The largest third-party data center operator in China and the third largest data center provider in the world, GDS has officially landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
China’s IDC company with a market value of 100 billion, was born today Up.
Today (November 2), the largest third-party data center operator in China and the third largest data center provider in the world Global Data (09698) officially landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The first listing opened at HK$81, which is 0.15% or HK$0.12 higher than the offer price. 1.12 million shares were traded before the market, with a turnover of 90.06 million yuan. Excluding handling fees, each lot of 100 shares will earn 12 yuan on the book.
The stock price closed at HK$83.00 per share on the day, an increase of about 2.62% from the offer price of HK$80.88 on the day. The trading volume for the day was about 12.9 million shares, with a total turnover of about HK$1.066 billion. The value of the Hong Kong stock market was HK$122.108 billion. .
IDC has become the outlet for capital this year
The IDC industry, which has been sought after by investors such as Hillhouse and Blackstone for more than half a year, finally gave birth to the first domestic leader with a market value of over 100 billion, second only to the US data center leaders Equinix and Digital Realty Trust.
The popularity of this leading stock in the domestic capital market is comparable to that of Ant Financial: Institutions subscribed more than 10 times in advance, and all old shareholders and top 10 investment institutions have made additional investments, among which are international The long-term large funds also have large domestic capital.
The reason why the IDC industry has become an area for capital betting is that the market has finally realized its importance.
First of all, because IDC operators are chain centers, manufacturers that provide 7×24-hour computer room custody and value-added services to downstream customers such as large Internet companies and financial institutions. The domestic IDC market is roughly divided into two categories, one is telecom operator data centers, and the other is neutral data centers.
The neutral data center market is large. According to the iReach research report, in terms of revenue last year, the total size of China’s IDC market was 33.4 billion yuan
Don’t worry about book losses
Of course, like most IDC companies, GDS’s financial performance is still at a loss.
The prospectus shows that GDS has experienced substantial business growth in recent years. The net income of GDS increased from RMB 1.616 billion in 2017 (the currency in yuan is RMB) in 2017 to 2.792 billion in 2018, an increase of 72.8%, and increased to 4.122 billion in 2019 Yuan ($584 million), an increase of 47.6%; from 1.877 billion yuan in the six months ended June 30, 2019 to 2.583 billion (US$366 million) in the same period in 2020, an increase of 37.6%.
GDS recorded net losses of 327 million yuan, 430 million yuan, and 442 million yuan in 2017, 2018, and 2019 and the six months ended June 30, 2020, respectively(62.573 million US dollars) and 193 million yuan (27.328 million US dollars). As of December 31, 2017, 2018, 2019, and June 30, 2020, the accumulated losses were 1.186 billion yuan, 1.615 billion yuan, 2.057 billion yuan and 2.25 billion yuan, respectively.
In addition, GDS has recorded gross profit of 408 million yuan, 622 million yuan, 1.043 billion yuan (148 million US dollars), 1.01 yuan in 2017, 2018, and 2019 and the six months ended June 30, 2020, respectively. Billion, gross profit margins were 25.3%, 22.3%, 25.3%, 27.5%.
Calculate, it lost 2.25 billion yuan in four years.
But Huang Wei believes that losses are not terrible. First, the data center itself is an asset-heavy industry, with high construction costs, “mainly because the annual CAPEX investment is relatively large”; second, GDS is constantly doing some equity financing and debt financing to ensure sufficient capital; and profit is only a matter of time , The data center that is now in operation already has many stable and mature assets, each of which is mature and profitable, climbing, and under construction each accounts for 1/3. “According to this year’s sales growth, the annual sales of 90,000 to 120,000 square meters After 18-24 months, there will be a net profit.”
In this way, capital and the market need not worry too much about losses.
As for why he chose Hong Kong for secondary listing, Huang Wei believes that the first is that Hong Kong’s conditions for the listing of technology companies are becoming more and more mature; the second is that Asian investors are more willing to participate and Hong Kong is more suitable for expanding the investor base. After all, as an asset-heavy industry, the capital market is very important; the third is the attraction of new infrastructure, which makes the future of the IDC industry certain; the fourth is that most of GDS customers are domestic banks, financial institutions, Internet companies, and governments , Listing in Hong Kong can improve brand awareness in this ecology.