Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for GDS Holdings Limited's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Laura Chen, Head of Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, Laura.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to 4Q and full year 2020 earnings conference call of GDS Holdings Limited. The company's results were issued via Newswire services earlier today and are posted online. A summary presentation, which we'll refer to during this conference call, can be viewed and downloaded from our IR website at investors.gdsservices.com. Leading today's call is Mr. William Huang, GDS Founder, Chairman, and CEO, who will provide an overview of our business strategy and performance. Mr. Dan Newman, GDS CFO, will review the financial and operating results. Ms. Jamie Khoo, our COO, is also available to answer questions. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. The company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today.
Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's prospectus as filed with U.S. SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Please also note that GDS earnings press release and this conference call includes discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information, as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. GDS press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited, non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to GDS founder, Chairman, and CEO, William Huang. Please go ahead, William.
Thank you, Laura. Hello, everyone. This is William. Thank you for joining us on today's call. GDS has been on an extraordinary journey for the past five years. The data center market in China has grown beyond imagination. As digitalization took off, our growth trajectory has been unprecedented in the data center world. We have become the clear market leader, reaching a scale which is multiple times bigger than our closest competitors. We have the best customer relationships, the most complete market presence. By far, the largest development pipeline, the strongest balance sheet, the lowest cost of capital, and the most important of all, an unmatched reputation which reflects many years of consistent delivery and high operating standards. As we look forward from today, we see wave after wave of incremental demand driven by new technologies such as 5G, AI, cloud, and IoT, supported by highly favorable government policies.
The market opportunities in front of us is inconceivable. While others are just waking up, we are moving rapidly ahead to reinforce our market position by innovating with products and business models, deepening our strategic customer relationships, adding substantially to our pipeline of scarce resource in Tier 1 markets, enhancing our platform by entering new markets in China and overseas, seizing opportunities to further consolidate the market, and the groundbreaking green initiatives. We have only just begun to reap the rewards of our past efforts. 2021 will mark our 20th anniversary. For me personally, GDS is still at an early stage of development, and over the next few years, we will take the business to another level.
Despite the difficult operating environment last year, we made tremendous progress over the past year across every aspect of our business and have met or exceeded our expectations. First of all, we beat our sales target, adding over 136,000 sq m or 271 MW of new customer commitments. We expanded our data center capacity in line with sales, adding nearly 140,000 sq m in service and under construction. We added significantly to our development pipeline, ending the year with 480,000 sq m secured for future development. We stepped up our M&A activities, closing four deals with over 50,000 sq m of capacity. We grew revenue by 39.2% and Adjusted EBITDA by 47.0% year-over-year. Our Adjusted EBITDA margin came out nearly 2.5 percentage points higher at 46.7%. We raised $2.4 billion of equity and successfully completed our Hong Kong IPO. Turning to our sales achievement on slide six.
At the beginning of the year, we targeted 80,000 sq m of organic net add, + 20,000 sq m from acquisitions pending closing. We over-delivered by a big margin, achieving 108,000 sq m of organic net added, including 14,000 sq m from BOT projects and nearly 28,000 sq m from M&A. Looking forward to 2021, we believe that the current level of organic booking is sustainable at around 90,000 sq m-100,000 sq m of net add, excluding BOT data centers. For the M&A part, we already have over 19,000 sq m net added in progress from the Beijing 15 acquisition, which is pending closing, and we aim to close more deals this year. Turning to slide seven. Every quarter, a handful of hyperscale orders account for a large part of our sales. These must-win deals are typically major deployments at our edge of town campus.
Hyperscale customers look to land and expand in key locations. For cloud service providers, these locations are often configured as discrete availability zone, which are critical to their IT architecture. We are very strategic in targeting the first piece of business when customers deploy to a new area. We have succeeded many times in attracting hyperscale customers to establish an initial presence on our sites. It requires close collaboration with customers, the right resource wherever they are going, and an undoubted reputations for delivery and operations. As a result of winning the first deployment, we have high visibility for a substantial amount of new business in 2021 and beyond as customers deploy additional phase on our sites. Turning to slide eight. While we maintain great relationships with our top customers, our customer base now extended to almost all of the high-growth hyperscale names in China.
