GDS Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
March 19, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • AI demand surge: GDS expects multi-gigawatt demand for AI inferencing in Tier 1 China markets, leveraging its land and power strengths to fulfill hyperscale deployments and committing to near-term projects while monitoring chip supply for longer-term orders.
  • Asset monetization: The company closed its first ABS-backed transaction, selling data center project equity for up to RMB 2.9 billion EV (RMB 1.7 billion equity), securing RMB 500 million upfront and deconsolidating RMB 1.2 billion of debt to fund growth without raising net leverage.
  • Record operations and backlog: In 2024 GDS achieved its highest-ever gross move-ins of 79,000 sqm in Tier 1 markets, ended the year with a 110,000 sqm backlog and 74% utilization, and secured a landmark 152 MW order slated for delivery and full utilization within twelve months.
  • Solid financial results and guidance: FY 2024 revenue rose 5.5% y/y and adjusted EBITDA grew 3% (7–8% normalized), and for 2025 GDS forecasts revenue of RMB 11.29–11.59 billion (+9.4–12.3%) and EBITDA of RMB 5.19–5.39 billion (+6.4–10.5%) with ~RMB 4.3 billion CapEx.
  • Day One spin-out progress: Post Series B GDS’s stake in Day One is 35.6%; Day One closed 2024 with 467 MW committed, targets 250 MW+ new commitments in 2025 and plans a public listing within eighteen months.
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Earnings Conference Call
GDS Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

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

Laura Chen
Laura Chen
Head of Investor Relations at GDS Holdings Ltd

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call of GDS Holdings Limited. The company's results were issued via NewsFile Services 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.gds-services.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. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation 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.

Laura Chen
Laura Chen
Head of Investor Relations at GDS Holdings Ltd

Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in accomplished 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 release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. GDS press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures. I'll now turn the call over to GDS founder, Chairman, and CEO William Huang. Please go ahead, William.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Thank you, Laura. Hello, everyone. This is William. Thank you for joining us on today's call. The race is on for AI in China. We saw the beginnings of it last year when cloud and internet companies increased their CapEx. This led to an initial wave of demand for AI training in remote locations. Now the race has gone to another level with demand for AI inferencing in Tier 1 markets. Based on our dialogue with our customers, this type of demand could run into multiples of gigawatts over the next few years. Looking at the opportunity from GDS perspective, it is exciting times to be a data center company again. The opportunity in Tier 1 markets plays to our strengths. We are by far the best positioned in terms of land and power to fulfill this kind of demand.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

The largest cloud and internet companies in China are all our largest customers. A key fact affecting the timing of customer deployments is the availability of chips. For deployments over the next few quarters, we do not see any significant risk, and we are willing to commit to new business. However, for deployments further into the future, we think the right approach for us is to wait and see. The demand situations in Tier 1 markets continue to improve, and we have the flexibility to decide when to move forward. We just executed our first asset monetization transaction. From a financial perspective, this enables us to address immediately opportunities without deviating from our current path and strict discipline. As our asset monetization program becomes fully established, we will have flexibility to do more while delivering on our commitments to shareholders.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Several years ago, we laid out a strategy to get GDS back on track with steady growth and a strong financial position. We remain firmly committed to this strategy. We focus on Tier 1 markets where we can add the most value. We prioritize delivering the backlog. We remain highly selective about new business, pursuing orders which match our inventory and which have fast-moving schedules. We incur CapEx when needed with short lead time ahead of our customer moving. We recycle capital through asset monetization, which is repeatable and scalable. We create additional value through our equity stake in DayOne, which is now a standalone business. Let's review our progress in implementing this strategy. Our gross moving during 2024 was 79,000 sq m, all organic and all in Tier 1 markets. This is the highest in our history.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

The moving rate picked up in 1Q 2024 and has stayed at a consistently high level into the current year. The pickup was due to a combination of backlog delivery and new orders with fast moving. As shown on slide seven, we started 2025 with 110,000 sq m of backlog for area in services. We expect to deliver over half of this during the current year. We ended 2024 with a utilization rate of 74%. We expect utilization to increase to high 70% by the end of 2025. Our gross additional area committed during 2024 was 49,000 sq m, similar to the past two years. In line with our strategy, we targeted new business to absorb in inventory. A good illustration is the three new orders which we won in 4Q 2024, all related in capacity in service or under construction.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

