Equinix Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 2, 2022

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Equinix Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines will be able to listen only until we open for questions. Also, today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katrina Raimo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance, Sustainne Willoughby, you may begin.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, and welcome to today's Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the statements we'll be making today are forward looking nature and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may vary significantly from those statements and may be affected by the risks we identified in today's press release and those identified in our filings with the SEC, Including our most recent Form 10 ks filed on February 18, 2022 and 10 Q filed on July 29, 2022. Equinix assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or comment on forward looking statements made on this call. In addition, in light of Regulation Fair Disclosure, It is Equinix's policy not to comment on its financial guidance during the quarter unless it is done through an explicit public disclosure. In addition, we will provide non GAAP measures on today's conference call.

Speaker 1

We provide a reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures And a list of the reasons why the company uses these measures in today's press release on the Equinix IR page at www.equinix.com. We have made available on the IR page of our website a presentation designed to accompany this discussion, along with certain supplemental financial information and other data. We'd also like to remind you that we post important information about Equinix in the IR page from time to time and encourage you to check our website regularly for the most current available information. With us today are Charles Meyers, Equinix's CEO and President and Keith Taylor, Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we'll be taking questions from sell side analysts.

Speaker 1

In the interest of wrapping this call up in an hour, we'd like to ask these analysts to limit any At this time, I'll turn

Speaker 2

the call over to Charles. Thanks, Katrina. Good afternoon, and welcome to our Q3 earnings call. We had another outstanding quarter as global demand for digital infrastructure continues to grow and customer preferences trend convincingly toward architectures That are highly distributed, persistently hybrid, deeply cloud connected and increasingly on demand. All factors fueling the Equinix position as a Trusted Partner in Digital Transformation.

Speaker 2

This vigorous demand backdrop fueled another great quarter, delivering record growth in net bookings With strong demand across all three regions, resulting in our 79th quarter of consecutive revenue growth and further demonstrating the resiliency and durability of our business even in the face of a complex and challenging macro environment. It is increasingly evident that the global pandemic has been a catalyst And this commitment to digital transformation continues even in the face of a broader dynamic of belt tightening as companies look to do more with less and see digital As a catalyst to both maximize revenues and optimize costs. While we continue to closely monitor macro conditions and adapt our execution accordingly, The fundamentals of our business remain exceptionally strong. Our expansive global reach and robust interconnected ecosystems continue to attract a wide and diverse customer set As they prioritize digital investments and embrace platform Equinix as a point of nexus to support hybrid and multi cloud. This wave of digital infrastructure demand and our highly differentiated value proposition are translating to a robust pipeline, A highly favorable pricing environment and low churn, all fueling record performance across the business year to date and setting us up for a strong trajectory As we look to 2023 beyond.

Speaker 2

As customers navigate rising interest rates and broad based inflation, they're our operating scale and scope give us a variety of levers to manage an increasingly dynamic environment, hedging currency, power and interest rates, Investing in advanced procurement teams, expanding renewables coverage and taking a programmatic approach to improving the efficiency of our world class data centers, We have had a keen focus in this area and continue to feel confident in our position. Our approach to multiyear hedging is affording Equinix the visibility and predictability to communicate to customers in advance of expected power price increases and is allowing us to deliver cost points to customers that remain highly favorable against Meaningful increases in power costs in many markets. And per our contracts, the full impact of these additional power costs will be passed on to customers. Overall, we believe we remain in a good position relative to competitors and the broader market. Turning to our results as depicted on Slide 3.

Speaker 2

Revenues Q3 were $1,840,000,000 up 11% over the same quarter last year, driven by strong recurring revenue growth. Adjusted EBITDA was up 11% year over year with AFFO meaningfully ahead of our expectations due to strong operating performance. Interconnection revenues continue to outpace the broader business growing 13% year over year. These growth rates are all on a normalized and constant currency basis. Equinix continues to extend its leadership as the most interconnected platform with 4 on ramp wins this quarter, bringing the total in our portfolio To more than 200 on ramps across 44 markets.

Speaker 2

We now have 11 metros across platform Enabled with on ramps from all 5 of the leading cloud providers. No other competitor has more than 1. In addition to placing critical networking nodes and on ramps at Equinix, hyperscalers are also integral to our go to market motion. As customers continue to Aggressively migrate workloads to the cloud and demand cloud proximity for their own private cloud implementations.

Speaker 3

As indicated in

Speaker 2

our recently published Global Interconnection Index, current trend lines indicate that more than 80% of Global 2,000 companies We'll be interconnecting with more than 4 hyperscale providers and over 30 SaaS providers or other business partners on average by 2026. We're continuing to invest behind the momentum we're seeing in our data center services business with 46 major projects underway across 31 markets in 21 countries. We continue to build capacity under our Xscale offering, including 10 ongoing Tokyo and our first organic build in Jakarta, Indonesia. Our new IBX in Jakarta will Add a strategically important high growth market to our platform as we look to enable local businesses and global organizations to unleash Indonesia's digital potential. This commitment to market leading reach continues to drive our business with customers operating in all three regions Now accounting for an amazing 64% of our recurring revenues.

Speaker 2

Key customer expansions this quarter include StackPath, A leading edge computing platform provider, which expanded into Dubai and Mumbai to support the growth of its worldwide edge compute delivery and security offerings. A win with a global multinational airline leveraging Equinix to connect to their federated ecosystem of partner airlines And utilizing the full suite of Equinix Digital Services. On that note, our digital services portfolio saw continued momentum as Equinix Metal had a strong bookings quarter as customers leverage flexibility and agility across multiple metros. Wins this quarter included a major Fabric to create an edge hosting environment in key U. S.