We had exciting breakthrough last year. We are working on more. The growth potential of some of our newer customers is extraordinary. We are highly focused on deepening these relationships. There are significantly new business opportunities in the pipeline. We have established a high level of trust with our customers, provided we have the right resource. We have an edge in winning new business. In the eyes of our customers, GDS is not just an asset player, but a total solution provider. We have built our platform to mirror our customer's requirements and market presence. This fundamentally differentiates us from other players. Turning to the slide 12. It is clear that customers must continue to locate their mission-critical latency sensitive data center in Tier 1 markets.
Customers target less than 5 ms latency to core network nodes and between AZs, which impose a distance limited of up to 100 km around the urban center. It is also clear from years of government policy that the supply of suitable land and power in Tier 1 markets will remain limited, not just in the urban areas, but also in the surrounding edge-of-town locations. We recognized this years ago and made huge efforts to secure sufficient resource to underpin our growth in all Tier 1 markets. As at the end of 2020, we had secured 480,000 sq m of developable net floor area distributed across the key markets. Most of it is land we have purchased from the local governments, together with allocation of power. This is a very valuable asset and another fact which sets GDS apart. We are not stopping at the current level.
We have some big land deals in the pipeline and will further strengthen our position. Sustainability is an integral part of our resource strategy. The whole of China is grappling with this, and it is not an easy problem to solve. We are working on a range of innovative solutions to source as much green power as we can. We are doing green power trading wherever possible and purchasing green certificates. We are also working with partners to evaluate co-investing in green power projects directly in the future. In 2020, over 20% of our total power consumption was green. In 2021, this ratio will go materially higher. We aim to publish our first ESG report later this year. We will set up targets and the roadmap which are realistic and achievable based on deep analysis.
In addition to the existing Tier 1 markets, we believe that some new Tier 1 markets will emerge in the next few years. Particularly as a result of 5G and the need to push computing closer to the edge. Chongqing is an example. It has been on our radar for a while. We bought land there early last year. We are now building our first data center on the site, backed up with an anchor order in 1Q 2021. We are looking at another emerging Tier 1 market driven by customer demand. Over the next five years, we could enter 10 new markets in China. Turning to the slides 14. Over the past few years, an increasing number of data center projects have been started by independent developers whose objective is to sell. As a result, we see a window of opportunity to consolidate the market.
We have an M&A track record like no other, having done 10 deals in the past five years. In 2020, we stepped up our efforts. We previously announced the Shanghai SH19 and BJ15 acquisitions. Today, we are announcing two new deals. Both of them are data centers under construction, but not yet committed by customers. They will give us highly marketable resource in their respective markets. We are paying a relatively small premium to organic build cost. We have the variety of M&A opportunities on our radar screen, some of which are sizable. Turning to slides 15. A foundation of our strategy is to be a total solution provider to the leading Chinese customers wherever they have critical mass of demand.
Our customers see a lot of value in working with partners who understand their ecosystem. The same logic which takes us to the new markets in China leads us to look at expanding overseas. Hong Kong is the start point outside mainland China. We currently have two major projects, the first of which is expected to come into service in 2022. We have recently secured an anchor [cast order from Hong Kong One, which we will announce in the next few months. The China cloud and the internet giants have big ambitions in Southeast Asia, both directly through their core platforms and indirectly through their strategic investments. Take AliCloud as an example. They already have three AZ in Singapore, two in Malaysia, and two in Indonesia. Singapore is a well-established hub for Southeast Asia and a global Tier 1 data center market.
