AirTrunk tops $5b valuation after Tokyo data centre deal
The value of Macquarie-owned AirTrunk is set to soar above $5 billion with the data centre operator poised to develop a huge data centre campus east of Tokyo.
The 300-plus megawatt project – by far the largest developed by AirTrunk to date – will include seven buildings set across more than 13 hectares of land within the data centre hub of Inzia, a small city just over an hour’s drive from the Japanese capital.
TOK1 will be the sixth data centre developed and operated by AirTrunk, founded and led by Robin Khuda.
“Japan is a highly developed market with strong international connectivity, underpinning its position as a technology and data centre hub in Asia,” Mr Khuda said.
“The rapid increase of cloud adoption in Japan will be enabled by critical infrastructure, including hyperscale data centres like TOK1.”
“TOK1 is part of our ongoing commitment to deliver secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure for our cloud customers in key Asia-Pacific markets.”
Japanese construction conglomerate Daiwa House has been appointed as the general contractor for TOK1 and will also take a stake in the project.
In April, the Macquarie Asia Infrastructure Fund 2, a fund managed by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA) and including investment from Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board, acquired an 88 per cent stake in AirTrunk, valuing the business at more than $3 billion.
This valuation was based on a 450MW total capacity across AirTrunk’s data centre facilities in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong.
The addition of the 300MW Tokyo campus is expected to lift the value of AirTrunk above $5 billion.
Mr Khuda, who has retained a “material stake” in AirTrunk, has spent $40 million buying prestige Sydney residential real estate since the sale to Macquarie, including purchasing a Palm Beach mansion for $12.5 million.
Demand for data centres, which was on the rise pre-COVID due to growing internet traffic, has surged even higher during the pandemic, as people have been forced to remain at home, communicate via Zoom and other technologies, stream movies and shows and order groceries online.
Highlighting the appeal of the specialist asset class, in August Telstra sold a Melbourne data centre to Centuria Industrial REIT for $416.7 million.
Telstra will lease the facility back from Centuria on a 30-year agreement.
Total capacity in Sydney surged 76 per cent in 2019 to 414.9MW, according to research by CBRE. Singapore has the second largest capacity after it increased by 14 per cent to 411.9MW.
AirTrunk’s biggest facility is a 130MW data centre in West Sydney. It also operates a 110MW data centre in North Sydney.
