DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (NYSE:DBRG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Marc Ganzi: So really high conviction, Eric, around DataBank, largely because the business is just performing at an incredible pace. So we’re pretty optimistic that we’ll get that done here in short order. Vantage SDC, same story. It’s a business that continues to execute against its plan. Really hard to find at that entry price and at that cap rate, the quality of the cash flows of domestic U.S. close to 100% investment grade, 15-year leases with investment-grade cloud players. And as you can imagine, other parts of the world, maybe not U.S. pensions, but certainly Asian pensions, Australian pensions, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds between Asia and the Middle East and Australia, we’re finding that there’s a lot of appetite for high-quality yielding assets.

And again, the entry price would be the same as it was when we initiated that continuation fund, as you know, Vantage SDC sits in a continuation fund already. And so we’ve got very strong momentum there. Part of my team is in Australia this week, fundraising, and some of my team next week is in Asia and some of my teams in the Middle East. So we’re constantly fundraising, Eric. It’s really candidly our strength. And that’s why we feel really confident about the 2023 guidance that we’ve laid out. And once again, that guidance is $8-plus billion of new fundraising just to be entirely clear with everyone. We have an expectation that we’re going to beat that target. So that’s the update on 2 of those. And by the way, if we sell a stake in Vantage SDC again, call it, if we sell what Jacky was sort of telegraphing we might sell half that stake, which would take us from 12% to about 6%.

Do you want to give us the math on that?

Jacky Wu: Yes, sure. So we’re a little over 13% ownership of Vantage SDC now, and under GAAP considerations, we would get to below 9.5% to deconsolidate our position. Obviously, we’ll be opportunistic with any sort of recapitalization there.

Eric Luebchow: Got you. That’s helpful. And just one more for me. Marc, there’s been some debate in the fixed income community, so maybe you could help clear the air around the outlook for Zayo within your portfolio just based on where the bonds are traded earlier this year. So maybe you can just give us an update on the cash flow and growth outlook and the performance of that fairly large portfolio asset, that would be helpful.

Marc Ganzi: Yes, sure. We’re certainly under no obligation to talk about that asset, but I really like you, Eric. But anyway, we’re forecasting roughly 5.5% to 6.8% organic net growth this year at Zayo. We had a very, very strong fourth quarter, strongest revenue bookings in the company’s history in 2022 and the strongest quarter of net installs in the company’s history in Q4. We have spent the last 2 years rebooting the management team. Candidly, redoing the back-office systems, which needed a lot of work in repair. We put more CapEx into the physical plant, just renovating certain routes and building redundancy and strength over $120 million invested in the last 2 years that was at our election, it was discretionary CapEx to make sure the network is strong.

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