In recent years, we believe that a large part of incremental demand in Singapore has come from our home market customers. For the time being, the Singapore government has suspended data center project approvals while new policies are developed around the land and power allocation. It is uncertain whether Singapore, given its resource constraints, will choose to open the door wide for extensive hyperscale deployment. The adjacent markets in Malaysia and Indonesia are less developed than Singapore, but have high growth potential. We believe that Chinese customer demand will be a critical success factor in these countries as well. We have established a picture of demand from our home market customers. They have repeatedly requested us to establish a presence. We are actively pursuing opportunities with existing assets in Singapore, as well as getting positions for when approvals restart.
We have also entered into discussions with a number of potential local partners who have projects at various stages of development in Malaysia and Indonesia. We believe that expansion into Southeast Asia is strategically important, and that we can capture several 100 MW of new business over the next five years. We are moving ahead in a very carefully and deliberate way. We aim to announce several new commitments in Southeast Asia over the course of this year. To conclude my section, GDS is head and shoulders above everyone else in the China market. This is a matter of fact. With what I told you today about the market opportunities in front of us, our strategic positioning, and our competitive advantages, we believe that the gap is only going to get bigger. Now I will hand over to Dan for the financial and operating review.
Thank you, William. Starting on slide 18, where we strip out the contribution from equipment sales and the effect of FX changes. In 4Q 2020, our service revenue grew by 6.9%. Underlying adjusted gross profit grew by 7.5%, and underlying Adjusted EBITDA grew by 6.2% quarter-on-quarter. Our underlying Adjusted EBITDA margin was 46.8%. Turning to slide 19. Service revenue growth is driven mainly by delivery of the committed backlog and closing of acquisitions. Net additional area utilized during 4Q 2020 was 16,461 sq m, consistent with the previous two quarters. The first quarter of each year is usually slower due to Chinese New Year. Nonetheless, we expect move-in in 1Q 2021 to be only a couple thousands square meters down on the prior quarter's level.
Given the timing of capacity increases, as shown on slide 23, we are forecasting that move-in over the course of 2021 will be heavily weighted to the second half. Monthly service revenue, MSR, declined 1.2% quarter-on-quarter in 4Q 2020. To RMB 2,489 per sq m per month. As shown on the next slide, MSR for the whole of FY 2020 was down 3.4% compared with FY 2019. In FY 2021, we expect a further low single digit decline. To some extent, MSR is a reflection of average selling prices. There are many other factors which affect MSR, including the customer mix, data center location, redundancy level, development cost, and contract structure, including the move-in flexibility and who pays for the power. Rather than talk about MSR on a standalone basis, I would prefer to focus on margins and returns.
Turning to slide 21, our underlying adjusted gross profit margin was 53.7% for 4Q 2020, and the same number for the full year, a near one percentage point improvement versus FY 2019. We calculate adjusted gross profit yield to enable investors to keep track of our returns in a simple way. It is a proxy for cash on cash returns. We divide adjusted gross profit for the year by the average gross amount invested, excluding assets or land under construction, or held for future development. Gross amount invested includes the goodwill for all of our acquisitions. For FY 2020, the adjusted gross profit yield was 13.3%, which compares with 13.6% for the previous year. This was achieved with an average utilization rate of 70.1%, not materially different from FY 2019. Our commitment rate for area in service is 94.3%.
When the utilization rates catch up to the commitment level, yields can climb to the high teens. As you can see, we have sustained returns across our portfolio. Turning to slide 22. Our Adjusted EBITDA margin had a slight dip in 4Q 2021, mainly due to one-off expenses related to Hong Kong IPO events. For the full year, Adjusted EBITDA margin was up 2.5 percentage points. Very approximately, we estimate that a half percentage point improvement was due to net positive impact on costs of COVID. For FY 2021, we aim for about one percentage point of further margin expansion.
Turning to slide 24. Our CapEx for FY 2020 was RMB 9.4 billion, a little bit less than what we guided due to timing of CapEx payments. RMB 9.4 billion includes RMB 6 billion of organic CapEx, RMB 1.5 billion of land and property purchases, and RMB 1.4 billion of acquisition consideration.
