GDS Holdings (HKEX:9698) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

0:01 Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for GDS Holdings Limited's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Laura Chen, Head of Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, Laura.

0:26 Thank you. Hello everyone, welcome to the second quarter 2024 earnings conference call of GDS Holdings Limited. The company's results were issued via Newswire Services earlier today and are posted online. A summary presentation, which we'll refer to during this conference call, can be viewed and downloaded from our IR website at investors.gdsservices.com. Leading today's call is Mr. William Huang, GDS founder, chairman, and CEO, who will provide an overview of our business strategy and performance. Mr. Dan Newman, GDS CFO, will then review the financial and operating results. Ms. Jamie Koo, CEO of GDS International, is also available to answer questions. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S.

1:17 Private Securities Delegation Reform Act of 1995. forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in a company's prospectus as filed with the US SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Please also note that GDS earnings press release at this conference call includes discussions of unaudited gap financial information as well as unaudited non-gap financial measures. GDS press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-gap measures to the unaudited most directly comparable gap measures.

2:09 I'll now turn over the call to GDS founder, chairman, and CEO. William, please go ahead, William.

2:18 Thank you. Hello everyone, this is William. Thank you for joining us on today's call. In QQ24, we achieved a revenue growth of 18% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 15%. This growth rate is quite remarkable in current market conditions. It reflects the progress which we have made in stabilizing our China business. and uplift from the highly successful execution of our international strategy. For our China business, we have two key financial objectives. Number one is to grow EBITDA at a steady rate.

3:04 And then number two is to generate a positive cash flow before financing. We believe that this combination can create significant equity value and help drive our share price recovery. In order to achieve these objectives, we provide delivery in the background. At the same time, we take a highly selective approach to new business, targeting orders which fits our inventory and have fixed moving schedules. This will allow us to grow while minimizing the need for incremental capex.

3:56 We have been following this strategy for a while and it's starting to produce noticeable results. Over the past couple of quarters, the growth moving rate has clearly stepped up. In 2Q24, it was over 20,000 square meters, the highest level for the past three years. The main reason for this improvement is the contract which we signed with faster moving schedule. These are mainly large internet customers whose business continues to grow strongly. However, We are also beginning to see improvements from orders which have been in the backlog for longer.

4:49 We expect this trend to continue as our customers implement their AI plans. In order to support higher moving, we need to complete some projects which have been in progress for a while. In the first half of 2024, we brought 45,000 square meters into service. At 30 June, this was already over 20% utilized. In the second half of 2024, we expect to complete another 32,000 square meters. The good news is that this does not require a lot of new capex. as we only incur the cost to complete.

5:45 The first indications of improved demand is customers observing capacity for which they already made commitments. This is underway. After that, we will start to see more new business opportunities. We are well-positioned to support AI demand as we are holding enough land and power quota. In the meantime, we will stick with our strategy of being very selective about what new business we take on. In our international business, we are already seeing very strong demand.

6:31 We had a phenomenal second quarter with two 206 megawatts of new orders spread across our two campuses in Johor. More recently, we signed a master sales agreement with a global technology company for capacity at our new campus in Bataan. This is a major breakthrough which will lead to further large orders. Singapore, Jeho Batan, is fast emerging as one of the very largest data center markets in the world. And we have a great market position. Where is this demand coming from?

7:20 Part of it is regional expansion. And part of it is spillover from the US, which is mostly AI-related. A critical success fact is that we were first mover into Johor and helped to create the market. We anticipated where demand will flow and secure this resource, which give us a time-to-market advantage. We have shown that we can execute delivery data centers in record time with state-of-the-art design and technology solutions. We have also shown that we can operate working with the local institutions to source and train talent. From the perspective of our customers, these are really meaningful differentiators.

8:25 As of today, we have 388 megawatts of total customer commitments, out of which 101 megawatts is already utilized and 287 megawatts is backlogged. The delivery schedule for most of the backlog is very short and the customers undertake to move in quickly. As a result, based on the terms of the existing contracts, we expect to have over 350 megawatts of utilized capacity within 24 months. I will now pass on to Dan for the financial and operating review.

9:13 Thank you William.

