Well, good afternoon. For those of you streaming in, welcome back to Citi's 2023 Communications, Media, and Entertainment Conference. For those of you I haven't met, I'm Mike Rollins, and I cover the communication services and infrastructure categories at Citi. Before we get started, I'd like to mention that we do have disclosures available at the registration desk and on the Citi Velocity page from which you're streaming the audio. We're also gonna work to incorporate your questions in today's discussion. We'll have a microphone for our audience here, you know, here live. If you're streaming this connection, there'll be a question box on the page that you're on for you to ask questions. We're gonna continue the tradition of live surveys.
If you're here in, you know, with us live, you can use the QR codes and the placards to get the information to queue into the survey. If you're online streaming, it should come up in one of those boxes for you to input your choices. With that out of the way, I'd like to welcome back Charles Meyers, President and CEO of Equinix. Charles, thanks for joining us.
Thank you, Mike, really glad to be here. I'm glad to be in the 3:30 P.M. slot in the sunshine here rather than the 40 degrees at 8:00 A.M. this morning.
It's a bit of a difference. As usual, we'll start with the question about your thoughts heading into 2023 now in terms of strategic operating priorities and maybe how they're different than they would've been a year ago at this time.
Sure. Before we start, I guess I'll keep my IR team on my good side and tell you that some of what I say will be forward-looking. If you want to look at our disclosures, they're on our IR website. I, you know, I would say, Mike, they're not dramatically different. I would say that, I think, you know, what we're focused on is continuing to, I think, press the advantage that I think we have in our core retail interconnected colo business around the world, where I think we're the clear market leader and, I think have the opportunity to really build on some substantial momentum in the business.
Obviously, we had a great first three quarters of the year, we look forward to giving you our Q4 results and talking about the year ahead, in the next, you know, 60 days or whatever it is. You know, really pressing the advantage, you know, in that business around the globe. I think that means building on the sales momentum that we have, really helping customers understand, you know, the distinctive role that we can play in helping them in their digital transformation agenda and implementing hybrid and multi-cloud as the architecture of choice.
You know, on the, in sort of inside the four walls, I think you're, you know, continuing to drive operating leverage, which I think is a key component over time for us to continue to deliver on our FFO per share growth commitments, which we have, you know, we really think about as our lighthouse metric. You know, that's gonna be, you know, a key priority.
Then, another one is really advancing our, our pursuit of becoming a more comprehensive, you know, sort of infrastructure platform as we, you know, extend our digital services, you know, portfolio, and, you know, really make the collection of both our traditional colocation services and digital services work effectively as a platform for our customer and deliver that with a seamless experience. Then the final area I'd speak to is just continuing to build on, I think, the culture that has allowed us to continue to attract and develop and inspire the best talent in the world. I think that, you know, they're the ones who are making the difference for our customers every day, and, I think, continuing that commitment on the culture side is, critically important to us.
As you think about the way 2022 unfolded, and you're ahead of the annual revenue growth target that you had constant currency organic of 7%-9%, what went incrementally right in 2022 to help you produce these results? Do any of those things that helped in 2022 carry over in 2023?
Yeah. I think they definitely do carry over, and I, and I'll... You know, I think the most fundamental thing that went incrementally right is I think the demand environment for digital transformation continued to gain momentum. I think the commitment to distributed infrastructure and the reality and the requirement that people have for distributed infrastructure has been, you know, really, I think, very clear. Finally, I think the role that we can play as people architect their way into hybrid and multi-cloud, you know, people I think despite, you know, people's concerns about, you know, some of a slight slowing in the growth rate of the cloud providers, for example, there is still a very heavy movement to the cloud, and to hybrid and multi-cloud as the architecture of choice.
I think that's been the most fundamental. We also had a little bit of tailwind, you know, in that growth rate associated with, you know, the power, the power price increases in Singapore last year. We're gonna see a repeat of that on a much larger scale in 2023. But I think that's, you know, I view that as sort of a, you know, not a fundamental, but more of a, you know, a near term or but what might be a little bit longer term, but something that's separate from the underlying trajectory of the business. But I think that, you know, the things that really went incrementally right, I think are really around the strength of the demand profile, and also I just think incredibly strong execution on the sales and go-to-market side.
You mentioned the power pricing.
Yeah.
Aspect of it. We're gonna tease out the survey question, but come back to this topic in a few minutes after we get people to submit their responses.
Okay.