In 4Q 2020, we paid RMB 413 million of acquisition consideration, mainly related to the Beijing 9 and Shanghai 19 deals. We expect our CapEx for FY 2021 to be around RMB 12 billion, including an estimated RMB 3.7 billion of consideration for the Beijing 15 acquisition and the two acquisitions announced today, assuming that they all close this year. With respect to CapEx guidance, we can only include acquisitions to the extent that we have bottom-up knowledge. It is quite possible that there could be more M&A deals this year, which are not reflected in our guidance. Part of the CapEx in FY 2020 and FY 2021 relates to organic projects which we build to suit for customers under build operate transfer or BOT contracts. There are different financial approaches to undertaking these projects. Previously, we sought to minimize our equity investment and maximize management fees.
Our preference is to invest more of our own capital, but to leverage it with lower cost debt. This approach gives us a reasonable risk-adjusted return on equity. We therefore decided to keep on our balance sheet two BOT projects, which we began constructing in 3Q 2020. We made some minor revisions to include these projects in our core KPIs starting from 3Q 2020. We still have a further nine BOT projects, which we may partner with GIC, but retaining a higher percentage of equity ownership. We will update you about these nine projects in the next one or two quarters. Looking at our financing position on slide 25, we had RMB 16.3 billion of cash on our balance sheet, and our net debt to EBITDA ratio is 2.2x .
Given our ongoing levels of organic CapEx. Assuming the Beijing 15 acquisition closes shortly, this ratio will go back up to 4x-5x over the next few quarters. Turning to slide 26. During FY 2020, we completed debt financings with a total facility amount of RMB 16 billion, equivalent to $2.4 billion, including both new project financing and refinancing of existing facilities. We made significant progress increasing the tenor of our facilities and lowering the interest rate margin. This is best illustrated by comparing the terms for four facilities, which we refinanced in FY 2020 versus the original terms. The new facilities have tenors of 8-15 years, compared with five to seven years for the previous facilities. Similarly, the new facilities have interest margins of -15- +50 basis points, compared with +120- +270 basis points for the previous facilities.
These improvements reflect the strength and track record of GDS, as well as increased appetite for data center exposure from the banking sector. In FY 2021, we anticipate doing about RMB 15 billion, equivalent to $2.3 billion of debt financing, including an aggressive refinancing plan. Refi involves some one-time costs, which will impact our effective interest rate in the first two or three quarters of this year. We should see a drop. Most of our RMB-denominated debt is floating rate, priced relative to the over five-year loan prime rate or LPR. This reference rate currently stands at 4.65%. It is very stable. In fact, it has hardly changed in the past five years. What tends to happen when there is a tightening in the credit markets in China is that banks prioritize lending to favored areas, of which new infrastructure, such as data centers, is definitely one.
We're therefore confident of achieving all of our debt financing goals this year. Finishing on slide 28 with our guidance. For the full year of 2021, we expect total revenues to be between RMB 7.7 billion and RMB 8 billion, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 34.2%-39.4%. Adjusted EBITDA to be between RMB 3.66 billion-RMB 3.8 billion, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 36.5%-41.8%. In addition, we expect FY 2021 CapEx to be around RMB 12 billion. We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please do limit your questions. Our first question comes from Yang Liu at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I have one question on the competition. Could management update us in terms of the competitive dynamic in China market? Do you feel that the competition is getting more intensified, compared with three or four months ago? Do you see pricing return pressure, or how does GDS do to defend the wallet share in our key customers when the peers are chasing them aggressively? Thank you.
Okay. Good morning, Yang Liu. First of all, I think the answer is, in general, I think that nothing changed. Compared with the last couple of years, we didn't see GDS position in the market will be changed. Our position is very solid in terms of our platform. We are the only platform player in the market still. There's no platform player in the market. As we mentioned in the last couple of the earnings call, there's not a change. The competitor or the regional player or project player. Platform is very valuable for all our key customer. This is number one. Number two, I think our position in our customer is very different than all the follower. Our position is very solid, and in our customer's eyes, GDS is very reliable platform. This will empower their business in the past, even in the future.