Speaker 2

Metros and enable seamless and high performance connectivity to their cloud partners. In Q3, we added an incremental 7,300 interconnections and now have over 443,000 total interconnections on our platform. Equinix Fabric had another strong quarter as interconnection diversity continues to increase. Expansions this quarter included Further expanding its footprint in Europe and interconnectivity with Equinix Fabric to optimize performance for its customers, As well as the financial software tools and enterprise applications provider implementing a global network optimization project leveraging Equinix Fabric. Internet exchange saw peak traffic up 8% quarter over quarter and 28% year over year to greater than 27 terabits per second, Representing the largest peak traffic growth since prior to the pandemic.

Speaker 2

Our channel program delivered a 6th consecutive record quarter accounting for 7% of bookings and approximately 60% of new logos and remains a critical vector in how we are expanding our reach and scaling our go to market engine. We continue to see particular strength from strategic cloud technology and system integrator partners like AWS, Cisco, Dell, Google, HPE, Infosys and Microsoft. This segment accounted for approximately half of our channel bookings And continues to grow in both deal and dollar volume. With these partners, we jointly offer a blend of IT and networking technologies That allow customers to interconnect seamlessly with hyperscale cloud and other as a service providers and benefit from solutions that deliver optimal performance, cost, security, agility and scale across our global platform. Channel wins included a U.

Speaker 2

K. Insurance firm With Equinix partner, Sovcat, for a data center consolidation and modernization project at our London campus, where technology elements from HPE, Cisco And Palo Alto Networks are being brought together in a cloud adjacent architecture, all directly interconnected to Microsoft and AWS. Now let me turn the call over to Keith and cover the results for the quarter.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Charles, and good afternoon to everyone. As you can see from our results, the The Equinix team continues to execute for our customers, our communities and for our investors. Our go to market engine delivered record gross and net bookings in Q3, Closing over 4,200 deals with more than 3,000 customers. Our success is derived from the breadth of our service offering, the scale of our growing platform, the quality of our operations organization and the focus of our investing for the longer term. For the quarter, Our net bookings performance moved up significantly, both compared to our Q3 expectations and the same quarter last year due to strong gross activity, A favorable pricing environment, lower than expected churn and the strength of our digital services offerings.

Speaker 3

Again, we had net positive pricing actions. Consequently, our consolidated MRR per cabinet increased to greater than $2,000 per cabinet Despite the weaker foreign operating currencies. And note, the expected price increases or PPIs discussed by Charles are not in either our reported or Over the past couple of months, we've been communicating with our customers about the pending power price increases. And most recently, we've notified them of the expected range of The dialogue with our customers highlighted the value of our multiyear power planning and sourcing efforts, Which is expected to meaningfully dampen the impact of inflated energy cost to many of our customers, both relative to the competition and the broader market. Finally, notwithstanding strong bookings performance in Q3, our forward looking pipeline remains healthy And our backlog and our book to bill interval remains constant, allowing us to remain confident as we look ahead into Q4 and plan for 2023.

Speaker 3

So given the momentum in our business, we're again raising our underlying guidance across each of our core financial metrics for the year. Now while our business remains well positioned and resilient, we continue to keep macro factors top of mind. Consequently, we chose to increase the liquidity position of the company. At quarter end, we had over $2,500,000,000 of unrestricted cash in our bank accounts And full access to our $4,000,000,000 line of credit, increasing the financial and operational flexibility of the business. Our net leverage remains low at 3.5 times our adjusted EBITDA, creating plenty of balance sheet flexibility.

Speaker 3

Now let me cover the highlights for the quarter. Note that all comments in this section are on a normalized and constant currency basis. I depicted on Slide 4, global Q3 revenues were $1,841,000,000 up 11% over the same quarter last year, Global Q3 adjusted EBITDA was $871,000,000 or 47 percent of revenues, up 11% over the same quarter last year, above the top end of our Q3 adjusted EBITDA, net of our FX hedges included a $5,000,000 FX impact when compared to our prior guidance rates and $4,000,000 of integration costs. Global Q3 AFFO was $712,000,000 above our expectations due to strong operating performance And lower net interest expense and included a $5,000,000 FX impact when compared to our prior guidance rates. Global Q3 MR churn was 1.9%, a continued reflection of our disciplined sales execution to put the right customer With the right application into the right asset.

Speaker 3

For Q4, we expect MRR churn to continue to trend at the lower end of our 2% to 2.5% per quarter range. Turning to our regional highlights, whose full results are covered on Slides 5 through 7. APAC was the fastest growing region on a year over year normalized MRR basis at 19%, followed by the Americas and EMEA regions We are now ready for questions. In August, we added Lima, Peru to our platform As part of the Antel acquisition, expanding our Latin American footprint to a 5th country and extending the Equinix platform to 32 countries and 71 markets globally. Our EMEA region delivered another record bookings quarter with strong pricing and robust channel activity led by our Amsterdam, Dublin and Frankfurt markets with strength in our IT, And finally, the Asia Pacific region had a strong quarter with robust exports from Japan.

Speaker 3

As part of our Future First sustainability strategy, we're very proud to announce a partnership with the Centre For Energy Research and Technology at the National University of Singapore And now looking at our capital structure, please refer to Slide 8. Our balance sheet increased slightly despite the weaker non U. S. Operating currencies to $29,300,000,000 Including an unrestricted cash balance of $2,500,000,000 Our cash balance increased quarter over quarter due to strong operating cash flow and And about $800,000,000 of ATM activity settled in the quarter. As stated previously, we'll continue to take a balanced and opportunistic approach to accessing the On the debt side of the house, on the heels of the rating upgrades from both Fitch and Moody's last quarter, S and P increased their debt tolerance for the company by one leverage turn, thereby increasing the level of flexibility from our balance sheet.

Speaker 3

We're pleased and appreciative of the rating improvements over the past quarters and look forward to our continued dialogue with our rating agencies. Turning to Slide 9. For the quarter, capital expenditures were approximately $553,000,000 including recurring CapEx of $50,000,000 In the quarter, we opened 6 retail projects in Istanbul, Madrid, Manchester, Melbourne, Paris and Toronto And 2 ex scale projects in Frankfurt and London. We also purchased land for development in Monterrey, Mexico. Our capital investments delivered strong returns as shown on Slide 10, our 160 stabilized assets increased recurring revenues by 7% year over year on a constant currency basis.