9:15 Following the completion of the first external equity capital raising for our international business, we have started formal disclosure of segment financials. As shown on slide 17, Digital Land Holdings Limited and its subsidiaries comprises all of our business and assets outside of mainland China, except for some minor third-party data centers in Hong Kong. We refer to this segment as GDSI or international. GDS Holdings Limited and all of its subsidiaries, excluding GDSI, comprises our ultimate holding company, and all of our business and assets in mainland China.

10:03 We refer to this segment as GDSH or China. Starting with the China segment on slide 18, in 2Q24, GDSH revenue increased by 8.9% and adjusted EBITDA increased by 4.3% year on year. In order to show the underlying growth rate, we excluded previously disclosed one-time items from 2Q23. GDSH revenue growth was mainly driven by an increase in total area utilized of 10.2% year-over-year.

10:49 As shown on slide 21, MSR per square meter comparing 2Q24 with 2Q23 was flat. However, EBITDA margin for 2Q24 versus 2Q23 was down by 2.1 percentage points. The main reason for this is the increase in power tariffs which occurred during the second half of last year. Turning to the international segment on slide 19, In 2Q24, GDFI revenue increased by 24% and adjusted EBITDA by 80% quarter on quarter.

11:38 As shown on slide 21, during 2Q24, there was a 28 megawatt increase in IT power utilized. The MSR per kilowatt per month was $135 including Power Income. As William mentioned, the ramp up over the next 24 months will be extraordinary. The rate of progress quarter by quarter depends on the timing of capacity completions and contractual revenue commitments. The increase in the next couple of quarters is quite small, but thereafter it will take off.

12:23 Turning to CapEx on slide 23. In 1H24, our China CapEx totaled 1.8 billion RMB. We expect lower CapEx in the second half of the year, including the proceeds of the BOT data center transfer, and still maintain our 2.5 billion RMB guidance for the full year. In 1H24, Our international CapEx was also around 1.8 billion RMB. In the second half of the year, we expect CapEx to increase significantly, and it is likely that we will exceed our CapEx guidance for international of 4 billion RMB.

13:11 Fortunately, the lead time from incurring CapEx to generating revenue in the international business is very short. Turning to cash flow on slide 24. Following the closing of the Series A new issue for international, GDSH received over 1.5 billion RMB from GDSI on repayment of a shareholder loan. This is included in investment cash flow for the GDSH segment and financing cash flow for GDSI. Including this repayment, cash flow before financing for GDSH will be clearly positive this year in line with our financial objectives.

13:58 GDSI cash flow for 2Q24 included $448 million, or 3.2 billion RMB, of proceeds from Series A. The remaining $224 million from Series A was received by GDSI in July. As shown on slide 25, at the end of 2Q24, The cash balance of GDSH increased to 8.4 billion RMB and the net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA multiple decreased to 7.2 times. In order to accelerate our financial transformation, we're working on a number of asset monetization initiatives.

14:43 Our key strategic goal is to set up a REIT listed in China holding data center assets. There is strong policy support for new infrastructure REITs. We have selected a stabilized project to move forward and are working through the regulatory approval process. This will be a first-of-a-kind transaction for data centers in China, and we are strongly committed to making it happen. Turning to international on slide 27, At the end of 2Q24, GDSI had a cash balance of 3.1 billion RMB pro forma for the second tranche of Series A proceeds.

15:29 Given the existing level of customer commitments and the strong sales pipeline, we plan to raise further equity for GDSI in a Series B round. The process is already underway. There's strong interest from global investors and we are confident that this round will set a higher benchmark for the value of our equity investment in international. Finishing on slide 29, we are maintaining our formal guidance for FY24 consolidated revenue adjusted EBITDA and CAPEX. However, it is likely that we will raise our CAPEX guidance at the time of 3Q24 results when we have a firmer view on the timing and amount of capex for international.

16:20 We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator, please. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question on the phone, please press star 11 and wait for a name to be announced. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to one question. If you have more questions, please re-enter the queue. One moment for the first question. First question comes from the line of Yang Liu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

16:54 Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I would like to congratulate you first on the very strong set of results. I would like to ask about the China part, the REITs plan. Could management elaborate more in terms of the timing of this infrastructure REIT? and also what could be the potential valuation when you inject the asset to the REITs and what type of investor could be the buyer and what is the current hurdle or key debate between the buyer and the company and also between the regulator and the company. Thank you.