During 1Q 2025, we won a massive new order with an existing hyperscale customer for around 40,000 sq m or 152 MW, split across two sites in Langfang and Changshu. It is the largest single order in our history in China. This new order requires us to deliver data center within six months. The customer committed to moving fully within the following six months. The whole cycle from obtaining the new order to full utilization is about one year. This is a high-quality AI-driven new business with no chip supply risk. It fully satisfies all of our criteria for CapEx with a short lead time, fast move-in, and a long counter tenant. Furthermore, the sites are existing campuses where we already invested in past years. As a result, we only need to incur the cost to complete, and we are able to meet the deadline for rapid delivery.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

For AI inferencing in Tier 1 markets, hyperscale customers typically require sites with at least 15 MW of available capacity deliverable within a short period of time. Fortunately, we are very well placed in this regard. We have multiple sites suitable for AI inferencing around Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, Guangzhou. After completing the 152 MW new order, we will still have around 900 MW of deliverable capacity. As demand continues to grow, there are up to a few sites in Tier 1 markets with the necessary scale and time to market. This should benefit us. Turning to slide 13, I would like to share some operating updates for DayOne, which became our equity investment upon closing of its Series B equity raise. In 2024, DayOne accomplished a historical 340 MW of new commitments.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

DayOne ended 2024 with 467 MW of total IT power committed, most of which will be billable within the next two years. DayOne's sales pipeline is highly visible and strong. DayOne is confident of doing over 250 MW of new commitments during 2025 and remains on track to hit 1 GW of total IT power committed in less than three years. I will now pass on to Dan for financial and operating review.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Thank you, William. DayOne Data Centers, previously known as GDS International or GDSI, completed and closed its Series B equity raise on December 31st, 2024. At closing, GDS's equity interest in DayOne was diluted from 52.7% to 35.6%. Accordingly, GDS deconsolidated DayOne as a subsidiary and recognized DayOne as an equity investee. In the consolidated financial statements for the quarter and year ended December 31st, 2024, DayOne's operational results and cash flows have been excluded from the company's financial results from continuing operations and have been separately itemized under discontinued operations. Retrospective adjustments to the historical statement of operations and cash flows have also been made to provide a consistent basis of comparison for the financial results. Furthermore, retrospective adjustments were also made to categorize DayOne's assets and liabilities as assets and liabilities of discontinued operations on balance sheets for the comparison periods.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

From the first quarter of 2025 onwards, DayOne will appear in our financials as a single line in our income statement and a single line in our balance sheet. However, in our earnings presentations going forward, we intend to continue disclosing key financial and operating information for DayOne, similar to what we disclosed when DayOne was a segment of GDS so that investors can keep track of DayOne's performance and the value of our equity investment. Although we will no longer present GDS and DayOne on a consolidated basis, we did provide guidance on a consolidated basis for 2024. I would highlight that our pro forma consolidated adjusted EBITDA for 2024 was above the top end of our guidance range. From now on, I'm talking about GDS continuing operations.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Starting on slide 17, in 4Q 2024, revenue increased by 9.1% and adjusted EBITDA increased by 13.9% year-on-year. In 2024, revenue increased by 5.5% and adjusted EBITDA increased by 3% year-on-year. If we normalize the numbers by excluding one-time items in 2023 and reversing the BO projects transfer in 2024, our revenue and adjusted EBITDA would have grown by 7.9% and 7.7% respectively. MSR per square meter declined 2.3% in 4Q 2024 compared with 4Q 2023, in line with our expectations. Looking forward, we expect MSR to decline slightly over the next year, and we assume that power tariffs remain at current levels. Adjusted EBITDA margin for 2024 was 47.2% compared with 48.4% in 2023 or compared with 47.8% in 2023, excluding the one-time items. This implies that on a normalized basis, EBITDA margins were [audio distortion].

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

For 2024, our CapEx totaled RMB 3 billion, in line with our revised guidance. Our base case CapEx for 2025 was RMB 2.5 billion. However, we will incur an additional RMB 2.3 billion as the cost to complete and deliver the 152 MW new order. Offsetting this increase, we expect to receive RMB 500 million first installment of cash proceeds from the ABS transaction. In sum, we are giving guidance for around RMB 4.3 billion of CapEx in 2025. Please note that this does not take account of the balance of proceeds from the ABS, further mega new orders, or the proceeds of further asset monetization transactions in the current year. For the full year of 2024, our cash flow before financing is positive RMB 379 million. Once again, this is in line with our financial target.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

