CDC anticipates doubled earnings after milestone year

CDC Data Centres is anticipating it will double its earnings over the next two years after progressing through what it has labelled as a milestone year.

CDC CEO Greg Boorer said the expected earnings boom is due to investments and contracts won.

These investments include the expectation of $250 million from Infratil announced in January.

“Because of the investments we’ve made and the contracts we’ve won, we’re expecting our earnings to double over the next two years – with around 80 per cent of that already contracted,” he said. “We’re already a big business today, but the future looks even brighter.” 

Infratil CEO Jason Boyes highlighted CDC’s outlook bolstered by strategic contracts with “substantial contracted growth across all major Western hyperscalers”.

“We can also see upside through the signing of additional contracts and the conversion of existing reservations beyond this period,” he said.

Boorer added CDC was also ready for AI, with various technologies in place to accommodate the workloads.

“We are hosting high power density racks, with liquid cooling, across our data centres, which are certified by NVIDIA for the latest AI chipsets,” he said.

“That’s because we made the right choices early, such as like liquid cooling, when everyone else thought it was crazy. AI isn’t just changing workloads; it’s redefining the infrastructure required to support them. CDC is one of the few operators that’s truly ready.” 

Last week CDC hosted an investor briefing and site visit at its Brooklyn campus in Melbourne, which has been in operation since October and added more than 30MW of high-density operating capacity to its platform.

CDC’s milestone year

FY25 has been a milestone year for CDC, which included new sites, expanded capacity and customer wins, laying the foundations for growth.

Part of this includes its New Zealand expansion with 16MW added at its Hobsonville and Silverdale facilities which were completed on time and within budget.

CDC said this was “no small feat given New Zealand’s construction and supply chain complexities”. Additionally, more capacity is under construction in the country in response to increased customer demand.

Meanwhile, its work in Australia includes the groundbreaking of its second Melbourne campus in Laverton, which is predicted to add at least 150MW of capacity to the region.

Construction is underway for its second campus in Marsden Park in Sydney, which it claims will be one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere at more than 700MW with initial data centre capacity already contracted.

“Marsden Park future-proofs CDC’s position in Australia’s most important data centre market,” the operator added.

As for hyperscalers, CDC said it either currently delivers, or is contracted to deliver, capacity to the largest Western global cloud service providers, which the operator said expands its opportunity set “significantly”.

Capping off its reasons for its milestone year is its 2.5GW total platform capacity, which includes its operational, under construction and future development timeline – more than double from 1.2GW a year ago.

On track for FY25

While CDC has its eyes set in doubling earnings over the next two years, its shorter-term goals see it on track to meet its FY25 EBITDAF – earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation, financial derivative movements, revaluations and gains or losses on the sales of investments – guidance of $320 million to $330 million.

This is due to long-term customer contracts with a low risk weighted average lease expiry (WALE) of 30 years (including options) and rising operational leverage as campuses scale and systems improve.

It also attributed this success to a strong capital base that is backed by Infratil, Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation (CSC) and Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, plus low-cost debt sourced from diversified global markets.