We're gonna put the question up there, which is how much will power price increases add to total revenue in 2023? The choices are 0%-4%, 4%-8%, 8%-12%, 12%-16% or over 16%. We'll see what our audience thinks.
Okay.
Of course, we're gonna welcome to see what you think about this.
Okay.
While those results are brewing, let's talk a little bit more about the demand in the digital transformation, that you're seeing. You know, what are you seeing right now from the sales funnel and the sales cycle, after having the success you've had for the first nine months of 2022?
Yeah. I think the, you know, the overall demand signal in market continues to be robust. I think pipeline looks good. You know, we've worked really hard over the last few years to build a more extended multi-year pipeline. I think sales team has done a great job on that. I think we've got really good visibility. We're very deeply entrenched with our customers as they think about, you know, the movement to cloud and to hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. I think we've got good line of sight, really feel good about the pipeline. You know, bookings have continued to be, you know, tremendously strong.
you know, the top 50 customers as a revenue mix has been coming down.
Mm-hmm.
The revenue growth accelerated.
Yep.
Who are the incremental contributors to this revenue growth?
Yeah, I think that's a it's not the fact that it's not that I think our business with those larger players are slowing down. It's that I think that the broader market, we've seen, you know, sort of outsized growth there. That has the effect of kind of reducing concentration, which I think is a beautiful part of our business. You know, we have no single customer that's more than right around 3% of our revenue. So, you know, I think that, you know, part of that is that the service provider world is very different than we might have seen it. If you, if you roll the time, roll back, and I know you've been following this story for a very long time, let's say 10 years.
You know, the service provider environment, you know, a lot of business with the networks themselves. You know, the cloud providers were, you know, sort of beginning to be exceptionally relevant. You know, but now you face a world where the range of service providers who are delivering as-a-service, you know, value propositions to the broader enterprise community as a, as a supplement to the IT architectures or as a, as a fundamental part of the IT architectures and how people get things done is enormous. So you look at it, and you can take customers that were small, emerging customers of ours at that time 10 years ago and now are massive companies. ServiceNow is a great example, right?
ServiceNow was a company who had a really great idea and was really focused on IT service management in their early implementation. They're now a massive company that is doing, you know, playing a very significant role in helping people run their businesses more efficiently. The growth of this broader range of as-a-service providers, I think, is one key factor. The enterprise business has dramatically outperformed, you know, the broader, the broader portfolio, right? It's just growing at a very rapid clip as people go from IT, you know, the way it was done, you know, before and now to more cloud-centric, cloud-enabled architectures.
Coming back to the power discussion, where is Equinix on the process of passing through power price increases to the customers?
I think we're very well advanced. We now are largely fully hedged, you know, and therefore deterministic in understanding what our underlying power costs are gonna look like in the year ahead. We've been very communicative with our customers through that process, very transparent with them, letting them know that those price increases would come through and we tried to give them an early read on how they would be sized. We've now given them, you know, more precise clarity on what those increases will be. Those will begin rolling through in the set of bills that go out in January. I feel really good about this. About this piece of it.
Look, it's, you know, nobody's loving the fact that energy prices are increasing the way they are. I think that what has happened is that customers have really come to understand the approach that we take to hedging the amount of energy that we invest in dampening the volatility in this underlying cost element. I think really can appreciate that we're gonna be able to give them greater predictability. The reality is, because we've hedged into our position in a significantly rising rate environment, you know, where we're landing customers, for the most part, is meaningfully below where the spot rate is. I think they're understanding the value that we can deliver in that area. While they're not thrilled about the cost, I'm very confident that we're gonna deliver on our objective to fully recover 100% of that.
As you think about the risk of leakage, you know, have you experienced any significant pushback, or is there the potential that after they sit with these bills for a couple months, they may be more aggressively try to optimize what's in Equinix versus, you know, where they place their workloads?
Yeah. I mean, I think that I certainly think that people. A couple things. One, on that latter question, we're not the only ones providing that. You know, these power prices increases are a broad phenomenon. Everybody's feeling them, and generally, everybody's passing them through. In fact, I think based on our intelligence, I think we're in an actually better position. I don't think that differentially. People are always, I think, looking to be as cost-conscious as they can be and get the most out of what they're doing. You know, the things that they place at Equinix, they place there be for very unique reasons. Because they get significant value out of them.