In 2025, with additional CapEx for the 152 MW new order, cash flow before financing will be negative. However, if we factor in debt deconsolidation and the deferred cash proceeds from the ABS transaction, we would still see no increase in our net debt. I'll come back to this point in a minute. As shown on slide 24, at year-end 2024, the cash balance was RMB 7.9 billion, and the net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA multiple was 6.8x. Turning to slide 26, we recently announced our first asset monetization transaction. This involves selling 100% of the equity of certain data center project companies to an SPV managed by a major Chinese securities company with back-to-back issuance of ABS. For the avoidance of doubt, the ABS represents the equity of these projects, and it is not a liability of GDS.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

The ABS is 70% subscribed by top-tier institutional investors in China, led by China Life, while GDS subscribes for the remaining 30% and retains the rights for ongoing operation of the underlying data centers. The ABS will be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange as a standardized security product. The total enterprise value or EV for the transaction is up to approximately RMB 2.9 billion, implying an EV to EBITDA of around 13x. The total equity consideration is up to approximately RMB 1.7 billion or RMB 1.2 billion, net of the 30% reinvestment by GDS in the ABS. The upfront cash proceeds are around RMB 500 million, and the deferred net cash proceeds are around RMB 700 million. The reason why there are deferred proceeds is because the underlying data centers are still ramping up. Upon closing, we will deconsolidate existing debt of around RMB 1.2 billion.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

We are making good progress with our public REIT or C-REIT application. It is moving forward faster than expected. C-REITs are not permitted to invest in the equity of unlisted companies. However, they can invest through ABS. As shown on slide 28, with the ABS transaction expected to close in the next couple of months, we can cover our 2025 CapEx at RMB 4.3 billion without increasing our net debt. We expect our net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA multiple to come down to just over 6x at the end of the current year. With the recovery in our share price, our 2030 CB is now deeply in the money. If we treat this CB as converted, our year-end net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA multiple will be around 5.5x.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Turning to slide 29, for the full year of 2025, we expect our total revenues to be between RMB 11.29 billion-RMB 11.59 billion, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 9.4%-12.3%, and adjusted EBITDA to be between RMB 5.19 billion-RMB 5.39 billion, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 6.4%-10.5%. In addition, as I already mentioned, we expect CapEx to be around RMB 4.3 billion. On slide 30, we look at our guidance a few different ways. Our official guidance takes into account deconsolidation of the data center projects underlying the ABS. On a normalized basis, if we assume the ABS did not happen, our adjusted EBITDA growth for 2025 at the midpoint would have been around 10.7%. This is consistent with the objective we set of getting back to double-digit growth.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Alternatively, if we take our official guidance and then add on the gain on the sale of the data center projects, the adjusted EBITDA growth for 2025 at the midpoint is around 16.7%. Lastly, the additional CapEx, which we will incur for the 152 MW new order in 2025, will lead to higher growth in 2026. Our current and very preliminary view is that adjusted EBITDA growth could be in the low teens for 2026 before taking out a further mega new orders or asset monetization. Finishing on slide 31, we are not providing guidance for DayOne. However, we note that DayOne ended 2024 with run rate adjusted EBITDA of around $60 million. Based on the expected ramp-up, will increase by multiples over the next two years. We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. 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. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will take our first question. Your first question comes from the line of Yang Liu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yang Liu
Yang Liu
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you for the opportunity to ask a question. I would like to have some visibility in terms of your plan to spin off DayOne and let it go public. Could management update us in terms of the current plan and schedule? Yeah, that is my question. Thank you.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Thank you, Yang Liu. I think, yes, I think last quarter, some investors asked the same question, but we don't have the clear view, right? Now, I would like to say we do have the plan where the IPO plan is more visible, and we plan to list the company within 18 months. I think this is achievable, and we are very confident based on the current international business, DayOne's business grows so fast, and we are very confident it will be a very successful IPO in the next 18 months and create more high value for our current shareholder.

Yang Liu
Yang Liu
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you. May I follow up in terms of the C-REIT progress Dan just mentioned? You see faster than expected growth progress here. What is the status now? Is it under NDRC or under CSRC or Stock Exchange? Should we expect it to come out in the next one or two or three quarters? What's your expectation now? Thank you.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. I think, Yang Liu, I think we say we made significant progress, but we cannot disclose. We do not allow them to disclose so far, right? I think maybe once we get allowed to disclose, we will announce this progress updated immediately. I think I remember last quarter when we talked about the C-REIT progress, we aimed to the end of this year, but I think the progress may be four or six months ahead than what we expect.

