Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for GDS Holdings Limited's third quarter 2022 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. I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Laura Chen, Head of Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, Laura.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the third quarter 2022 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 will refer to during this conference call, can be viewed and downloaded from our IR website at investors.gds-services.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 per-perspective as filed with the U.S. SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement 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'll now turn the call over to GDS Founder, Chairman, and CEO, William Huang. Please go ahead, William.
Thank you. Hello, everyone. This is William. Thank you for joining us on today's call. I'm pleased to report another quarter of solid result. We grew revenue by 15% and adjusted EBITDA by 11%, demonstrating that our business is resilient and defensive. In the current uncertain environment, we are managing GDS with the following priorities. In China, we are focused on delivering the backlog, keeping CAPEX down to what is essential, and being selective about new business. Outside China, we are stepping up our international expansion. It has been proven to be a winning strategy with the groundbreaking order secured during the quarter. While we are holding tight in China and waiting for recovery, we have created a second growth engine. At the same time, we are strengthening our financial position by monetizing assets in China and raising private equity for our international business.
Overall, we remain very confident of our strategic position. We are on the right path to achieve our goals. While demand in China is slower during the current period, there are still significant new business opportunities. Large internet companies are growing. They are building out their own IT platforms and de-deploying in new locations. They often favor larger sites around the tier one markets. If the customer is strategic and their demand matches our resource inventory, we will go after the new business. A good example is the 9 MW order, which we won in the third quarter from a tech-driven retail platform. It is for our Tianjin one data center, which is partly in service and partly under construction. We won another 20 MW order from a different customer in the current quarter, which fits the same pattern.
Outside China, we are building up our market presence during the quarter. We re-received a letter of award from a Chinese internet customer for a 64 MW deployment at the Nusajaya Tech Park, Johor. This is a clear proof of concept for our Singapore, Johor, Batam strategy. It lays a strong foundation for our continued expansion in Southeast Asia. During the first nine months of this year, our new bookings totally totaled 61,000 sq m, including 28,000 sq m from international business. We will definitely exceed our 70,000 sq m target for the whole of. The new commitment mix this year is around 60% large internet, 20% financial institution, and 20% Cloud customers.
The profile our customer new business in terms of the markets and the customer segments is very different from even one or two years ago. This shows how we have been able to evolve our strategy to capture growth. Our backlog totals sq m, all of which sq m related to data centers which are already in service. We have reviewed our backlog with customers. Their commitments are solid. The underlying capacity is scarce resource in key locations. The customers will need for their future expansion. Our backlog is mainly spread across 10 cloud and the large internet customers. A couple of them have asked us to lengthen the moving period for two years to three years, which we will agree.
On the other hand, we see that some of the large internet orders which we have won more recently have shortened, shorter moving period than the normal two-year schedule. The moving rates could pick up over the midterm as the market recovers and these new counters kicking. We expect to have one churn event from the backlog of around sq m or 1.2% of the total backlog. The customer has agreed to pay us a substantial termination fee. We are managing our capacity expansion in sync with moving. As a result, we have brought the utilization rate back up over 70%. Our installed base is very solid.
Over the past five years, our churn rate has averaged just over zero, 0.5% per quarter, which is substantially lower than the global benchmarks. Over the next couple of quarters, we will have one customer churning around sq m of area utilized. The customer is a large internet company whose scale has increased enormously in the past few years. This has led them to reconfigure their overall IT architecture. I'm pleased to say that around half the churn capacity will come back to us after a few quarters as the customer deploys at other-on-other GDS sites. In fact, over time, there's a good chance that the customer's new deployments with us will grow much bigger than the churn. Turning to the slide nine.
In the first nine months of this year, we brought sq m of capacity into service. In the last quarter of 2022, to bring another sq m into service. Compared with our original plan for this year, we have pushed back nearly sq m of completions into year two, FY 2023 and beyond. This will help us to materially CapEx, which Dan will explain later. Over the past 20 years, we have built GDS into the leading developer and operator of high-performance data centers in China and a top five player globally. Our unique platform. Multinational cloud and internet companies to seamlessly deploy their IT infrastructure in our, in all of China's tier one markets.