17:46 Thank you, Yang Liu. It's Dan here. I'll answer that question. In order to pursue this strategy, we've selected a single site with two data centers as the seed asset for the REIT. Typical REIT offerings in China, historically, have been around 2 billion RMB per transaction. that seems to be a size which the market is comfortable with and we select an asset to fit with that. Under the regulations, the asset must be stabilized. We must own the real estate, so the asset also qualifies on that basis. There's a series of regulatory approvals that we need to obtain.

18:42 We've already been working on this for over one year and we're getting to the level where the regulatory approvals would be sorted at central government level and if that is successful we will receive approval to be able to proceed with the offering which is then valid for one year. We hope to reach that milestone next year it's not normal to do testing the waters or pre-marketing exercise in China but we do have an active dialogue with major financial institutions in China because we've also been looking at pre-packaging some assets which are not yet stabilized as a way of creating a pipeline for the REIT and we've received very positive feedback. There's a significant appetite amongst financial institutions in China to get exposure to new infrastructure including data centers, data centers which are green, which have very high quality internet company or cloud customers. We think that a substantial percentage of the

20:13 offering to the public will be taken up by strategic or anchor type investors. Under the regulations, we will be required to retain a 20%. There is quite a significant public listed REIT sector in China. Those REITs which are real estate based, trade on dividend yields which fall within a fairly well-defined range. If we take that range and look at it very conservatively based on the amount of income which we think we will be able to distribute, it implies an EBITDA multiple which I think it will be clearly appreciative compared with where we're trading.

21:15 If you look at our current public market value on some of the parts basis to strip out international, the last series A price benchmark, our China business is being valued at somewhere between 9 to 10 times current EBITDA. The China sector is trading at implied EBITDA, which is a quantum Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next questions. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Lothan from Raymond James.

22:01 Please ask your question.

22:04 Great, thank you. Can you characterize how much of the business in mainland China is AI driven? And can you give us an idea of the current impact of the Chinese economy to the demand on that base of the business? Thanks.

22:21 Okay, Frank, this is William. The first question is, I think the current demand The new demand in China currently, I think the 70% is driven by the AI type requirement, including the training and also inferencing. So the remaining 30% is driven by the internet company and also the traditional cloud business. Yeah, this is the second question.

22:55 How is the economy impacting demand?

22:58 I think so far, I think for the training and the cloud business, I think this is not directly impacted from current China macro environment. It's totally opposite. And I think this is based on a lot of the, let's say, giant, they are continuing to invest CapEx to train their own model and also try to, in China there's a lot of the, there's a lot of startup company was invested by the venture capital to do the more application type, the vertical type of the AI stuff. So this looks like it's create a very, it's create his own Let's say environment, right? So this is what's happening in China right now.

24:07 Thank you for the questions. Next question. One moment, please. Our next question comes from Sarah Wang from UBS. Please go ahead.

24:22 Thank you for the opportunity to ask a question and congratulations on the solid results. I have one question about international business. As Dan just mentioned, there's quite some capacity needed for international business. May I ask what's the future financing plan, especially in the near term as well as in the mid-term, for example, the potential spin-off or IPO?

24:46 Thank you. Before Dan answers this question, I think it's... Yeah, all the financing requirement is based on our focus for the next two or three years. So our target is to double the current order number within the next three years. So this is our base. So in terms of the financing plan, I think I would like to let Dan introduce experience a little bit more.

25:27 I mentioned that we've started the process for a series B round. This will be raising capital once again from external investors, global investors, using what will be a similar instrument, type of security, convertible preferred shares. Our base case assumption is that the new issue size will be similar to Series A, say $600 to $800 million. It's possible that we could increase the size. Indeed, the appetite is there. After completing that offering, which we aim to do before the end of this year, I think that the next financing that we will undertake at our international holding company level may be mezzanine debt. Certainly intend to explore that as a way of optimizing the overall cost of capital for international.

26:39 At the same time, we are putting in place senior debt at the project level, usually in local currencies, and we are currently undertaking the a large syndicated term loan for our Malaysian business. That covers the range of different financing initiatives in the international. Thank you for the questions. Next questions will come from the line of Daily Li of Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

27:18 Hi, I'm taking the question. I have one question about the international business. It seems that the area in service is in a good momentum in 2Q, up like 50% quarter on quarter. And how do we see the trend in Q3 and Q4 for the area in service for the international business in absolute value or like quarter on quarter growth? Thank you.

