Earnings, M&A, strategic developments, legacy assets, expansion activity
Another busy week saw more from earnings season, while there continues to be strategic and expansion activity.
Digital Ocean on the cloud side and Equinix on the data centre side reported results and things were in line with expectations. There has been slowing in the demand profile, but infrastructure businesses continue to demonstrate resilience, while holding down a strong and stable foundation.
There has been less M&A activity of late, but there was one notable data centre deal as Dartpoints acquired Venyu in Louisiana. There were other developments of note. QScale, a new operator in Quebec, secured a strategic investment from Macquarie-backed Aligned Data Centers and Cyxtera closed financing for continued operations as it looks at a number of different strategic options. There were multiple transactions last year stemming from the dissolution of Sungard AS and 365 Data Centers has spent the time since consolidating those assets and extending its portfolio across an expanded footprint.
The colocation industry continues to be at a crossroads as legacy assets are being realigned and combined with select assets that have a place for them that makes sense. DigitalBridge’s earnings included some interesting and useful comments about where things are going in this regard.
Finally, there was more expansion activity in a number of US markets. Prime Data Centers expanded to the Phoenix market, DataBank broke ground in Atlanta, Netrality expanded in Houston and Novva Data Centers confirmed plans to enter the Reno, Nevada market. In locations outside the US, Rack Centre is planning a larger data centre in Lagos, Nigeria, while Equinix got approval to build further in Slough, outside London. Meanwhile, Scala launched a few data centre in Rio, Brazil.
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