Workloads that don't require that, we don't, you know, we don't say, "Hey, you should put other workloads here." We say, "These are the things that we are gonna be distinctively well-positioned at Equinix," and they're willing to pay more for that. So I think that's been the dynamic that we've had. Our business has really proven over time to be very, from a demand standpoint, very inelastic. You know, we had, as you well know, we have, you know, we raised Interconnection pricing very meaningfully in Europe over the last couple of years. We got these, that very same questions. People said, "Well, you know, what's gonna happen? Are people gonna, you know, go away? Are you gonna see churn?" We saw none of that. I think we've got a lot of experience in seeing that at the end of the value proposition is very durable, very compelling.
Mm-hmm.
I think we're gonna see, you know, that, demand is gonna continue to be very inelastic.
Ready for the survey result?
Ready.
All right. Let's do it. In terms of the power price increase, and what it'll add to total revenue in 2023, 20%, 0%-4%, 40%, 4%-8%, and another 40%, 8%-12%.
Hmm.
you know, this is one of the questions. we realize you're hoping to do 100% recovery, which means it's zero calorie revenue.
Right.
Based on what you're seeing is there a way that you can help us logically understand what this potential benefit might look like for 2023?
Yeah. Obviously, I won't quantify it for you. We'll do that in, you know, whatever it is, 30, 45 days when we do our full year call and our Q4 call and give you guidance for the year ahead. We'll give people... What we're gonna do on that, by the way, is we're gonna have a great degree of transparency, much like we've had with the customer, we're gonna have with the investor community, which says, "Here's our projected growth with the power price increases in here.
Here's what we're projecting that to be or what that is going to be. And therefore, here is the underlying growth rate." I think we'll be able to separate those out. I think, you know, we feel very good about, one, our ability to recover the cost increases we're gonna experience on the energy side, and two, about the organic underlying growth rate of the business.
Outside of power price increases, what are you seeing in terms of pricing opportunities that can translate into profit opportunities?
Yes.
For Equinix?
That's definitely happening. There'll be partially cost offsetting opportunities because we are seeing inflationary elements in the business in various places. You know, everybody around the world, I think across every sector you can imagine, is seeing this dynamic, which is underlying cost increases leading to price increases. I think that is gonna be a dynamic. I, you know, I think that we have, you know, we're in a very good position from a pricing standpoint in terms of We've already and we started rolling those things in, honestly, you know, towards the latter part of 2022. We've done increase list price increases across Space and Power as well as Interconnection.
I do think those are gonna have positive impacts on the business, because I think that the cost increases are metabolizing into the business at a little bit of a slower rate. I do think there will be some opportunity for this. Part of it is simply offsetting the realities of the current cost environment.
Is there any way kind of to frame it in terms of, you know, how significant pricing is in terms of an opportunity for Equinix?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's more about sustaining the return profile that we the very attractive return profile that we have had. This isn't about, you know, looking to gouge people. It's looking to sustain the, you know, what I think is, one, a very compelling value proposition for customer, but then also a very attractive return profile for our investors. We continue to underwrite to our, you know, our, we, you know, our stabilized assets are performing at almost 30%, you know, against the, you know, gross PP&E invested. And our new underwritings are, you know, we continue to underwrite those high 20s, low 30s IRRs. This is Pricing for us is about sustaining those level of returns and allowing us to deliver continued AFFO per share growth.
Let's get to our second survey as we dig into more of this, the revenue opportunities. We're gonna ask our audience. What will organic constant currency revenue growth be for 2023, excluding the power price increases? Take that off the table. Your historic annual target range has been 7%- 9%.
Right. The Analyst Day that we gave you know, was 7%- 9%. Yeah.
The 2022 guidance is for, you know, for last year, recognizing we haven't gotten to the Q4 earnings yet, was 10%-11%.
Right.
Okay. That frames it. The choices are less than equal to 7, 7-8, 8-9, 9-10, or over 10.
Okay.
We'll come back to that.
Great.
In a few moments. As you're thinking about revenue growth opportunities, help us frame the macro. If the US goes into recession, if global markets go into a recession, how should investors think about the sensitivity of demand for your services, you know, relative to, you know, some tougher macro conditions?
Yeah. I mean, look, I do think that the sort of macro environment continues to sink in in various ways. I will tell you that it wasn't, has not been lost on people that we were entering, you know, a period, a phase of, you know, sort of more challenging macro for some period of time now. Yet as we continue to talk to our customers and understand their sentiment, understand, and even understand their budgets looking into next year, I would tell you that they are, you know, they seem deeply committed to their digital transformation agenda because I think it's fundamental to their ability to differentiate in their markets. It's fundamental to their ability to get, you know, do more with less.