In recent years, our home market customers have accelerated their expansion into high-growth markets overseas. They are asking for our support. An exciting opportunity to expand our platform beyond mainland China. Pinned by strong demand from existing customers. To address this with enhanced focus, we have set up a new international holding company as a vehicle for all our assets and operations outside of mainland China. It is headquartered in, headquartered in Singapore, and over the next couple of years, it will have its own dedicated management. We believe that we can rapidly grow GDS International into leading regional and center platform for leveraging our industryThe business relationships and the scale economics. GDS International has the potential to become a major value driver for our shareholders. Two of the world's largest data center markets are on our doorstep in Hong Kong and Singapore.
It therefore makes sense for us to focus initially on building up our presence in and around these regional hubs. We entered the Hong Kong market many years ago, leveraging third-party data center capacity to serve mainly financial institution customers. In recent years, the demand profile in Hong Kong has changed, with hyperscale driving the majority of growth. New purpose-built data centers are required to fulfill this demand. We initiated our plans for self-development in Hong Kong in 2018. We selected West Kowloon as the best location to serve both enterprise and hyperscale customers. Acquired our first brownfield site for redevelopment as Hong Kong 1. We sourced three other projects in close proximity to Hong Kong 1, creating a virtual campus with multi-year supply pipeline.
This is highly beneficial for customers as it enables them to land and expand in the same location and operate with the optimal efficiency. It is a unique proposition in Hong Kong. We have already sold-out Hong Kong 1 to leading China cloud, global cloud and FSI customers, demonstrating our competitive edge. Singapore ranks in the top five data center markets globally. It was also one of the fastest growing. However, in 2019, the Singapore government temporarily paused new data center approvals due to the pressures on resources and impacted on our review. When we were considering our strategy for Southeast Asia, we felt that the biggest opportunity and the right place to start was by adjusting the spillover demand from Singapore. This situation is very familiar to us from our edge-of-town development in China's Tier 1 markets.
We moved early and decisively to secure land and power for hyperscale development at the various sites in close proximity to Singapore. As a result, we are well ahead of other players in executing this Singapore-Johor-Batam strategy. On the Johor side in Malaysia, we locked up sufficient resource for 280 MW of development at the Nusajaya Tech Park. We have the landmark 64 MW customer win, which I already spoke about and a strong sales pipeline. On the Batam side in Indonesia, we locked up the 58 MW for future development. We have already received a sales MOU from a potential anchor customer, expect the order to come in the next couple of quarters.
We aim to submit an application for Singapore project approval in the near future. Are also evaluating opportunities in other Asia capital cities to future expand our footprint in the region. Like I mentioned earlier, we have grown GDS into the leading carrier-neutral platform in China by building up continuous supply in Tier One markets and focusing on strategic customers. This is exactly what we are doing with our international business. With resource secured and some great customer wins, we are on the right track to achieve our vision. We have been through difficult periods in the past. The challenges that we are experiencing now are for the short term, while the data center industry is for the long term.
During this time of uncertainty, we continue to build up our position by expanding our customer base and enhancing our market presence both in China and outside China. We remain very confident about our future. I will now pass on to Dan for financial and operating review. Thank you.
Thank you, William. Starting on slide 17, where we strip out the contribution from equipment sales and the effect of FX changes. In 3Q 2022, our service revenue grew by 2.8% and underlying adjusted EBITDA grew by 1% quarter-on-quarter. Our underlying adjusted EBITDA margin was 45.1% compared to 46% in the previous quarter. Turning to slide 18, service revenue growth is driven mainly by delivery of the committed backlog. Net additional area utilized during 3Q 2022 was sq m. around sq m was in tier one markets, and the remaining sq m was from BOT projects.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, we expect move-in to be a few sq m lower as a result of the first part of the churn, which William mentioned. Monthly service revenue per sq m was RMB 2,237, compared to RMB 2,265 the previous quarter. The decrease is mainly due to dilution from move-in at BOT projects. For FY 2022 as a whole, we still expect MSR to decline by around 5% year-on-year. Turning to slide 19, our underlying adjusted gross profit margin was slightly down on the prior quarter at 50.7%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was just under one percentage point lower at 45.1%.