27:53 We gave some guidance in the earlier presentation and the prepared remarks about the timeframe for delivery of a very substantial part of the overall backlog. We currently have about 280 megawatts of capacity which is committed but not yet delivered and utilized. And we said that that will be most of that. In fact, we said 260 megawatts out of 280 megawatts will be delivered and utilized and revenue generating within 24 months, which is a very rapid ramp up. It implies that our our revenue generating capacity will increase by 3.5 times over the next 24 months.

28:56 We did not give a quarter-by-quarter breakdown, but as an indication, over the next two quarters, the second half of this year, the increase in capacity and service and the delivery and utilization will increase by a relatively small amount. But over the course of next year, 2025, the increase will be very substantial. Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Edison Li of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

29:39 Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations again. I have two questions. Number one is that for your power capacity or power security in Southeast Asia. I think that amount increased from 711 megawatt from your first quarter presentation to 797. So may I know where that incremental is coming from, which location is coming from? And number two is you said that you want a big international technology customer at Batam. And can you discuss your customers in Malaysia? Is it still... I think go company right now and what do you expect that to change or or or situation to change or happen over the next couple of quarters?

30:26 The first question about the increase in in secured resource, developable capacity. That is in both of our sites in Johor, where we completed land purchases for additional plots, contiguous with our existing sites, and where there is power infrastructure in place, and we were able to upsize the amount of power that we were able to obtained through that infrastructure.

31:14 The second question is asking about the customer mix in Southeast Asia.

31:18 I think currently we already have, let's say, five customers, both from China and international. Or like the industry... are all technology leaders. So I think we are very, very focused on trying to diversify the customer. This is always our target, right? So the current mix is, let's say, around 70% from China. It's not a single customer. It's three of them. And another is also international customer.

32:07 But based on our current are focused. I think in the next 12 months, the international customer will increase the percentage as well. Ultimately, I think it will be 50-50 in this region.

32:28 Can I follow up with one quick question? So you said that there are five customers, including China and international, and then You said that you won a big international customer in Indonesia. So can I assume that you have one international customer in Indonesia or just one customer in Indonesia and that's international and then you have four customers in Malaysia and that's China and international? Is my understanding correct?

32:54 Yes. Indonesia is international and four in Johor. Chinese and international. Yeah, you're right. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the questions. Next question comes from the line of Louis Zhang from Citi. Please go ahead.

33:18 Thank you, management, for taking my questions. Congratulations on the strong results with like solid international growth and signing and then the domestic recovery. I actually got two quick questions. The first one is for the domestic one. I think that like the net moving for this quarter is very encouraging and the MSL is trending up like how shall we think about the pace of the moving and MSL recovery ahead and more importantly the sustainability of the demand and then second question is for the international I think some regional or global peers also have their planning in your hall and for seeing like increasing DC supply, what is your strategy in SEA? And what are the like your plantation over the regional or the global peers?

34:05 And then also one more thing on like the supporting infrastructures like electricity grid, like with those kind of stuff limit the near term supply growth. Thank you.

34:20 Louis, I'll begin with your questions about China. So the move-in, yes, it was a very clear step up in 1Q23 compared with the level of move-in over the past 12 quarters. And that was continued. In fact, it was even higher in the second quarter. This is partly a result of the contracts we signed in the last 12 or 18 months. which have faster move-in schedules than those that we signed previously, and also the beginning of a pickup in the move-in by customers whose commitments have been in the backlog for longer. So based on the contractual terms, but also what we currently know about our customers' intentions, We expect the current level of movement to continue through next year as far as we have visibility, which I think is very encouraging.

35:37 For the MSR, we look at MSR on a quarterly basis and compare the rate of change with the same quarter of the prior year. And so over the past few quarters, on average, the MSR has decreased by a little over 2%. And as we go into next year, there will be further decrease but probably less than the decrease during 24 as compared with 23. So it's also encouraging to see that the MSR is bottoming out. Thank you. OK.