It's fundamentally, you know, their ability to, you know, retool how they do work and again, drive operating leverage in their own business is part of their digital. You know, digital is central to that. We have seen them be very committed to that. I think they see that we can play a particular role in helping accelerate the, you know, that and gain leverage by being able to effectively use all of the cloud resources at their disposal, you know, more effectively. We just have not seen that. You know, we are continuing to invest behind the bookings momentum that we've seen. We're adding more quota-bearing headcount.
We ourselves are being very tight in terms of, you know, we're tightening down on G&A and saying we're gonna do more with less ourselves. I think that, you know, right now we continue to feel very optimistic about the demand environment and, you know, we're gonna continue to track it. I think the history of us performing well through periods of economic challenge, we hope will continue to, you know, present itself.
You mentioned, growing the sales force, quota-bearing headcount. What's the objective there? Is it to go deeper in verticals that you're already attacking and targeting, or are you looking to expand that funnel even wider?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's more The reality right now is when we look at many of our salespeople, and we look at their book of accounts, they're meeting or exceeding sometimes meaningfully their targets, and yet they have been left a lot of a lot of their patch untouched. This is for us about saying our bookings momentum is so strong, let's make sure we get more coverage, and, you know, continue to. I think our focus is gonna continue be more on the, what we call our STAR targets, which is, you know, sort of more, you know, those larger global enterprises. We also will get broader reach through our channel partners. You know, I think it's about really tapping into the demand that exists there.
The digital services arena is something that is also where you have a more valid, you know, sort of, and relevant, you know, value proposition for the developer community. I think, you know, that's a way for us to gain mind share in larger enterprises that will translate to larger enterprise deals over time. It's a little bit of both of those.
Ready for the survey results?
Yeah.
In terms of organic constant currency revenue growth for 2023, 29% at, or below 7%. 21%, 7%-8%. Similar percentage of 21%, 8%-9%. Also similar, about 21%, 9%-10%. Then 7% above 10.
Wow, it's quite the spread. It's interesting. Okay.
As we think about the components of revenue growth, you're positive on volume going into next year?
Yes.
You're positive on pricing?
I am.
These were incremental from the time of the Analyst Day when you gave the seven- nine.
Well, you know, look, I think that obviously, if you look at 2022 performance, we went over the top end of that. A very little bit of that associated with the Singapore price increase, but most of it on underlying fundamentals, right? You know, I think without getting myself into trouble and saying more than I should, I think I would simply say, I think that we are seeing and demonstrating strong momentum in the business. Demand signal is strong. I think if you look at the fundamental of Px Q, our pricing, you know, pricing is probably rising. You know, some of that is just recovery of the underlying energy costs, and some of it is inflationary forces, but may create some lift.
you know, the volume, you know, continues to be good. Power densities are we're seeing increasing in power density. Interconnection continues to be strong. I think there's a number of things that lead us to, you know, feel good about the top-line momentum in the business.
One thing we haven't talked about yet is churn.
Mm-hmm.
How has that been progressing? And what does that look like in terms of as you look into your, you know, that pipeline of what.
Sure.
can look like? Anything that we need to be aware of or that could pop up?
I think, you know, we always are. I would say churn is an interesting one. We've had, as you know, our results have been really good. We've had a very strong trend line on the churn for the last few quarters. We've been at the bottom end of or below the bottom end of our range, our 2%- 2.5% range that we typically talk about. You know, I think we'll give you more insight on that going into next year. You look at it, there's a lot of puts and takes on churn. I think there's some areas where, for example, we've been actively looking for churn opportunities because we want capacity in certain markets.
We believe we can, you know, sell that capacity for meaningfully above the rate that it's currently contracted at. That's a very positive churn event. I think on the other hand, I do think that when you get macro sort of conditions like we have, you get what you described earlier, which people saying, "Wait a second, we got to go find ways to cut costs." They always go, and they look, and they say... And typically for us, it's not that they say... 'Cause it's very-- I think it's very naive for people to say, well, are they gonna, might they come, and if you raise their price, might they turn you off? It doesn't work that way.
We, you know, we're sort of supporting fundamental infrastructure, you know, to run their business. I think then, you know, them going and saying, "Hey, we've contracted with Equinix for 100 kilowatts in Ashburn, and we're only using 60, and can we, you know, can we go back to them and ask for the other 40 back?"