In 3Q 2022, utility cost was 31.6% of service revenue, compared with 30% in 2Q 2022, and 28.8% in 3Q 2021. Turning to slide 20. 2022 is a transition year in terms of bringing down our CapEx in Mainland China on the one hand, and increasing investment overseas on the other hand. Our organic CapEx in Mainland China will be around RMB 6 billion for FY 2022, which is a few billion lower than in the past couple of years. We expect a further significant drop in Mainland China organic CapEx next year. After 4Q 2022, we will have no more material acquisition consideration outstanding. With the landmark business win in Johor, we are accelerating our CapEx as the contract is for delivery next year.
Accordingly, we expect international CAPEX of RMB 2 billion this year, rising to RMB 4 billion next year. Looking at our financing position on slide 21. At the end of 3Q 2022, we have RMB 9.1 billion or $1.3 billion of cash on our balance sheet. Our net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA ratio was 7.6 x on a consolidated basis. Our effective interest rate dropped to 4.4%. To make it more clear, I would like to lay out a preliminary view of our FY 2023 investment and funding plans. Starting with uses of funds in Mainland China. We expect organic CAPEX next year to be around RMB 3.5 billion, down from RMB 6 billion this year.
We are able to bring it down to this level because we already have substantial capacity in service to support move-in. The cost to complete all the capacity in service and under construction in Mainland China is only RMB 7.1 billion. As William described, we are pushing back project completions over several years. Scheduled debt repayment for Mainland China will amount to around RMB 2 billion, some of which we will refinance as we always do. Our preliminary assessment of total uses for Mainland China in FY 2023 is therefore around RMB 5.5 billion, excluding refinancing. Turning to sources for Mainland China, we expect to have positive operating cash flow of over RMB 1 billion. We expect to draw down around RMB 2.1 billion of new project debt, representing 60% of incremental CapEx.
We have RMB 9.1 billion available to draw down under committed project finance facilities in Mainland China. To supplement our sources, we are pursuing an asset monetization strategy. We are developing several structures with different partners. Far, we have signed the subscription agreement with a sovereign wealth fund for the offshore China data center fund, which is still subject to execution of other agreements, regulatory approvals, and satisfaction of various conditions. We have also signed a detailed term sheet with a well-known industrial property company for the sale and partial leaseback of one of our properties. Taken together, we expect to generate around RMB 3 billion of cash proceeds from the first asset injection into the fund and the sale and lease back. Thereafter, we have the option of doing more through these and other structures.
In aggregate, we expect our total sources for Mainland China in FY 2023 to amount to over RMB 6 billion, which would be sufficient to cover our total uses. With selective asset monetization, we can fully fund the growth of our business in Mainland China until it becomes self-financing after two or three years. Turning to international, as I mentioned previously, we expect total CAPEX for international in FY 2023 of RMB 4 billion or $550 million. We expect to finance 60% of this, say RMB 2.4 billion or $340 million with project debt. The facilities are already in place. For the balance, we plan to raise private equity so that GDS International is separately capitalized. We recently started talking to potential investors about this opportunity.
As you can imagine, there's a lot of interest in partnering with GDS, one of the world's leading data center companies, in its international expansion in a high-growth region. We plan to raise sufficient private equity to fully capitalize GDS International's current business plan in one or more funding rounds. With this approach, we can grow the international business ambitiously without further capital injections from GDS Holdings. Over the next few years, we believe that the combination of asset monetization in Mainland China and external capital raise for international can meet our funding requirements in a consistent and well-structured way. At the end of this year, we expect our cash position to be around RMB 7.5 billion or $1.1 billion. This is sufficient to cover all short-term debt at GDS Holdings level, including the CB, which is puttable in 2Q 2023.