36:25 The second question is, I think, about our strategy in this region, right, in Johor. I think, number one, I think everybody knows we are the first mover in this region. And we still, in the next three years, I think that we still enjoy the first mover advantage because the time is lucky and the demand profile still will continue maintain a very strong level. So even after three years, I think still the market size will increase, still continue to increase. So I don't think in short term, in the next five years, it will be another issue for all the players in this region. So I think this is based on our understanding of the market. So, of course, if we talk about after five years, what will happen? I think our strategy is that, number one, I think we are looking at not only this region market.

37:36 We are also start, we already start to develop the region, other market in this region. Everybody know GDS is a market creator. So we don't follow. So I think we will give you another surprise in the next three years. Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next questions. Full-up questions from Yang Liu of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

38:06 Thanks for the opportunity to ask another question. One more thing from my side is regarding the REITs playing in China. Could you please talk about whether the REITs will be a public trade REIT or it's a private REIT or actually you are targeting both? and another thing is what could be the estimated debt reduction if you can deliver one REIT project to the, inject one asset to the REITs.

38:46 Yeah, this is Dan here. So the REIT is listed, will be listed on one of the stock exchanges in China and it will be offered publicly. The typical REIT offering size I mentioned earlier is about 2 billion RMB. As a guideline, I would say that transaction that size, we would expect to deconsolidate around 1 billion RMB of debt and if we sell 80% of the equity, then we will receive equity cash proceeds for the disposal of 80% at the valuation of the offering. So the combined effect should be that it helps to increase our liquidity, decrease net debt and also accretive on EB to EBITDA on multiple basis. That's a single transaction. Of course, once the REIT is established, the possibility is there for us to drop further assets into it.

40:13 And that's what we would hope to do over the longer term. But for now, our focus is just on achieving the first step, which is to set up this vehicle. You asked about privately placed. I mentioned earlier that we're working on pre-packaging some assets. That will be privately placed. It takes the form of an asset-backed security. Technically, it is listed on a stock exchange, but it's easier to think of it as a privately placed security. It's a stepping stone in terms of packaging the assets so that it is, you know, ready to be injected into a REIT when the assets are stabilized.

41:03 Thank you. And one more question regarding the international business. It's very encouraging to see the big new orders. Could you please update us what is the IRR trend for the big new orders? Is it stable or rising a little bit or declining a little bit. What's the trend compared with the previous orders?

41:33 I'd say it's very consistent. It may be easier to talk about a development yield rather than IRR. The development yield is in the low teens, which is quite acceptable to us in terms of a Thank you for the questions. Next question comes from the live, Jonathan Atkin from RBC Capital Markets.

42:30 Please ask your question.

42:32 Thanks. So, to you, Carter, what about China and then what about international? So, in China, I was just interested in any comments you would have about the contract renewals and churn outlook for the remainder of this year. It looks like you've got a fairly sizable amount. Coming up for renewal in the second half of this year, 12.1% of total area committed. And then internationally, I would agree with William's comments about Johor, and I think you have somewhat of an incumbency or early mover advantage. But Johor is something that I was interested in because you were one of the winners of the CFA process. and is there any visibility in terms of timeline as to when you might get that project underway and when that might be ready for service or is it too soon to have a view on that?

43:22 Thank you. John and Stan, on the first part of your question about churn in China, you're right. We have a large amount of contract renewals in the second half of the year, but if we look at The quantum of churn, we measure it in terms of area utilized. The churn is a percentage of our total area utilized. And over the past six quarters, it's been running at an annualized rate of about 5%, which I believe is relatively low by international standards. In absolute terms, it's averaged and Yixin Qian. And the second half of this year, it will continue at about that rate. But if we look into next year, I think that 3% to 5% annual churn rate would be normal for us. And we don't currently actually have any visibility on any churn which is exceptional.

44:36 Those numbers represent really quite a small percentage of the total amount of capacity which is coming up for contract renewal as you pointed out.

44:50 Yeah. John, I think the Singapore project, yeah. You know, in Singapore, so I think it's very difficult. Number one is getting the CFA. It's very difficult, right? The second, now we win the CFA, but The second issue is to gather the very, very good location of the land is more difficult. Fortunately, we are in the process to acquire land right now. I think we believe it's in the process and should be done in the next couple of months, completed the process. We aim to deliver will be here before the end of 2026 to launch the service to the market. That's a pretty firm schedule.

45:54 Thank you for the questions. In the interest of time, that concludes the Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.

46:03 Thank you once again for joining us today and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.