The good news is we can always say, "Hey, we're, you know, we're not in a position to accommodate that request." We could say, "Yes, we will." You know, when renewal comes, then they can resize that as they wish. I think, you know, macro, you know, tighter macro climate always creates a little bit of pressure there. We've had, you know, a really strong trajectory, and I think our number one, you know, you know, focus on churn is put the right customers in the right locations with the right workloads, and churn will do the right thing.
Taking a step back, just kind of closing up this conversation on the opportunity for revenue growth. Should investors believe there's an opportunity, given all the things that you described, for Equinix to do better, just like you did in 2022, better than that annual 7%-9% rate in 2023?
Yeah. I love how you can ask the same question in several different ways and have me not answer it.
It's worth a shot.
It is. I think investors should feel, as we do, optimistic about the long-term future of our business, about its relevance to digital transformation, and about, you know, what that means for the opportunity that exists. I think we'll be able to give you a lot more insight into that as we give you a full year guide in 45 days or so.
On the margin side.
Yeah.
take power price out of the equation.
Yeah.
How are you thinking about the trajectory to get to the goal of 50% or better in 2025?
Yeah. I think, you know, I think that that's something we'll also give you a little bit more insight into. I will say this in terms of giving you a little more concrete answer on that. We clearly see operating leverage as one fundamental element of driving AFFO share growth, which we view as the lighthouse metric for our business. You know, 'cause at the end, I think investors see it and say, "What do I get in terms of dividend yield, and what are you gonna give me on AFFO per share?" Right? That's fundamentally how people... We have that very deeply ingrained into our thinking about how we run the business. In order... look, I think we're seeing good top line momentum right now.
You know, we've kinda tapped ourselves out of being able to reduce our interest costs, and you know, we did that over a period of time. We're gonna have to show operating leverage to continue to, you know, continue to expand the AFFO per share. I think if you look at our Q3 results, for example, SG&A was really flat despite the fact that we were making investments in sales. That means the G&A was actually trending downward. I think we need to keep that going.
I think the exact timeline on which we think a target of 50% is achievable is something I think we're continuing to look at. We'll give people an update on as we get to our full year guide. Then probably more, more accurately or more comprehensively when we do our Analyst Day again in June.
As you look at expanding the portfolio, development, building new data centers, acquisitions, even building financial flexibility on the balance sheet.
For sure.
how should investors think about the priority on how Equinix wants to use that flexibility?
Yeah. I mean, I think that our first priority, I think, is the continued organic growth in the business, right? I mean, I think that we're seeing, you know, we've talked a lot about the strength that we're seeing. We're talking about the returns that we're underwriting to. I think that's first and best use if we can, you know, where we, and really putting our emphasis there. That said, we've also had great success over the years, as you well know, with M&A. I think, I believe there will continue to be strategically and financially interesting M&A opportunities for us as a business. I would say private multiples in our, in our sector have not softened as much as I might have thought or anticipated, but I think we might be seeing some of that.
I think we wanna be, and I think, you know, we'll be appropriately disciplined in that, but I do think we're gonna, we will I think there are absolutely opportunities for us to continue to extend the geographic reach of our platform or to add scale in key markets through M&A. I think that will be. We, those factors. So the health of a very healthy organic business, opportunities for M&A. The third thing is that, look, there's a lot of uncertainty still out there. I think having a well-fortified balance sheet is just prudent, given the uncertainty that we live in. We've seen the last few years a lot of things that we didn't expect to happen. I think, you know, it's just prudent for us to have a fortress-type balance sheet, and I think that's what we have.
As you think about what you were describing earlier, trying to be a comprehensive platform, what does that mean for digital services in terms of growing what you already have on the menu and adding product to that menu?
Yeah. When I say that, it's really about us saying, Hey, how can we use our physical platform and the reach of that physical platform around the world, and then manifest the underlying value proposition of that in terms of global reach, advantaged access to key digital ecosystems, you know, interconnection, an interconnection portfolio and service excellence, and how can we deliver that so that customers can combine the right forms of infrastructure to implement hybrid and multi-cloud as in the way that is best for them? I would say right now, even though we have, I think, a super compelling value proposition, sometimes that's harder for customers than it should be. There's a fair amount of, you know, effort required for them to really unlock all that value.
We have to continue, I think, to add services that simplify that, make it more accessible, make it more on-demand. Things like Metal, Network Edge, and now Fabric and its continued evolution as a cloud networking, you know, capability, I think are kinda what we would see as continued investments there. I think the cloud networking arena in particular, I think is and continued momentum in our, in the bare metal, in the Equinix Metal business are things that I think are definitely on the horizon for us in areas we're making investments.