We have no long-term debt outstanding at GDS Holdings level, which is repayable until 2027 at the earliest. Turning to slide 22. We reconfirm that our revised guidance for FY22 revenue and adjusted EBITDA and the original guidance for FY22 CapEx remain unchanged. We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator, please.
Certainly. For the benefit of all participants on today's call, please limit yourself to one question. If you have more questions, please reenter the queue. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one one. Our first question comes from the line of Yang Liu with Morgan Stanley.
Thanks for the opportunity to ask a question. My question is related with our sales. I think third quarter GDS delivered very strong sales with almost 30,000 sq m new booking. Do management think that is a sustainable level or we should combine 2Q, 3Q together? Do you think that the previous target of 80,000 sq m is achievable? I think William mentioned that 70,000 sq m targets revised down after 2Q. The company would definitely exceed that. Whether the company can go back to previous pattern, like 20,000 sq m per quarter and 80 per year, do you think that is a achievable target? Thank you.
I think yes, we would revise the guidance, sales guidance in Q2, right? We adjusted to the 70,000 sq m. Now we are very confident to achieve above this number in total years level. I think the looks like in next couple of Q, we still can maintain this momentum so far.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Tina Hou with Goldman Sachs.
Hi, management. Thank you very much for the detailed presentation. I have a question on the customer churn front. Wondering because now we're talking about potential reopening of China in the second quarter of 2023, have we seen any early signs of like customers demand start to recover? On the other hand, any potential further like customer churns maybe on the horizon that we should be watching out for?
I think, you know, number one, I think the this year actually is, it's very clear there's a cloud, the cloud player, they have slowed down their CAPEX whole year. We see what we can still tell is that it will recover, definitely, but still need time because of the COVID policy in China didn't change a lot. It's all. On the other hand, I think what do we see is that the internet player is very active this year. It's much active than before. I think due to their IT structure changing or their business still growing in China and outside China.
In our view, maybe next year, cloud will slightly recover, but the internet, large internet companies still maintain very active demand in next year. That's our view, current view.
Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, but yeah.
Sorry.
Dan will answer.
Can I answer the part about.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Excuse me. I, from the fourth quarter this year to the fourth quarter of next year, was five quarters, we have a total of sq m of area utilized, which comes up for renewal. Out of that, we mentioned today one churn event involving sq m. other than that, there's no other significant churn that we aware of or we expect, nor is there any other early termination of contracts that we're aware of or expect. As regards the one churn event that William spoke about, is actually a result of the company's or the customer's success, because of their extraordinary growth and therefore the evolution of their IT architecture.
It's in no way, a negative in term or even, a systemic issue. We fortunately we competed, for their new deployment, and we won the majority of it. Really there's only a timing difference between churning in one place and, moving in another place. As William mentioned, I think eventually the movement will be.
Yeah. We can say that it's a new migration.
Yeah. Migration.
It's not churn type.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right.
Yeah. Okay. Sorry, Tina, your next question.
That's very clear.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's very clear now. Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Atkin with RBC Capital Markets.
Thank you. I wondered for Dan, if you could maybe talk a little bit about the sources of funds, and you talked about inside of China debt financing and what are we looking at in terms of current debt financing conditions? What cost of debts? On the equity side for outside of China, maybe a little bit of color around the types of parties that you foresee doing business with and that have shown interest so far.
You asked for the sources of funds. You're talking about the project debt component in China. As you know, our approach has been to project finance each data center development and to put that project finance into place at the inception of the project. That between the capital which we allocate to the project and the project, a committed project finance facility, the project is fully financed. The situation we find ourselves in is that based on expected level of CapEx next year in China, which I mentioned was around RMB 3.5 billion, and out of which, we expect to debt finance 60%, which is just over RMB 2 billion. That would be the total amount of new project debt drawdown. It's already, the facilities are already in place.