Yang Liu
Yang Liu
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Sara Wang from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Sara Wang
Sara Wang
Equity Research Analyst in Greater China Software and Data Center at UBS

Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. I have two questions mainly on the China business. First of all, may I ask whether the current CapEx is based on existing orders on hand? As management just mentioned, that includes the more than 150 MW order win in the first quarter. How shall we think about new order wins throughout 2025? The second question is regarding the existing vacant capacities. William just mentioned the AI inference demand from hyperscalers now. They require more than 50 MW project size. In the existing capacity utilization ramp-up, is it mainly driven by non-AI demand? Thank you.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. The first question is, I think, yeah, this is the first quarter we have won the deal, which we announced, right? Of course, I think we see a lot of pipeline. As I just mentioned, we will wait and see what is the chip supply situation, right? This is a key driver to drive the AI deployment in China data center. I think there is something not very clear so far in terms of the chip supply. Everybody knows that, right? We are very cautious on that. We are watching this situation very, very closely. This is the key, let's say, criteria to let us decide and go for some deal. I think, number one, the demand from all the hyperscalers is very strong. This is everybody can see from all the CapEx guidance. This is for sure.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Second, this demand will maintain not just today and this year. It will maintain three and five years. We are very super confident for the current year's demand and the next few years' demand. We are more patient because of the potential supply uncertainty, chips. We are very, very cautious to monitor all the supply change in the future, and then we can decide. On the other hand, we are ready to do anything, any time, any order if we wish. We are ready for that. Our current state of strategy is wait and see and very selective to choose the new order. This is the first question. The second question is, I think, of course, in the AI world, the first wave all invest in AI training.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Now, because the DeepSeek has triggered all the China inference coming more early than everybody expects. They bring DeepSeek; we love DeepSeek. It brings the order inferencing coming more early. It definitely fits our results where we located. I think the inference requirement is totally different than the training requirement. Number one, it should stay close to the traditional cloud to corroborate to support enterprise. Number two, it will lead more new applications come to more early, and this also requires very, very short latency. This all fits our resource, which we are located. We can say in the next wave, the current wave, the coming wave is inference is a huge benefit, positive for GDS resource what we have.

Sara Wang
Sara Wang
Equity Research Analyst in Greater China Software and Data Center at UBS

Not very clear. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan from Raymond James & Associates. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Frank Louthan
Managing Director for Communications Services in Atlanta at Raymond James & Associates

Great. Thank you. Can you characterize the types of customers and workloads that you're getting? What percentage of that is AI versus more traditional cloud enterprise-type business that you're seeing come in China today? What is the current book-to-bill rate? Meaning, how long is it taking you when you sign a contract when you're fully billing at the contracted terms? Historically, that was fairly lengthy. What does that current rate look like today? Thanks.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. Currently, I think the workload in the Tier 1 market, which we are seeing, we have seen, is mainly driven by the inference, not training, right? Training wave, as I just mentioned, it's happening in the last two years. It is not in our strategy. We are focused on the Tier 1 market. Our resource all in the Tier 1 market is in line with our resource business strategy as well. I think what we are very clear, currently in Tier 1 market, demand mainly driven by the AI inference. Of course, in the meanwhile, it is also leading the traditional cloud deployment more faster than before. Yeah. This is what we see. Yeah. This is number one.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Number two, yeah, I just mentioned that we choose our criteria is if we use the current our capacity and the CapEx capacity in data center under construction to fit our customer demand, short-term demand. I think this is lead time from the obtained order to fully utilize is 12 months. It's 12 months. It's much better than previous last couple of years' order. Typically, last couple of years, typically two years, even longer, right? Now it's a, let's say, improved the lead time for us. Yeah.

Frank Louthan
Managing Director for Communications Services in Atlanta at Raymond James & Associates

Are those lead times contractually obligated, or is that just how quickly the customer wants to move?

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. As I mentioned, the deal which we select, the contract length is much longer than before based on our current position. We are sitting in a very good position to negotiate new term compared with the last couple of years. We are well positioned.

Frank Louthan
Managing Director for Communications Services in Atlanta at Raymond James & Associates

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Timothy Zhao from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Timothy Zhao
Timothy Zhao
Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you, management, for taking my question. I think the first question really is regarding the supply and demand dynamics that you see in the Tier 1 markets. As you mentioned that, I think by end of this year, I think the utilization rate of GDS is, I think, approaching high 70s%. Just wondering if you have any sense on the industry-wide utilization rate, and also how do you think about the pricing environment in the Tier 1 cities? Secondly is regarding DayOne. I think you mentioned that I think you foresee around 250 MW new commitment for DayOne in this year.