Speaker 3

These stabilized assets are now collectively 88% utilized and generate a 29% cash on cash return on the gross PP and E invested. And finally, please refer to Slides 11 through 15 for our updated summary of 2022 guidance and bridges, including the anticipated financial results Prior guidance, we're increasing our underlying revenues by $15,000,000 due to strong recurring revenue performance. We expect 2022 underlying adjusted EBITDA to increase by $46,000,000 compared to our prior guidance due to strong revenue performance and more operating spend. We now expect to incur $20,000,000 of integration costs in 2022. We're raising our underlying 2022 AFFO by $52,000,000 to grow between 10% 11% on a normalized and constant currency basis due to strong operating performance And lower net interest expense.

Speaker 3

And as a result, our AFFO per share is now expected to grow between 9% 10% On a normalized and constant currency basis, above the top end of our prior guidance, including the impact from our Q3 ATM activity. Finally, 2022 CapEx is now expected to range between $2,100,000,000 $2,300,000,000 including about $190,000,000 of recurring CapEx And about $135,000,000 of on balance sheet ex scale spend, down slightly due to timing of expansion spend. So let me stop here. I'm going to turn the call back to Charles.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Keith. Our results this quarter continue to reflect strong execution by our global team and highlight the unique position that Equinix enjoys In advancing our future first sustainability commitments. This quarter, in addition to our continued investments and commitments around environmental sustainability, We're very pleased to have launched the Equinix Foundation, an employee driven charitable organization working to advance digital inclusion through philanthropic grant making And strategic partnerships. The foundation reflects our ongoing commitment to social sustainability, and we're excited about the work we can do to build a better, more inclusive, more As we advance Q4 and position for 2023, our highly differentiated position continues to drive strong momentum, robust customer demand and a deep high quality pipeline. We're delivering sustained growth, better to top line and AFFO per share, While maintaining our clear focus on driving operating leverage across our business.

Speaker 2

We continue to effectively exercise multiple growth levers, including expanded market reach, Our exceptional value and a commitment to a bold innovation and sustainability agenda, all of which demonstrates the resilience of Platform Equinix And highlights our ability to deliver distinct and durable value to our customers and our shareholders. So let me stop there and open it up for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. Our first question is from Jon Achin from RBC Capital Markets. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Thanks. Got 2 questions on energy. One is, Keith, if you could maybe refresh us on what portion of cash OpEx this quarter was for energy? And then on the PIs That you are pushing through starting next year, can you talk a little bit about to what extent it applies to customers that are in the middle of their contracts versus And new contracts. Thanks.

Speaker 3

So John, I'll take the first one and I think I'll pass the second one to Charles. It's roughly 13%. Again, it moves around quarter on quarter and it's also dependent on in some cases the currency movements. For this year, you should see the range anywhere sort of from 12% to 13% on a per revenue dollar basis.

Speaker 2

Yes. And on the PIs, John, the look, our the way our contracts read, we're not impaired in any way from putting those through during the course of the contract. So they're not limited to when you take renewals. So just to sort of back I'll give you a view on we talked a little bit about it in the script, but I think that we'll give you details more details when we do the 23 guy. But think thanks to some really incredible work by our teams.

Speaker 2

We feel really good about where we are on that on the PI issue and on Empower generally. I think we're about 90% plus or more than well over 90% hedged in our deregulated markets and are going to be topping off those positions In the coming weeks months, and we've already communicated those planned increases to customers and are generally able, as as Keith mentioned in his script, we'll be able to provide them with cost points that are meaningfully advantageous relative to current spot in those markets. I think we're going to we're in a really good position there. I think we're going to be able to pass through. Obviously, they're not yet passed through because we're still operating at our hedge rates from this year, but as they adjust, we've given them the advanced visibility to what they expect to see.

Speaker 2

And I think broadly speaking, they knew what was coming. And I think in a lot of cases, they're pleased to see that it's not quite as bad as they had feared it might be.

Speaker 3

And if I could ask a

Speaker 4

little bit about cloud, we saw slowing growth at 2 of the 3 largest CSPs, not just percentage, but even in Like incremental revenue dollars and I wondered what does it mean for your business in terms of maybe affecting the pace of cloud repatriation And more broadly, as you look at your cabinet adds, how much of that would you attribute to things like cloud appreciation versus new logos versus just existing customers upsizing? May maybe talk a little bit about those moving parts.

Speaker 2

Yes. John, I do think, pipe repatriation does happen, but I think it's probably getting more air Time then maybe it's it really is appropriate. I mean, I think we're still very early in the movement of clouds from traditional IT textures into cloud. And that's what we continue to see. And well, I recognize we did see some slowdown from the cloud providers.

Speaker 2

1, that was impacted significantly by currency. And 2, I think a lot of it as I looked through those reports and heard it was Sort of reductions in usage based volume on what are likely sort of non mission critical workloads. And so I think that as I talk to CIOs, their commitment to moving to cloud based architectures, their commitment to moving significant percentages of their overall workloads to public cloud and then integrating that Their overall workloads to public cloud and then integrating that with private cloud infrastructure that needs to be cloud proximate is Full tilt. And in fact, I talked to a CIO that said that they had this Fortune 200 type CIO, But they had an application estate that was 4,000 plus applications. And when I asked them how many of those had been migrated to It was in the range of 200.

Speaker 2

And so a long way to go. And so if you look at just the quantum of growth that's happening in the cloud. In any given quarter, they're adding 3 just the top 5 providers adding $3,000,000,000 to $4,000,000,000 of incremental recurring revenue. And so I think it is still a long way to go. And I think that we continue to be particularly relevant as people think about the way things used to work in IT architectures, they all live nicely together in a rack next to each other in an enterprise data center.

