GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So that negative free cash flow before financing might be a small number. I don’t think it’s very challenging for us to do monetizations at this scale if we have a substantial amount of capacity in this offshore China data center fund to do more deals. We’ve been working for some time on onshore equivalent and now in the process of signing a formal term sheet, a framework agreement and asset has been identified and initial diligence done by the investor, which would also recycle at least a few hundred million RMB of additional capital. And then, just looking more broadly, the REIT market in China is beginning to really take shape. There’s a lot of interest. We’re being approached continuously by investors and banks looking to structure something involving data center assets.

I think it’s an asset class that attracts a lot of interest in China, right? For the China REIT market regulations, it’s really designed for stabilized assets. With these funds, we made the decision that has suited our purposes to focus on three core projects that were still under development, derisked to a degree, but under development. But that could be a stepping stone towards virtually being able to access the REIT market. So, I think we have — I think we’re very comfortable. I think we probably are far better positioned than anyone in having potentially an offshore, an onshore and a lot of banks chasing us for a data center REIT. So that shouldn’t be a problem.

Frank Louthan: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question. Please standby. It is from the line of Joel Ying from Nomura. Please go ahead.

Joel Ying: Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have just one quick — one question about China market. So, we are seeing latest news about AI technology ChatGPT. So, do we actually see any potential demand rising from the market about the AI data centers? And do we expect the AI data centers will be — could be outsourcing by — like companies like GDS, third parties or for some of the cloud companies who will do the self-building things that will be outsourced, that will be self-build? Thank you.

William Huang: Yeah. I think you’re right. I think now everybody is focused on the ChatGPT. But forget it, in China, this is already — a lot of the big players already started to use the AI. AI is also very hot topic in China. And we also believe this will be the new — will drive the new wave of the demand. And definitely GDS, our product, our location, all fits the AI-type demand in future in terms of power density, in terms of total power capacity and the location where we are. So, I think we are very, very encouraged by the new wave of the demand. This will affect our business in the next few years and just what happened in the last eight years ago when the cloud started. So, I think we are very happy. I think definitely, I think the — because, the AI-type demands ask for more high-power density. It’s very difficult to build by themselves. So, outsourcing will be the trend and that’s what we believe.

Joel Ying: Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. We’ll now take our next question. Please standby. It is from the line of Edison Lee from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Edison Lee: Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions. My first question is about the — your build-out schedule or your delivery schedule. And I found that in 2023, 85% of your delivery is actually taking place in the second half, right, only 15% in the first half. So, I wonder if that is driven by your demand assessment or driven by your construction schedule? Okay, that’s number one. Number two is, on your guidance for 2023, obviously, the EBITDA growth less behind the revenue growth. If you take our international business, what do you think the EBITDA growth can be in 2023? And lastly, one of your peers recently said that a major cloud service providers in China in fact stopped self-building. And I don’t know how true that is. But what is your view on the cloud service providers’ sell-building program, given the current state of the market? Thank you.