Timothy Zhao
Timothy Zhao
Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Just wondering if you can provide some color on the orders or the demand and what type of customers that you are seeing that contributing this new commitment, and what are the underlying demand like AI versus non-AI, and if there's any risks regarding chip availability in this region. Thank you.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Okay. The number one question in China, I think the Tier 1 market just starts. Yeah. As I said, all the AI giants, they just give the guidance, official guidance start from this year, right? Last couple of years is mainly driven by the training. This year, the guidance, of course, the demand in the next three years, the demand will be shifted from the training, pure training, to training to inferencing. As I said, this is start to benefit us. The situation since last couple in the past, in the Tier 1 market, even in the Tier 1 market, the supply and demand balance, not balanced yet. It's a start. From my personal view, I would like to say after six or 12 months, this will rebalance. The demand and the supply maybe after 12 months will turn around. This is my view.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

The current Tier 1 market has a lot of individual data center players. They used to have a lot of resources, but most of them are very fragmented, so not fit for current AI demand. On the other hand, there are still a few individual players that still have large-scale around the Tier 1 market. I think given the time, this will definitely digest for the AI demand. Our strategy is very, very selective to choose to pursue the order. The best order, the best deal for us, is fit to our criteria. This is number one. Number two, another way to see it is we're willing to see the price getting improved. If that's the case, I think it's a good market. It's turned around to a good market and a healthy market. This is more fit for us.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Oh, DayOne, right?

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Utilization of 47%.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

What kind of customers? DayOne.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Oh, okay. In terms of the DayOne customer, I think number one, the new order is from the very, very different cloud and video company. I think it is from different country, different application, different workload. Very diversified in the last year's order, which we got from the international market. This is number one. Number two, I think in general, in Southeast Asia, the main deployment is not AI. It is high-performance GPU and the cloud. The main workload from whatever Chinese customer or US customer is cloud growth, and also the video application, internet. High-performance CPU, sorry. High-performance CPU. Now, the GPU in the whole market percentage is still a small number, right? I think the new chip's policy will not impact whole Southeast Asia demand profile.

Timothy Zhao
Timothy Zhao
Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Thank you. That's very clear.

Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Atkin from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jonathan Atkin
Jonathan Atkin
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Thanks for taking my question. One China and then one, I guess, DayOne. What's the use of the ABS proceeds? Can you give us a little bit of a flavor for the customer profile, margin profile, weighted average lease expiration, just any color about those stabilized assets that you're issuing capital off of? The DayOne question is maybe a little broader. You broke ground in Chonburi, I think, just a couple of days ago. What's the use case that you see for Thailand? Any kind of update on JB and Batam? What's going well? What are some of the challenges that you're seeing relative to your last conference call? Thanks.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. The ABS proceeds can be used either to pay down debts and deliver or to reinvest if the right opportunity is there. We look at new investment opportunities as being one part of the equation and asset monetization as being the other part of the equation. This ABS issue has been achieved at a good time because we also presented with a very good new investment opportunity at around the same time. When we put it all together, we are able to increase our CapEx, but keep our debt at the same level or lower, and be able to achieve at the end of this year lower net debt to EBITDA. We have a lot of assets that are suitable for asset monetization treatment. We selected assets for the first transactions that we thought would be highly acceptable to investors.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

The asset we chose for the ABS happens to be one that we acquired a few years ago, and it has mostly financial institution customers, which obviously financial investors have high recognition for those kind of customers. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. For the C-REITs, we chose a different seed asset with quite a different profile. It's more of a cloud internet customer.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. Let's talk about a little bit the groundbreak in Thailand, which is announced the day before yesterday. I think this is, as usual, when we start to build the new data center, building the new CapEx in Thailand, that means we have very, very strong customer demand back to us. That is why we start to build a new campus in Thailand. The customer is mixed both from the demand in Thailand, the demands are very mixed both from US and China. Chinese customers. It's quite a mix. Yeah. I think we can see this is we built this campus is the largest campus in Thailand so far. I think we are very confident the demand will continue in Thailand. Thailand will be the new hub in Asia-Pacific, in Southeast Asia, even in Asia-Pacific.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

In terms of Batam, I think we are very happy to talk about that. We delivered the first two phases, which we are committed to our customer. We continue to build the remaining phase for our customer as well. I think the Batam project is going well. We see, based on this customer, this very good customer, successful delivery. I think more demand is coming to Batam as well. This is what's happening in Batam Island. Yeah.