Speaker 2

Well, as soon as you start migrating workloads to the cloud And then trying to interface them with your data and applications that you're still managing on your own, things don't work quite the same. And that's what we're seeing in our pipeline. People are saying, Hey, I've got to have my hybrid, my private cloud proximate. It's got to be distributed. The applications all have to work together.

Speaker 2

And so I I think we're still going to continue to see vigorous demand for this migration to hybrid and multi cloud for the foreseeable future.

Operator

Our next question is from Simon Flannery from Morgan Stanley. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you very much. Good evening. Just a couple if I could. Just continuing on, it's great to hear that the strong demand trends.

Speaker 5

Are you seeing any softness anywhere, any kind of whether it's Europe or whatever, one of your competitors talked about small enterprise, some pressure at the margin there. It seems like there's certainly some caution around the uncertain macro environment. And if you put through some of these power price increases, has that changed some of the profitability dynamics for some of these companies? And then just on margins, some really good performance I saw particularly in the Americas this quarter, maybe you can update us on the 50% target and how Singapore is playing out as we exit 2022? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Sure. There's a lot there, Simon. But let me try to cover it. And if I forget any of it, just bring it back up. But Annie, softness, look, we are not blind to sort of the challenging macro conditions in which we're all operating, that's for sure.

Speaker 2

But I would say that Our bookings trajectory, our sales execution, our pipeline, quality of pipeline, volume of pipeline, all continue to be very solid. And that is across regions And it is across sectors. And I think that the phenomenon that I was just describing in answer to John's question is an exceptionally horizontal people just moving to these new cloud first hybrid IT architectures and I think seeing the relevance of Equinix in that. And so are there customer segments or types that are having more challenge? We get that question a lot.

Speaker 2

Do think that we're less exposed to either startups or small company. That's typically not our sweet spot of our business. We're really more on enterprise level, both service provider and enterprise architectures, and how people are rethinking those globally. And so we continue to see a strong level of demand. And so I think we're less exposed to that perhaps than maybe public cloud providers and others that And small or start up type businesses that might be impacted.

Speaker 2

In terms of power in Europe generally, would say our European business is performing very well. And yes, we do expect that power is going to and again, it hasn't yet impacted We haven't rolled those through. One, a couple of comments on that. One, our history is that we've rolled pricing through in interconnection. In fact, if you look at the non financial metrics, we've increased MRR per cab in Europe $100 over the last four quarters.

Speaker 2

And that's driven by interconnection pricing, that's driven by mix of business, etcetera. But the European business is performing very well. I do think it will create a pinch for people that they're going to have to pay for more for power. But just to put that into context, we think that a lot of our Customers are going to see monthly increases that are really modest, depending on how concentrated they are in highly impacted markets. But we think that even in worst cases where people are in a high impact market, they might be impacted by, call it, 15% 20% of their monthly bill.

Speaker 2

And so for most people, we don't believe that is something that will impact their overall commitment to their digital transformation. But it does create and we think so we think that we're going to be able to continue to sustain the demand levels that we're seeing. And then the last piece on margin, again, we're kind of what we would expect. We were actually slightly ahead in Q3 I'm aware our expectations would have been. And Singapore is actually slightly better than what we expected for the full year.

Speaker 2

But thankfully that's sort of coming to an end. This is the last quarter where we'll see that. I think we'll be able to now make the adjustments That we needed to make in terms of passing through the appropriate price increases in full in

Speaker 6

the markets impacted beginning in 2023.

Speaker 3

As I said, I think

Speaker 2

we're going to be able to Beginning in 2023. As I said, I think we're going to be able to do that in a way that customers, even though they're certainly not going to applaud those price increases, think as they look at it, in a lot of those markets, they're feeling it as consumers and they're feeling it at a very acute level. And I think they're going to realize they're starting to realize what I think the benefits of our hedging programs are in terms of dampening that volatility for them.

Speaker 1

Great.

Speaker 3

Let me just add a couple of other quick points, if I may, in addition to what Charles said. 1st and foremost, the objective to get to to get to 50% margin targets, as sort of Charles alluded to, we're doing better than we anticipated in the Americas. Singapore is Better than anticipated. And overall, we're running the business with a great deal of discipline. And I say that with emphasis.

Speaker 3

And so number 1, we're seeing margin profile that's better than you might have otherwise anticipated. 2, when you sort of look into the 4th We're making some discretionary decisions to accelerate costs into the Q4. But after that, we continue to drive the business with great efficiency. As it relates to the 50% EBITDA margin target, just I've said this on a number of in a number of On deal roadshows and 1 on 1 discussions with investors, we're not shifting our emphasis to 50% EBITDA. We believe that we can get there.

Speaker 3

In fact, the performance of the business post the Analyst Day, we're actually doing better than we anticipated at that point in time. But you've got a very volatile and fractious market. And so we've got to deal with the consequences there. But if you look at it from a value on a Per share basis, we're as good if not better than we told you we're going to be in. So I think that's really important.

Speaker 3

And then the last thing I just want to leave you with It's sort of an adjunct to what again what Charles said. The whole dialogue around small customers, I mean part of the reason that we disclose in our prepared remarks the amount of transactions we did is to give you a sense of just the volume of activity and so we did 4,200 transactions again with 3,000 customers. As we said last quarter, our pipeline is as strong as it's ever been. And in fact, I said it was healthy this quarter. Actually, our pipeline is bigger this quarter than it was last quarter.