We are the only reliable platform in our key customer eyes. What I can see here is, of course, because the market is booming, a lot of the new players in the market, even a lot of the data center, established data center player.
The competition between them looks like a more stronger than before, but not a factor to us. In terms of the price and the return, I would like to say It's very difficult to talk about the price, as we mentioned last couple of times. We are pursue the profitable return. I would like to say, in our future profitable return, we will maintain what we talked about before. In general, it will not impact our profitable return.
Thank you. If I may have another question. I saw that we have a new financial metric, underlying adjusted GP. Should I assume that it is almost the same with NOI we have been using for past years?
Yeah, the short answer is, it is exactly the same. It is a different name and maybe it's a little bit simpler because gross profit is a standard accounting line item, and adjusted gross profit just needs to be reconciled to gross profit. Presentationally, I think it's a little simpler. The number itself is exactly the same, yes.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Atkin at RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. I was interested in the slide that talks about your largest orders in Q4, and two of those contracts commenced already, essentially. That was a very fast turnaround between contract signing and contract commencement. The other two are fairly far out. They appear to be built-to-suit. Can you talk a little bit about the nature of the customer demand that you're seeing that similarly balanced between what appear to be immediate needs and then needs that are kind of out? My second question relates to CapEx, and I wondered if there's any trend that you're seeing in your business around the build cost, construction cost per megawatt of IT capacity. Has that trended differently recently or is there any chance that that could decline over time? Thank you.
Yeah, John, I'll answer the first question. We highlighted four hyperscale deals. The first one, we acquired a data center in Shanghai, is one of those projects that was undertaken by an independent developer. After we acquired it, we were able to move forward with the customer contract. That's why there appears to be a short time lag. The second one, which also appears short, is Beijing 7. In this case, it's an existing data center. It was already roughly speaking, half committed to customers. This was not the first order for the data center. This was an order that took up most of the remaining capacity. Once again, that's why there seems to be a relatively short time period, because it was a order for an existing data center.
The other two hyperscale orders in Langfang and Guizhou, yes, they both involve, in one case, greenfield assets. In the other case it's a conversion. It's an early pre-commitment right at the very beginning of the project. John, can you repeat the second question?
Declining in China. I wondered if you're seeing that, what the reasons might be, or if you're not seeing that at all.
I'm sorry. On my line, I couldn't hear it clearly.
Construction cost per megawatts.
Oh.
Yeah. Yeah. Construction cost per megawatts of IT capacity.
Yeah.
Has that trended differently?
Yeah. Sorry, I couldn't hear. The trend in construction costs has been that we're able to keep achieving cost reductions through a variety of ways. Some of it is simply scale and procurement. Some of it is through supply chain management. Some of it is through the way in which we approach the construction in terms of the phasing and the modularity and offsite prefab and so on. Some of it, frankly, is by setting up projects which have the most optimal cost due to location, due to the proximity of power infrastructure, due to the ability to leverage existing substations and so on. The gains year-on-year are small percentage gains, but they are continuous and looking forward, we continue to see opportunities to continue this.
We expect actually for quite a few years to come to be able to lower our unit development cost by small increments year-on-year.
Thank you.
Thank you. Just a reminder for all participants, for the benefit of all, please limit your questions to one at a time. Thank you. Our next question comes from Colby Synesael at Cowen & Company. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Michael on for Colby. Two questions, if I may. First, it appears you restated your area under construction and a few other KPIs in the third quarter to include the BOT data centers. Just to be clear, this is because you intend to retain 100% ownership of those assets? If so, what drove the change versus your prior view? My second question is, based on the conversations you're having in the markets outside of China to which you intend to expand, which market would you expect to have a footprint in first, and what would you consider to be a reasonable timeline for having a data center up and running there? Thank you.
