Macquarie raises $130m to expand data centre business

Macquarie Technology Group has tapped investors for $130 million to boost the balance sheet and provide funding to grow its multi-million dollar valued data centre portfolio.

The ASX-listed Macquarie Technology Group will direct some funds to expand its data centre campus in Sydney’s Macquarie Park precinct, with a new building called IC3 Super West that will join the existing IC2 and IC3 assets, the latter of which was also upgraded recently.

Data Centres are one of the growth sectors in commercial real estate, with demand rising from the vast level of data used that needs to be stored electronically.

Macquarie Technology was previously Macquarie Data Centres and has a market value, pre the placement, of $1.36 billion. It has five data centres in operation with a pipeline for additional growth. It invests in data centre and cloud certifications such as for credit card payments; requirements for government workloads and for multinational customers.

The group’s chief executive David Tudehope said the funds raised from the institutional placement would strengthen the company and enable it to invest and expand the data centre business to capitalise on cloud and AI megatrends.

“As our economy becomes more digitised, organisations are moving their data and applications to the cloud at a faster pace,” Tudehope said. “The cloud lives in new-generation data centres like ours supported by leading cloud services and cybersecurity platforms. AI is the next significant megatrend for data centres and the digital economy, driving higher power density and demand for greater capacity.”

“We expect to see strong demand for the latest generation of data centres.”

David Tudehope

He said as these two megatrends combine, “we expect to see strong demand for the latest generation of data centres”.

The latest raising comes as the group has completed major upgrades to its data centre campuses in Sydney, namely IC3, and Canberra, helping government and enterprise customers expand their capacity and improve security compliance.