Speaker 3

And so we're really optimistic about the business and where we position ourselves And we can continue to drive value into the overall equation. And again, we're long term focused. We want to drive value into the investor and we're very much focused on AFFO per share.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from Michael Rollins from Citi. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hi, good afternoon. First, on the stabilized constant currency Growth 7% year over year. Can you unpack that in terms of what was driving the strength between whether it was utilization, Just overall pricing, interconnection, etcetera. And then, second topic is on capital allocation. I'm just curious in the wake of higher rates, if you're Considering any changes to the pace and breadth of the development strategy and as the AFFO dollars Our approach in the combination of non recurring CapEx and the cash dividends, what does Equinix Want to do with the balance sheet flexibility that you were describing earlier in the call?

Speaker 7

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, I'll let Mike take I mean, I'll let Keith take the second part of that, Mike. And then let me talk a little bit about stabilized assets and

Speaker 3

he can talk a little bit more on

Speaker 2

the balance sheet side and rates, But the look, yes, it was a tremendous quarter, obviously, on stabilized assets, 7% is particularly strong. There is still a little bit of juice in there on the Singapore piece, but it was but it's definitely even without that significantly above kind of where we've been trending. And I think it's kind of a combination of all of those factors that you're seeing pricing Interconnection, utilization, power density, all of those things probably really playing in. So And I think you're starting to now see the beginnings of seeing price actions. Now you're not seeing the PPIs, the power price increases, Those will roll through in 2023.

Speaker 2

But as we've talked about, we've already adjusted list pricing on a number of our products. You're starting to see that roll through in renewals And you're seeing it on other products around interconnection, etcetera. And so I think you're starting to see that. As you Broadly speaking, utilization is trending up nicely. In fact, if you look over the last four quarters, AMER and APAC are both up 5%.

Speaker 2

And so Europe is down about 2%, but a lot of capacity added in that region, right? And So I think we're continuing to get more out of the assets that we've deployed, continuing to feel very good about the pricing environment, Continuing to dense people up, driving good commercial decisions, and I think that's really showing up in the stabilized assets. We also had a couple of retired assets that in there that probably also further help. And then the last piece I would say is churn continued as trend February. We haven't talked a lot about that, but boy, I think we've always said, look, the right get the right customer, right application, right asset, that's the way to drive turndown.

Speaker 2

And I think we've seen that effect over the last many quarters and continue to feel really good about that. We had obviously elevated levels Turn in the Verizon assets, which I think was really impacting our stabilized asset performance for a period of time and have now really come through the back end of that really nicely. And I think feel really good about candidly, I'm like, I'm not sure that current level is that's a little above the range that we've typically guided you guys We'll certainly take it and are pleased

Speaker 3

with the performance. Michael, just going to the maybe just a couple of things. One of the things that you probably noted in our same store reporting in the earnings deck is that you can see that a lot of the value on a stabilized basis is coming from colocation and interconnection. In fact, interconnection on a stabilized basis is up 10% year over year on a constant currency basis, whereas colocation is up 7%. It's being diluted a little bit by the other services, which is only up 5%.

Speaker 3

And then non recurring is down quarter over quarter largely because of the one Non recurring fees that we get from the Exhale business. But overall, you're seeing just strong just to validate what all that Charles said, it's just you can see it in that slide just perfectly. As it relates to the balance sheet, If you wouldn't mind, I'd like you to reframe the question just one last time. I want to make sure we get it right and respond to it. So could you just ask that question again on where we are visavis our capital allocation?

Speaker 7

Yes, thanks. And it was 2 parts. First, if you're considering any changes to the pace and breadth of development strategy in the wake of higher rates. And then as the AFFO dollars are approaching the combination of the non recurring CapEx and the cash dividends, What do you want to do with the flexibility on the balance sheet that you were describing earlier in the call?

Speaker 3

Yes. So thank you on that. So 1st and foremost, I think we find ourselves as pretty darn good capital allocators. We So we want to invest in the high returning investment we can make is in the organic business and we're going to continue to focus on that. No surprise this quarter we have 46 projects currently underway across 31 markets and 21 countries.

Speaker 3

And so we remain very active and we want to continue to grow And expand the business horizontally, while at the same time investing quite openly on the vertical side of the investment, which is the digital services. So you're going to see a combination of the 2. And as we look into 2023, we'll give you more guide on that. But suffice it to say that we there is an appetite continue to invest in the business and we really get to enjoy the cash flows we generate in the business and the low payout ratio to basically self fund that Yes, for all intents and purposes. So I feel extremely good about that.

Speaker 3

As you look forward then, again, we are A little bit excess cash right now. We saw an opportunity in the market in the quarter, pardon me, to pull down a little bit of our ATM. And so we settled some stuff that we did in Q2 this quarter and then we also we sold some in the quarter in and of itself at $6.90 I think the average was $6.97 a share. And so we chose to do that because we knew we're going into period of volatility and we wanted to make sure that we could fully affect the use of our cash flow And invest in the long term growth of business, which is really on the expansion capital, while also investing in digital services. So that's what you're going to continue to hear us talk about.

Speaker 3

And then we're also being very judicious about I've spoken quite openly about we want to raise more debt even in the current environment. The question is, where do we source that debt from and can we take advantage of different markets around the world based on prevailing cost to borrow. And so you'll hear more about that, but suffice it to say, I think you'll see more debt activity over the coming quarters than otherwise you'd see With ATM. And then just as it relates to investment in capital, yes, I know the cost of capital is moving up. But we the benefit of our model is and for all the reasons you just heard Charles speak about, we get a really good return on our assets.

Speaker 3

Our stabilized assets are getting You're going to get a nice incremental return. And so from our perspective, we're not arbitraging over our cost of capital. We're driving real value into the business for our customers and for the future. And as a result, we want to continue to that investment and we'll be very wise about what we raise in the form of capital to fund our growth knowing that you've got a dividend that's growing and you've got a business that's growing. And as a we got to fund not only the business and also the capital redeployment back to the investor.

Speaker 3

So I think it's a great question you're asking. We spent a lot of energy on it. I've got a fantastic treasury team that work underneath us. And we're looking at all ways to source our capital And fund value on a per share basis to the business. And so stay tuned.