There's not over RMB 9 billion of committed, undrawn, available for drawdown project finance facilities. There's practically no new financing we need to do in order to be able to achieve that drawdown. It's just a fraction of what is available to us. More generally speaking, the project finance market in China for data centers, and particularly for us, is, you know, as supportive as ever. Data centers are a priority area of infrastructure frequently and repeatedly emphasized by the government in various policy statements. Therefore, you know, the financial sector is very supportive in terms of allocating credit and so on to data centers.
Most of our debt, most of our project debt, you know, technically is floating rate, but it's floating rate against a benchmark which we call the over five-year Loan Prime Rate, which doesn't change very much. It's not a fully market rate, therefore, it's not volatile. Over the course of this year, I think it's come down by 35 basis points. It's exactly the opposite experience of the U.S. and most of the rest of the world. Our pricing benchmark for debt is actually lower this year. I think our effective interest rate, which we just reported of 4.4%, is the lowest in our history. For the international capital raise, you asked me what kind of investors we're talking to. There's a spread.
You know, we've been approached by a variety of investors and, we initiate a process to explore more thoroughly the, you know, the potential sources of capital. I think one point I would make about this is that when we've raised capital, we always try to do it in a value-added way. It's not just about money, but it's also about what the capital provider brings to us in terms of added value to the business. I think that's really what we're looking for. We're looking for an investor who can be a partner and also add value to the business.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Aaron with JP Morgan.
Yeah, hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. My question is on the Nusajaya and the Southeast Asia expansion in general. I think congrats on this win. A little bit about what is the delivery schedule for this project going to be looking like? How do the economics go for MSR and look like compared to what we have in China? Lastly, for the international,
Sorry, Gokul. Your line is not very clear. Can you repeat your question, please? Thank you.
Raising capital. What will be the kind of ownership eventually that you're comfortable with for the international company?
Hey, Gokul, we can't hear you. Hello? Hello? Hey, Gokul. We can't hear you.
Okay.
Can you repeat your question?
Our next question will be coming from the line of Michael Elias with Cowen.
Well, hopefully, I come through clearly. I just had a question for you related to the churn. Could you guys give a little bit of color of when you expect that churn? Is it in one tranche, or is it in multiple tranches? Also, is that in just one Top-tier market, or is that in some edge of town or even remote remote sites? Any color there would be helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. Hi, Michael. The 17,000 sq m churn, there will be around sq m in the fourth quarter of this year. I think the balance will be spread across the first two quarters of next year. It's all in one Top-tier market. It involves several different sites and several different data centers. I think it's highly marketable capacity. given time, we wouldn't have any problem reselling that capacity to other customers.
Thank you. I appreciate that color. Just as a follow-up question, as we think of, you know, the cadence of net installs moving forward, I feel like one overhang was the elections. You know, just as you look to next year, are you seeing any indications from customers that they could pick up the pace of their installs into your facilities? Thank you.
Michael was asking about the quarterly move-in rate, whether we see any potential pickup.
Yeah. As I just mentioned, I think that if you have a view for next year, I think the CAR will slightly recover. But it will cost a much longer time, but they start to recover. I. That's my view in next year. But what I, what we see is the new order from the Internet giants, they are moving speed much higher than what we expect. It's a combination.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan with Raymond James.
Great. Thank you. Talk to us a little bit more about the international expansion. I mean, what are you finding that more attractive? Is it just the certainty of the business environment? Is it better growth? Will the customers be new to you, or will you be sort of following some of your current Mainland China customers there? Thank you.
May I start, Frank, and then William and will add in. I mean, the logic of our international expansion is the same as the logic of our business in China, right? You know, our proposition to our customers is to be a solution to how they deploy their IT. You know, we try to integrate our data centers into a platform to be present in all Tier one markets wherever our customers have critical mass of demand. That takes us into Hong Kong, it takes us into Singapore and the adjacent areas and beyond. I would say that the growth rates in Southeast Asia are currently higher than in China.
