire," he said.

He further noted that in this case, assets were not fully ramped up yet and that asset enhancement works needed to be done.

Currently, the group has four data centres in Singapore, 11 in Europe and is the fund and asset manager for the development of a data centre in Korea.

With the potential acquisition of the hyperscale data-centre campus, the group's combined data-centre portfolio represents more than S$2.5 billion in real-estate assets under management.

He Jihong, chief executive officer for data centre and chief corporate strategy officer in the CapitaLand Group, said: "5G, artificial intelligence and big data are driving the growth of the digital economy and creating strong demand for data centres. Data centres are a growing new-economy asset class and represent a global investment opportunity and a key strategic business focus for CapitaLand."

CapitaLand shares closed at S$3.72 on Wednesday, down 0.5 per cent or S$0.02.