Speaker 2

Mike, you guys are pushing a lot of the buttons here. So I want I'll offer an anecdote that I think is really powerful and that is kind of when I'm out and talking to customers and with sales teams, it's pretty amazing because what I hear from sales teams, Their number one concern, not enough capacity. They're like, we're worrying we're going to run out of capacity. We need to are you building more capacity? I'm not hearing, hey, what are you going to do to my quotas next year?

Speaker 2

We know the answer to that question. I'm not hearing, Hey, challenging passing through these power increases is challenging. What I'm hearing is we need more capacity. We need to continue to invest in the business. When are we going to get more coverage on digital services?

Speaker 2

I want to cover more markets. We need to respond to our customers' needs. And so I think it's just We're pushing utilization up. That's starting to create some pinch points. And From our perspective, as we look at the how the business is performing, continue to invest in organic growth prudently and appropriately And always in with a keen eye on the macro environment, is still best and highest and best use for

Speaker 6

us. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question is from David Barden from Bank of America. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Hi, good afternoon everyone. This is Alex on for Dave. Just Charles, maybe just on those comments that you just made in terms of building out more capacity. Are you seeing any issues just similar to what's going on in Northern Virginia and other areas of the world of power transmission issues or power procurement issues?

Speaker 2

Yes, it's a great question. The answer is yes. I mean, I think you're seeing that markets around the world are thinking about How to allocate energy. They're also thinking about the sustainability impacts of data centers in their markets and how they want Sort of how they want to think about providing energy and permitting to support those, etcetera. So obviously, that's a key area of focus for us.

Speaker 2

I do think that overall, we're in a very good position. I think that not only do we have really well established relationships across those markets. We have a level of commitment and I think sophistication on the sustainability side that people I think feel comfortable that we are going to make the commitments necessary to support digital transformation in their markets And digital growth in their markets in a way that's responsible. And so I think that's going to continue to be a differentiation for us. But we put and the other thing is that our business and our business model are very different when it comes to Power, they need to support, for example, a hyperscale facility that's going to support 1 or 2 customers and allocating that power entirely to those is very different than the power situation we find ourselves in.

Speaker 2

We have a much greater level of flexibility in terms of Looking at how we're using power, moving the power around over time, and so I think there's some additional flexibility for us there. The short answer is yes, that is a dynamic that I think is not unique to Northern Virginia. We feel very good about where we are in market by the way, just in terms of our position there. But, it is something that I think is going to be, on people's minds. And I think we're on the capacity question, we're even seeing that churn people who are planning churn are now unplanning it.

Speaker 2

And because I think they feel like they have ensuring that they have capacity and sometimes under Existing terms or something that is close to those existing terms is a strategic decision for them. And I think we're continuing to see favorability in churn for those reasons.

Speaker 8

Perfect. Thank you. And then maybe if I could just ask one more. Just you completed NTel and then you announced a smaller deal on Latin America. You just kind of walk us through the Latin America strategy and where you kind of see that business going?

Speaker 2

Sure. Generally, I would say that we feel like that. The Chile addition with Intel was our best strategic one that sort of fills out the LatAm portfolio in a really powerful way. And so I think we feel good about the level of coverage that we have there. That's not to say there wouldn't be potentially incremental opportunities there, but Our business is in Brazil continues to thrive.

Speaker 2

Obviously, a market currency wise that can be challenging and has been for years. But the growth there has been really strong and our differentiated position in that market continues to be very good. So I think that continue to invest in that business. We're happy with the early returns on our business in Mexico. As Keith said, we've made some investments there for land and continue to see that as a with additional market opportunity there.

Speaker 2

Excited about the early returns. That's one of the things we see on these businesses. We underwrite them to a certain level of performance. And almost always, we're seeing that the Power of bringing those assets into our channel, our channel broadly speaking, meaning our direct teams and our partners and giving them access to those, We are really typically hitting bookings velocities that are much better than what we underwrote to. And so we feel good about that.

Speaker 2

But I think we feel good about LATAM. I think there's potentially incremental opportunity. But if I were to prioritize where I think we were more likely to make incremental M and A activity, We would be in probably maybe some other parts of the world. And we've talked about those in a variety of places. Southeast Asia, I think, is continuing To reshape a bit and is a market that both organically and potentially through M and A we would find attractive.

Speaker 2

India is a market That I think we will continue to invest in organically and potentially inorganically. And obviously, we've got a starting point in Africa that we are very excited about. But there's more potentially to do there. So I think that's I kind of went a little your question there, but that's a little bit of a frame on the M and A world.

Speaker 8

That's great. Thanks so much, Charles.

Operator

Next question is from Aryeh Klein from BMO Capital Markets. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Maybe following up on churn, it's It's been low for a while here. As we move into potentially tougher macro and you ask customers to absorb kind of the full brunt of the price increases, Is that something that you would expect to tick up?

Speaker 2

No. So I mean, we really don't see that. I think that we've seen one, I think the history of our business and this is pretty empirically validated is that our demand tends to be pretty inelastic. And so I think that's likely to be particularly true relative to the power price increases, which I believe and hope will be at least to some degree Transitory. Now whether or not we get back to energy level, pricing levels that we were at before, I don't know.

Speaker 2

But I think that I don't we don't currently see that as a driver for people to say, oh, well, we're going to churn out of our capacity. So I think it increases the level of focus that people have on efficient utilization of the capacity they have deployed. And I think that you see that same dynamic a little bit in cloud, right, which is people are saying, hey, we got to tighten up on our cloud bills. We got to we're going to reduce usage on non mission critical workloads. I think you're seeing some of that impact in that business.

Speaker 2

Our business is much more on fixed contracts. We're starting we have a little bit of usage based revenue in some of our digital services. I don't foresee us kicking up in churn in any meaningful way as a result Sort of the pricing adjustments. I think that we're going to continue to see people very committed to their digital transformation. I think like That will be an element of inflationary forces that our customers are going to deal with much like we and every other company is dealing with out there.