I think there's a huge hinterland in Southeast Asia, where, you know, many, many aspects of the digital economy are taking off. You know, the opportunity over the next 10 years is probably as good as anywhere in the entire world. To begin with, it's very concentrated in and around Singapore, but we think it will spread out from there. So that's the attraction. In terms of the customers, I think it's very valuable that we have the insight and cooperation and demand from our home market customers as we go into these areas. That's clearly a big advantage. We will definitely win significant business from non-Chinese customers. I can say that with total confidence.
In Hong Kong, for our Hong Kong one data center, we have order from one of the largest cloud players in China and one of the largest cloud players globally. I think, give us a little bit of time, and you'll see that we have a mix of China and global customers in our Southeast Asia data centers. They're not necessarily new customers because we may serve some of those global customers in China. I just say they're non-Chinese customers that we will serve outside of China.
Yeah. I think in fact, today, Southeast Asian markets represent almost 50% of the China market. It's already very a sizable market. The growth rate is, I believe the growth rate in this region, the demand growth rate is much higher than other region globally. This is a totally the market profile totally fits GDS to generate more big scale new order in this region. I think this is We are very excited about the opportunity. We also believe we have the very, very, very strong competitive edge to win the future market in this region.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sara Wang.
Hello?
Thank you for the opportunity to ask a... Hello? Can you hear me?
Yes, we can. Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. Just one quick question on the delivery schedule. I noticed the number sq m to deliver for 2022 this year is revised down by, say, roughly 20,000 sq m. The delivery sq m for next year remains largely unchanged. Is it because most of the projects in China somehow is delayed into 2024 or beyond?
Yeah. So we still have a lot of flexibility. You know, data center development has very distinct phases and is very modular. We've incurred a certain amount of cost for the projects which are under construction, and we can time and phase out, you know, How we incur additional costs. It's really tied to when the customer needs to take delivery. I think for the area under construction, it's over 60% pre-committed. So those sales agreements have a start date, delivery date in them. That's when, you know, the customer is entitled to begin to move in. If the customer agrees to delay or defer that start date, then we can delay or defer the CapEx.
I think we can actually continue to push back the completion of the projects. I just want to take this opportunity to repeat a number I mentioned during the prepared remarks. If you look at the area which we have under construction, it's well over sq m. the cost to complete all of it is just over RMB 7 billion. We talked about mainland China organic CapEx next year being around RMB 3.5 billion. That's approximately 50% of the cost to complete all the remaining capacity. That gives you some idea of what our run rate CapEx is versus the capacity that we can bring into service.
Got it. Just one quick follow-up. Given the flexibility in our delivery schedule, do we see any risk to our, say, committed sq m?
You mean the backlogs? No. I mean, we have a 240,000 something sq m backlog. We mentioned that there was 1, call it, early termination from that backlog, which is actually a partial early termination. It's not an early termination of the entire commitment from that customer. It's sq m. that's 1% of the backlog. In that case, because it's an early termination, there's a substantial, I'd say, a very substantial termination fee that we will receive either this quarter or next quarter. That's a very immaterial amount of churn from the backlog. You know, we have the financial protection of the termination fee.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next comes from the line of Alex Wang with Daiwa.
Okay. Thanks for mentioning. My first question is regarding our customer-
Alex, we can't hear you.
Hello? Hi.
Please better now.
Yeah, fine. It's fine now. Okay, great. Regarding our customer diversification strategy, the total customer base reached roughly 820 this quarter. I want to get more color about the incremental customers acquired in the next several quarters regarding our customer mix and about the longer term picture regarding customers. We have initial landscape around 20% from cloud in the next several quarters. In the long run, do we expect the mix to be further recover in 2023, 2024? The second question is regarding our customer move-in progress. We mentioned some customer delayed their move-in pace from two years to three years.