Okay, Michael, on the first part of your question. We did previously disclose the existence of these projects. We had a category we called Managed BTS Data Centers, and in that category, we grouped them for projects relating to customer one, projects relating to customer two, projects relating to customer three. There was one project relating to customer two and one project relating to customer three, so they were just single data centers on a site. We decided because of the situation that it would be more optimal for us to undertake those ourselves in the usual way. Therefore, we moved them from the category of what we call Managed BTS Data Centers and then include them in our KPIs, just as we would with any other self-developed data center.
We do identify in the detailed breakdown in the appendix to our presentation, which are the BOT projects, so that it's clear for all to see. More generally, with regard to these BOT projects, it is becoming quite popular. We see more of the large cloud and internet companies in China experimenting with this approach for development on their campuses in remote areas. It's a situation where they clearly have the option to self-build, right? Typically it's their campus and there's no barrier in terms of land and power, but they still see advantage in outsourcing, but the terms of outsourcing are quite different. From our perspective, it's not the core strategic focus, but it is adjacent part of our business. I think we will be flexible about how we approach it.
In the past, we have done some on balance sheet, and we put about 80% leverage on the projects, and the return on equity to us was quite acceptable. I think going forward, we will do some that way, we'll do some where we have a majority, and maybe we'll do some where we have a minority or even just purely a management fee. I think the market will call for a wider variety of business models and certainly regards these projects outside of the core markets. We will be adopt a variety of different approaches. William, do you want to answer the second part of the question?
Okay.
Yeah.
I think the overseas strategy, as I just mentioned, the first point is Hong Kong, right? We already developed Hong Kong, two projects are in the development. The next step is obviously Southeast Asia. In South Asia, the top three country in our radar screen is Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These three market is, in our view, in the next five years, the demand from China will be a few 100 MW . We are trying to catch up with this wave. Potentially, I think that Southeast Asia is a high potential market. Our current strategy is that we have to set up our presence there, but it's for the strategic reason. If you look at it, the current Southeast Asia market, it looks very similar like eight years and 10 years ago, the market in China.
We are willing to step in and build our data center position there and to catch up with the future high growths. This is our current goal. Maybe the first project will be in Singapore, maybe in Malaysia or Indonesia. We will give you the clear answer in the near future.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Tina Hou at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for your time, management. Yeah, my question is also related to the Southeast Asia expansion strategy. Wondering what kind of differences in terms of revenue as well as return in these potential Southeast Asia projects, and how that may impact our P&L in the future? When do you see the first project to start contributing our revenue to our P&L as well? Thank you.
I think it's too early to talk about the revenue, because in the next five years, I don't think it will impact a lot in our revenue. Our current, all the guidance, all the development, we are still in China, because China is still a big market. As I just mentioned, Southeast Asia, in our view, is strategic, but we've not calculated any number in our P&L right now. I think maybe when the project's coming, we will talk about that.
Our next question comes from Gokul Hariharan at JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Could you talk a little bit about what are we seeing from national government policy in China regarding energy efficiency, pollution control, et cetera, given some of the bigger commitments on climate change? I know that GDS would be publishing the ESG report this year, but could we start talking a little bit about what are we seeing from a PUE perspective, especially for some of the newer edge-of-town projects, and what GDS has been able to do along with customers on this front? Second question is on M&A. Seems like M&A is now becoming a much bigger part of pipeline, as evidenced by last year. If you think about the next two to three years, should we assume that M&A becomes probably a much bigger part than even last year? Last year, I think it was about 20% of the total pipeline build.
Should we think that M&A would be a much bigger part of the pipeline if you think about the next two to three years?
William, do you want to address the question about government policy?
Say that again.
ESG policy, government policy, and also power quota.
To me.
Ordinance. Just yeah.
Yeah. I think the ESG is a very hot topic right now in Greater China, including Hong Kong or mainland China. I think this is definitely a trend. The government encourages the green power, and also, we call it negative.
Carbon neutral.