Speaker 2

But I think it boils down to kind of how you what priorities you place and we really feel like digital transformation and the move to hybrid and multi cloud is, as we said In the script, both a revenue maximizing driver and a cost driver in many cases in terms of doing more with less. So we feel like the demand profile is going to continue to be strong. And again, our ability to forecast churn has been very, very good. And so we're not going into Cash churn has been very, very good. And so we're not going into that blind.

Speaker 2

We continue to have confidence there. But We'll have to continue to monitor it very closely and see how the market responds. But I think our history and then our empirical data would indicate And we have a market that's pretty inelastic from a demand perspective.

Speaker 6

Thanks. And then Keith, I think you mentioned some of the timing related to some spending during Looking at Q4, the margin for the quarter are towards the lower than they've been in a long time, the implied margin. How should we think about the spending in the Q4 and how that maybe carries into 2023?

Speaker 3

Yes, as I said in the prepared remarks, there's an element to discretionary spend that we accelerated into the quarter and think of that in the $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 range and then you've got a pretty large range in the quarterly guide. So I would say like look at the underlying performance, you've got some seasonal costs too that sort of take place in the Q4 that we absorbed. But overall, the business continues to perform better than we anticipated. The margin profile or the cash that's generated in the business it's stronger than we are planning and as a result we use that as an opportunity to accelerate costs and put us in a pretty good spot As we start to think about 2023. Yes, just to give you a

Speaker 2

little more transparency on what some of those are. We're pulling forward some R and M, Pulling forward, just finishing out some projects that we are focused on both on the go to market side and on the product side To really give us that momentum going into next year, we gave a little bit more, what a little wider berth To the teams on T and E in Q4, because we really continue to believe that getting our teams reconnected Both to our customers and to each other is important. And I think we're really seeing the dividends of that. And so Yes, we definitely have not lost the plot in terms of our focus on operating leverage. In fact, if you look at our SG and A line, it's flat quarter to quarter and that's in the Base of increasing investment in sales and marketing.

Speaker 2

And so that implies that we're sort of tightening down on G and A. And even though we're adding headcount in very targeted areas to support a very healthy organic performance of our business, We're also really tightening down in areas of the business and recognizing that we continue have to continue to have a focus On automation and simplification and efficiency, and we got to get that G and A leverage that we need in the business over time. So we there is we're trying to make good balanced decisions on that front. And again, we'll give you more perspective on kind of what that means, but feeling very good about trajectory of the business as we exit towards the end of the year.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks for the color.

Operator

Next question is from Sami Bardi from Credit Suisse. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Keith, earlier you said that you have been having conversations with your customers regarding those PIs and you said that you have been sharing with them some ranges.

Speaker 3

I was hoping you could kind

Speaker 9

of share with us what those ranges actually are just so we have an idea of magnitude when we enter 2023. And then I think there was a question about general Activity and trends and apologize if this is a duplicative question, but the tech sector is reporting some elongated lead times and some sales cycles extending to a certain degree, there are even IT budgets to require board level approvals, which are just slowing some things down.

Speaker 3

So, if you could tell us if

Speaker 9

that those are the things that you're seeing or not at this stage? And then I have one follow-up.

Speaker 3

Okay. Well, let me maybe just start with the ranges. So first and foremost, we wanted to have Our go to market engine, the customer facing teams wanted to have some dialogue with the customers On sort of power increases. And so the first Volley was really everybody seeing what's going on in the broader market, particularly in Europe and as a result, making sure that you're sort of advising the customers that there is going to be effectively a prior increase at some point. The second volume was effectively look depending on where you are, one market is very, very different than another market, some are regulated, some are unregulated.

Speaker 3

This is the sort of the range that you should expect. As both Charles and I have mentioned, we've got a sophisticated hedging program. We basically solidified what we think is a good portion of the exposure for next year And so we have specific information on that. And so we give them a range of what that could be. And again, as market specific, as volume specific, as Location specific, again, customers, there's going to be a wide range for these customers depending on where they operate.

Speaker 3

And the 3rd Volley will be in the not too distant future here is your specific increase. And so part of it is just making sure that the customers fully understood they were communicating with them and we guided with it and we give them enough time to understand what was going to happen, particularly if they as they start to think about their 2020 planning cycle. And so that was that's the first part. To give you something specific about what look, I could tell you in some markets, if you look at spot, you're talking about multiples of increase, particularly in the UK market. That's not where we are as a company.

Speaker 3

We've done a very good job buying forward and making sure we have a good position with and I think our customers as we said, we think we'll be in a better spot relative to our competition And we'll be certainly well below what I think prevailing market rates are. So that's the positive. That is a European discussion. As you look at Asia and Americas, it's a different dialogue. You've got a much more structured increase and overall, I feel very good about that.

Speaker 3

I think one of the things that you should walk away though is understanding that the company is almost wholly hedged for next year. And certainly Europe is even more hedged than the broader company. And so that's the one thing I think it's really worth noting here, because last year we had some exposure to Singapore that we feel much better where we are going into 2023 on Singapore. As we said, the market we would go to come back to the market and the market would come to us and all indications is the market is coming to us And as a result, we will pass through those incremental costs as well. So hopefully that helps you a little bit, Sami, but I can't give you a specific range.

Speaker 3

It's Market and customer specific.

Speaker 2

We will get I mean, but obviously, we'll get as we as those tighten up

Speaker 3

and as we get as Going to the

Speaker 2

call in February, we'll give you a lot more transparency there.

Speaker 3

Yes. And Sami, what's the second question? I think it was going to go to Charles on that one.