Is this feedback more from customer, cloud customers in Mainland China or some initial sales coming from international customers? Thank you.
The first question was about increasing the number of customers. I think it's quite about new enterprise customers, so that's where that number comes from. The second question was which type of customers were requesting extended move-in periods from two to three years? Maybe I can answer that one. William mentioned, if you look at that total backlog, most of it, almost all of it actually pertains to around 10 customers. I think nine out of the 10 are Chinese cloud and internet companies, and maybe the tenth is a non-Chinese cloud internet company. There's only a couple who have requested an extended move-in period. They're both Chinese cloud or internet companies. William, what about the enterprise business opportunity?
Yeah. I think if you look at our first two quarter, our new order mainly driven by the enterprise customer, especially financials, the Top-tier. That's our very solid customer base. We also added more new industry, new e-customer in this year. We made a very, very significant progress to acquire new customer to strengthen our customer base in this year. This is our strategy. We always did like again in the last few years. I think that's why our orders still maintain very stable situation. Even in this year, we still can get a rich, the very high level new booking, if compared with our peers or global peers, right?
Our new order booking still maintain very high level. I think the, that's all base, based on we have very strong customer base, and we continue to depict them, the customer base.
Mm-hmm.
This year, I think in the next years, GDS still will focus on the hyperscale plus, a very good high quality enterprise customer.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mingxuan Li with CICC.
Hi, Management. Thanks for taking my question. Just a small one regarding overseas business. Since all our three under construction data centers in Malaysia have been fully pre-committed and ready for service next year, how do we expect the overseas moving rate, revenue growth rate and margin? Thanks.
Your overseas, in our definition, includes Hong Kong, where the first data center, Hong Kong one, will come into service in the next couple of months. That is fully committed, mainly to China and Global Cloud. The move-in rate there will be over two years, which is standard and typical for cloud players. For the commitment that we've announced, the letter of award of 64 MW for Nusajaya, it's actually three data center buildings, but it's the entire phase one of our development on that site. The delivery will be the second half of next year. We expect the move-in to be very fast for the entire capacity.
That illustrative of what William was mentioning, that, you know, some internet companies have place orders a shorter period of time ahead of when they require delivery and then commit to a faster move-in than we typically see with cloud customers. As you've mentioned revenue and EBITDA, I think the international business will be mildly EBITDA negative next year. Be around break even the year after. It could be better, but that's the base case.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question from the line of Yang Liu with Morgan Stanley. Pardon me, Yang, please check your mute button.
Thank you for another option to ask a question. I take a look at your CapEx plan and the operating cash flow and also the debt. Do you think if, actually, if we look a little bit forward going into 2024 with a little bit higher operating cash flow and also similar or even a little bit down CapEx, do you think a free cash flow positive is achievable for the China business in 2024? Thank you.
I think it's close. Yang, we would expect or hope that operating cash flow will grow and organic CapEx may be lower. The gap, the gap to being self-financing will narrow down. You know, we may pursue asset monetization not just to fund that gap, but we may pursue it to deleverage as well. You know, asset monetization generates cash proceeds, but it may also lead to some debt deconsolidation. I think the strategy is not purely and simply driven by uses of funds, you know, the liquidity, but also by leverage. I think that's, you know...
At this point, we put in a considerable amount of work on developing the structures that we've already talked about, the sale and lease back and the data center fund and frankly, the international capital raise. We're working on other structures which we haven't yet disclosed yet. The objective is to have optionality. We're working with different partners with different structures. Even in this difficult time, there's very strong interest and commitment from these partners to getting these deals done. I think it gives us optionality as to how much capital we wanna recycle or raise, regardless of whether the, you know, or whether the Mainland China business is free cash flow positive. We might still be doing it.
Thank you.
Thank you. As this our notes, I'd like to now turn the call back over to the company for closing remarks.
Thank you all once again 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 Piacente Group Investor Relations. See you next time. Bye-bye.
This concludes this conference call. You may now disconnect your line.