Jonathan Atkin
Jonathan Atkin
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

If I could sneak one on China domestic, you highlighted big internet demand, but then you also mentioned DeepSeek. There's a deep ecosystem of AI startups in China. How do you see the sales funnel and kind of prospects in terms of square meters or megawatts sold from AI startups within China versus established internet companies that are also increasing their CapEx?

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. Sorry? Oh, no. Yeah. I think the demand, right, is mostly driven by the hyperscale.

Laura Chen
Laura Chen
Head of Investor Relations at GDS Holdings Ltd

Hyperscale. Established.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Established company. And we do see a lot of enterprise-type demand is coming because this is just a start. A lot of small enterprise, the first phase is try their AI first. And they also internally, I think now I think the sentiment is very good for all the Chinese enterprises inside China because everybody tried to leverage AI to improve their efficiency or increase their revenue. I think this is very popular right now. I think given the time, I think the demand will mainly be driven by the multi-industry. Yeah. That's easy to see. I believe it will happen in the next few years. It's already started.

Jonathan Atkin
Jonathan Atkin
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Thanks for.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Daley Li from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Daley Li
VP and Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Securities

Hi, management. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions. One is regarding our future series issuance. How do you anticipate the valuation range for this series? Because if we look at other series in Asia, in the China market, warehouse valuation is pretty high, like 20x EV to EBITDA. What's our expected valuation range for this and the yield? My second question is regarding the moving pace for China market. If we look at the next few quarter-by-quarter moving pace by the client, as we have seen more rush orders for AI chips in one Q, could we expect maybe more faster ramp-up in 2Q or going forward? Thank you.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

First of all, let's see.

Laura Chen
Laura Chen
Head of Investor Relations at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Okay. Yeah. Daley, thanks for your question. There's around 50 C-REITs listed in China, and we categorize them by the nature of the underlying assets. There's around 25 where the underlying assets are commercial real estate, industrial, business park, logistics, and so on. We think that subset is the best benchmarks for a potential data center C-REIT. Those 25 companies there are two or three outliers, but if we exclude them, what remains is trading in a very well-defined range in terms of dividend yield. I believe that dividend yield is the driver of their valuation, and the multiple is derived from that. The dividend yield is quite concentrated around 5%. If we take that as a reference and assume conservatively that we would offer a data center C-REIT at a yield premium, we can derive what the implied multiple would be for us in terms of our asset monetization.

Dan Newman
Dan Newman
CFO at GDS Holdings Ltd

It is quite attractive. We set a benchmark 13x with the ABS, and we stated that the investors in the ABS had the explicit intention when the time is right, when all the qualification criteria can be met, to inject that ABS into a C-REIT. Clearly, they expected to be able to do that at some kind of valuation multiple pickup.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. In terms of the moving pace, right, I think I just mentioned the new order is a six-month move-in pace. I think that means.

Laura Chen
Laura Chen
Head of Investor Relations at GDS Holdings Ltd

Not late this year.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

What?

Laura Chen
Laura Chen
Head of Investor Relations at GDS Holdings Ltd

Not late this year.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Yeah. Start from this year. I think this is a very big change compared with the last couple of years. Yeah.

Daley Li
VP and Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Securities

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As there are no further questions, I'd like to now turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.

Operator

Thank you all for joining us today, and we'll see you next time. Bye.

William Huang
William Huang
CEO at GDS Holdings Ltd

Thank you.

Laura Chen
Laura Chen
Head of Investor Relations at GDS Holdings Ltd

This concludes this conference call. You may now disconnect your line. Thank you.

Executives
    • Dan Newman
      Dan Newman
      CFO
    • Laura Chen
      Laura Chen
      Head of Investor Relations
    • William Huang
      William Huang
      CEO
Analysts
    • Timothy Zhao
      Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs
    • Frank Louthan
      Managing Director for Communications Services in Atlanta at Raymond James & Associates
    • Jonathan Atkin
      Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets
    • Sara Wang
      Equity Research Analyst in Greater China Software and Data Center at UBS
    • Daley Li
      VP and Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Securities
    • Yang Liu
      Executive Director at Morgan Stanley
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