Speaker 2

Yes, was around the general trends and extended cycles and are we seeing tighter IT budgets and those kind of things. Look, as I said, what we're seeing is generally a substantial commitment to the digital transformation agenda. And that doesn't mean people aren't seeing the need to tighten their belt On IT or in other ways, but typically we see that they are trying very hard not to sort of distract their agenda in terms of the move to hybrid multi cloud as the architecture of choice. And I was just reading something from Gartner the other day in terms of just looking at how important is a particular IT project to your sort of digital agenda and what is it going to do to impact Your competitiveness to drive top line growth, to save money, etcetera. And we continue to see a vigorous commitment To those kinds of things.

Speaker 2

And so, and we have generally and Keith talked about this both in terms of our sales cycle and our backlog have not seen extensions of either of those things. And so sales execution has continued to be very, very good. Pipeline continues to be strong, pipeline execution and conversion continues to be strong. And We're not saying it doesn't exist, although we're but what we would say is that the demand profile And how it's translating for us in bookings and pipeline is very, very good and we're continuing to invest in the business accordingly.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thank you for

Speaker 9

the color on both those. My last question is more on bare metal. And you mentioned how you have a new SaaS customer coming On using the service and you also have a healthcare enterprise or customer using the service. And one of your private data center peers recently introduced In metal service and product, so I kind of want to just understand what's the vision here for Equinix and the metal solution overall? Like are you guys trying to Grow this 2, 3 times, is this going to become a much more integrated or interconnected piece to everything you do?

Speaker 9

I just want to understand what the kind of the pipeline or the road map is there.

Speaker 2

Sure. Well, it definitely, think can be 2 to 3 times and more than that than its current size for sure. I think it can be so I think we definitely believe it's a meaningful business going forward I also think we want to see it be more fully integrated. In fact, I think that is feedback we're getting from our customers is, We love your individual digital services, but they don't work as effectively as an integrated platform as we would like. And so Scott, who Crenshaw has joined us is sort of out there talking to customers, hearing what's on their mind.

Speaker 2

That has been a topic, and we're really continuing to align our product and development agenda to ensure that we're addressing the needs that the customers have. And so we do believe that an integrated If you look at network edge, fabric and metal, we think that's a compelling combination of offerings for customers as they look to implement Digital transformation strategies and hybrid and multi cloud. And so, but I think it's important that we really continue to view that as giving them the right sort of portfolio of services to meet their needs. We think that Actually, public cloud will be a great home for a significant portion of their workloads. We definitely see sometimes repatriation back to Either a colo based solution or a metal type based solution that allows sort of different level of economic scaling And utilization is something that happens.

Speaker 2

But we want to respond to the needs of the customer and have the right solution For them and so when that's cloud, that's great. Move the workloads to cloud, we'll give you the connectivity you need to connect it to the data and other You need to have it perform well and we'll distribute that infrastructure around the world. And so I think that us being able to go in with that trusted advisor status with The customer is really what's driving the business. But we definitely see a big opportunity in metal. And I think and with the broader digital services As you know continued and as we've said in the past, it's growing at a multiple of the rate of our of the broader business.

Speaker 2

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

And our last question today is from Matt Niknam from Deutsche Bank. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Speaker 10

Hey, thanks for taking the question and I'll keep it to 1 because I know we're over the hour. You're tracking a 9% to 10%, Not a problem. So I know you're tracking a 9% to 10% constant currency growth on AFFO per share this year. But there's obviously headwinds from rising interest rates and higher power costs. And I know you've mentioned you intend to pass those through.

Speaker 10

But the question is really what confidence level do you have in the ability to stay within that 7% to 10% AFFO per share growth range for next year with the

Speaker 2

number of headwinds out there? Thanks. Clearly, we're not give you sort of a guide for next year and we'll give you that early. I guess I'd sort of reposition the question to simply tell you that If you look at our performance of what we said we would do at the Analyst Day and what we've now done, I think we continue to feel really good about Top line growth is strong, stronger than outside of the bounds of what we had said. I think that And I think that's really on the strength of underlying business momentum.

Speaker 2

And so and we feel really good about the trajectory going into next Here from a top line growth standpoint too. I think growth will be a little wind assisted on PPIs next year, but I think we'll give you clear Transparency on what that is, but I think it's going to be on top of really strong underlying momentum in the business. And we think that's translating into the AFFO per share sort of growth that we think is needed and attractive. And then you combine that with a healthy dividend yield And we think it's a great story. So just generally, I would say, we feel good about the momentum.

Speaker 2

Top line Growth is good. We're going to continue to focus on operating leverage, and we think, therefore, we're going to be able to deliver strong performance on an AFFO per share basis. Keith, anything to add there? Matt,

Speaker 3

the only other thing I would say is, one of the things that again, you talked about normalized constant currency. And so on a constant currency basis, we're taking roughly relative to where we started the year, about $180,000,000 hit to the top line because the currency movement is about $85,000,000 to the EBITDA line. So it gives you a sense that what we're absorbing. So the performance of the businesses It's doing much better than we had anticipated and you can see that coming in so many different places, including the Americas business. I think when the I think the other thing that's going to certainly aid many of us, particularly those that are U.

Speaker 3

S. Dollar south, as currency start to move the other direction, which I suspect that they will at some point that you're also going to get wind at your back from currency. So not only do you have the momentum coming from what Charles alluded to, but I also think that you've got you're going to have currency movement when other where other sort of central banks move their rates up To the U. S. Or the U.

Speaker 3

S. Starts to slow down on their rate increase and that's going to be, I think, a real benefit to the business. And As I said before, if you just take our top three currencies and you take them back to our traditional parity level, not a deviation Higher or lower, I mean, you're really talking about a significant increase in revenues just from currency movements. Of course, we hedge ourselves and we do a really good job of currency hedging. But I wanted to leave you with that thought as well.

Speaker 3

It's not just about The pure execution to the business on how we're operating it, but also there's some currency movement that I think is going to benefit us as well.

Speaker 2

That

Speaker 1

concludes our Q3 call. Thank you for joining us.

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Earnings Conference Call
Equinix Q3 2022
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