Carbon neutral. GDS already start to prepare for this for a couple of years. As I just mentioned, 20% of our data center are really green energy. From the policy point of view, I think in general, still under development right now. We didn't see any official enforcement policy right now. Of course, the immediate impact is, as I mentioned, in the carbon quota, in the Tier 1 market, especially also in some edge town of the Tier 1 market. It's easy to see it will control more tight in the future. This is what we can see. What's the impact? Yeah.
I'll answer the question about M&A. The main drive of our business for the foreseeable future is going to be organic development in tier 1 markets. Having said that, we clearly see an opportunity right now, the next few years, to consolidate the market. There's been a lot of new entrants, a lot of development by independent developers, and that's what creates the pipeline and the opportunity to consolidate. We believe that we have significant competitive advantage in terms of M&A, in terms of the capability and experience of our team, the methodology that we developed, the deals we've done since 2016, our financing capacity, the ability to conduct technical due diligence. We find that when you engage with sellers, always top of their mind is if they engage with a potential buyer, they want to know, is that buyer going to get to the finishing line, right?
I think sellers have a lot of confidence when they engage with GDS because of our track record, right? People ask about data center M&A in China. I think most of it is being done by us. I'm not aware of many M&A deals that are being done by others. We are the major force in data center M&A in China. Question about how much of this could there be. Frankly, we don't have a quota. We don't look at it like that. There's really two different types of deals. One type, which I call flow deal, is the kind of 5,000 sq m to 10,000 sq m data center, typically that kind of single data center or a purely capacity like the two deals we announced today, Shenzhen 8 and Tianjin 1.
It could be capacity with some customer commitment either there or coming with our acquisition, like in the case of Shanghai 19. Say there's a steady pipeline of those kind of deals and the acquisition multiples have not increased. We can still do these deals paying a relatively small premium to organic cost. We count in terms of our metrics based on when deals close. If we do two of those, it comes to maybe 15,000 sq m. We do three, it comes to something over 20,000 sq m. The other kind of deal, which is harder to predict, is the more sizable ones. Let's say 20,000 sq m and upwards. We've done two or three, depending on how you categorize. There was the Beijing 10, 11, 12 deal. That was 20,000 sq m. There's the Beijing 15 deal. It was 20,000 sq m.
If you call it M&A, there's the deal where we're partnering with CITIC, which by the way, is now upgraded to 28,000 sq m. These opportunities are scarce and hard to predict when they're going to come onto the market. If they are at a more advanced stage, have customer commitments, there's likely to be more competition for those kind of opportunities. That's where multiples have probably gone up. Still, I think reasonable and justifiable. We have some opportunities like that in our pipeline, and they can be quite a big swing factor if they crystallize. I don't want to set any expectation on that. That could make quite a big difference. That's where we could go from having 20,000 sq m or 30,000 sq m of acquisition net add a year to having something quite a bit more.
Our next question comes from Rob Palmisano at Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. It's Rob on for Frank. I just wanted to follow up. You sort of spoke to this earlier. Can you talk about likely sources of capital for next year? Can you speak to your strategic relationship with CyrusOne going forward after they just recently monetized their investment in you guys?
Yeah, Rob, we always try to be, or we have been fully financed, fully capitalized for our business plan. I think we're quite open about sharing what our business plan is. I think based on the comments William made about the expected level of organic net add at 90,000 sq m-100,000 sq m. The fact we've got 1 20,000 sq m data center acquisition already in the pipeline and potentially closing shortly. Hopefully, other acquisitions that will close this year. That's the business plan which I think everyone can see, and we're well capitalized for that. At least for the next couple of years. Look, we haven't factored in regionalization. We haven't factored in M&A beyond the flow deals as I just described them. We haven't factored in a higher level of organic growth.
To some degree, we haven't factored in potentially bringing forward a CapEx if we see opportunities to acquire land or buildings, which are going to be opportunities that are one time opportunities that you have to grab when they're there, otherwise they're gone forever. If any of that materializes, it's upside to our business base case, and I believe it will be positive for our shareholders. If the need for capital arises, it should be seen as something, it'll be because of greater success. William, do you want to comment about the relationship with CyrusOne?
Okay. I think in terms of the sales cooperation, we still maintain the sales cooperation relationship. Because historically, they refer some deal and we follow the deal, and they help us cut a couple of deals. Since now Chinese customer go to U.S., it's a slowdown. They get a limited benefit from us. I think our relationship is still there. GDS current, our international team work very closely with the different partner and to get for example, last year we got another deal from U.S. based customer, let's say, in China independently. We are not relying on them, of course. In some way, we work together with some deals still, right?
Our next question comes from James Wang at UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, management. This is James Wang from UBS. I've just got two questions. First one is a follow-up on the ESG issues. I'm just wondering, since Chinese government has announced the carbon neutrality goal, whether your conversations with your largest cloud customers have changed? Related to that, out of your current land held for development, future development, how much of that is renewable energy and whether you'll be able to increase the percentage of renewable energy usage for your pipeline projects? That's the first question. The second question is on you expanding into, you mentioned 10 different regions in China. For example, I also saw that you've recently got into Tianjin and Chongqing. If I remember correctly, in the past, for example, in the West, the utilization rate increase has been rather slow.
I'm just wondering what you're seeing in terms of demand in these new regions, whether the situation's changed versus the past. Thank you.
May I answer this first question?
Yeah. Sorry, I'm in a different place from William. I can't hear everything clearly. James, what I heard was you asking about for the area held for development?
Yeah
What proportion of the power that comes with that?
Yeah. I'm asking.
Yeah.
Yeah. On the ESG front, so conversations with your largest cloud customers, whether that has changed, whether they're taking a more focus on renewable energy usage?
On your land held for future development, how much of it is renewable energy?
Yeah.
Whether that percentage can increase. Thank you.
Yeah. Sure. Well, I think the first part of the question is everyone in China is take more notice, start from the central government downwards, right? Our largest customers look to us and expect us to help them solve the problem, the challenge with how to reduce their carbon footprint. Probably the biggest component of it is where does the power come from? Meaning, what fuel is used in the power generation. It doesn't necessarily go with individual projects. For example, in a region like within Shanghai, for example, we can purchase green power through the power trading market. That's one of the ways in which we reach the level of green power that we mentioned, over 20% of our total consumption. That's not location specific.
There are some locations where specifically there is green power because, for example, the location may be on the same grid as where there is a large amount of wind power generation, even though they could be quite a few hundred km apart. It could just be that they are on the same power grid. We will come out with targets. I think rather than talk specifically about which project has what, I think the way to look at it is in the aggregate. We will have to be innovative and take a number of different approaches, which we're working on all now at the same time. Whatever targets we set will be very serious ones. We take this very seriously. It's absolutely critical to our business. William, you want to answer the second part of James' question?
Yeah. Sure. I think, first of all, I think in China, the Tier 1 market is very obviously Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, right? The western side, if you look at the last three years, actually the growth, the data center demand in Chengdu and Chongqing in last three years grows very fast. This is the trend. Given the current utilization, what we can tell is that the growth trend is very obvious. We are very confident to increase the utilization in our current data center in western part of China. In our radar screen, there's another 10 cities like Chongqing, right? We pay more attention on that. This is a new trend.
In the last couple of years, what we can tell is a lot of our customer, current customer, cloud player, and a lot of the internet giants, they start to deploy their server in this city. We are very confident these 10 new market will drive another growth in the future. I think as I mentioned, 5G in China is very advanced than the other country. 5G, what's the impact is when the 5G complete the deployment, it will produce more data from those cities because those cities all economic center in all the province. The population, most of them is around more than eight million or even the 10 million, right? I think this potential market now is just a start. We treat them like a new emerging market, right?
In order to make the investment more efficient, we always will follow up our customer demand to get into this market. Yeah. This is our view.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we have no further time for questions. I will hand over to GDS for closing remarks.
Thanks everyone for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact GDS Investor Relations through the contact information on our website or the Christensen Group Investor Relations. Thanks all. Bye next time.
Thank you. This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.