What are you seeing in terms of the benefit you're getting from xScale in terms of importing those relationships and the presence into the retail platform?
Well, one, you know, the, obviously the new, the hyperscale customers in the top five or six of those that represent the vast majority of our xScale revenue are super critical partners to us. One, we are an important underlying element of their infrastructure, and we wanna stay very close to them and continue to serve their needs. Two, what we have found, and you guys see this in our results virtually every quarter, which is we always announce that our top channel partners in the quarter were AWS and Microsoft and Google and that's because they are having great success selling multi-million, multi-$10 million, multi-$100 million enterprise deals for their cloud services to large scale enterprise customers, who are generally part of that conversation is, that's great.
We're committed to cloud. We believe it's a, it's a critical element to where we're going, and how are we gonna manage the private infrastructure and ensure that it all continues to work as we expect it to? We're getting very involved in those sales cycles. So I think that's, you know, that's a key, a key part of it as well.
Is the hyperscale business also seeing some pricing benefits beyond just power? Does that change the return opportunities from that platform?
Yeah. Interestingly, the xScale business is almost fully passed through power. It really doesn't have any. It just. There's no kind of gymnastics required. It's it just passes through to the customer kind of in a more automated way, right? I don't think there's a real upside or downside opportunity there. I think, you know, realistically and pragmatically and transparently, xScale is continues to be a business that is price competitive because it's harder to differentiate. The reason we went off balance sheet and went through the JV structures is because it is a different return profile business. It's more of a spread to cost to capital business.
Honestly, we wanted to preserve our dry powder for the retail business, which delivers, you know, far superior returns. That said, it is to your foundational question there, it is still strategically important for us to. What we have seen is in metros where we deliver the full portfolio, xScale, interconnected retail, digital services, we have great success because we can meet the really full proposition that our customers require.
So that's been our strategic objective, and I think it is, has played out very well for us. Candidly, the underlying financial performance of xScale has been good. You know, I think even though it is a very competitive business, I think there is a lot of demand. I think there's a very deep tool, pool of demand, and we're getting uplift with fees, that I think give us, you know, good, you know, a very acceptable return profile on that.
In the international markets, historically, you would talk about how you've had these exporting of bookings from the U.S. markets, and you're looking to build more sales inside of the local markets. How is that progressing for Equinix?
Very well. I mean, we always talk about selling the global platform and, in fact, we, you know, I think we come off a really strong quarter in terms of, I think, last quarter in Q3, we had strong exports from Japan and other Asian markets into the U.S., and into Europe. So I think the team has really embraced global selling, and it's still a little bit imbalanced. I think that's just the nature of the technology progression and maturity. I think we've seen real progress in terms of selling the global platform.
You mentioned there's an Analyst Day coming up.
Yeah.
this year. Maybe give us a little preview and what's the biggest misunderstanding that you wanna address at this meeting?
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's, you know, what we're gonna really be trying to articulate, I think, at the Analyst Day is this unique position that we play in driving digital transformation. The role we play, why, the geographic reach of our platform, why the ecosystem, you know, density that we have and how that delivers, you know, significant value to customers and how it's, you know, facilitating key, you know, value, key workloads like AI and other things that are, I think, driving, you know, business insights and business returns. I think that's really what we're gonna be focused on. I think the biggest misunderstanding is really just there is...
The notion that people think about the data center market, and they would talk about that as if it's a thing. It's not a thing. It's a collection of things. We happen to play in a variety of those and don't play in some of them. That's why I think that just the dynamics of understanding how the market segments and the very different business models and the durability of the differentiation that exists in some of those and doesn't exist in others of those. I think that's really where we're gonna be focused in trying to, you know, articulate and clarify that for people and simplify it as much as possible.
Let's close out with our last survey question. Biggest threat to the financial results of retail-centric data center markets over the next few years: direct competition, demand shifts to hybrid IT, technology's gonna dilute the monetization of Interconnection, power density, energy costs, SG&A costs, no immediate threat. We're gonna go to the polls. In our last question in before we get to these results, you know, Charles, as you look at the business in the addressable market, how do you think about the share position you have today and where that can go over time?
Well, share kind of links to that comment I just made because it's, whenever somebody asks a question of, you know, share, I say, "Of what market?" I think we have a very compelling share position in the market that we see as the sweet spot in our market. That is, you know, how do you provide, you know, well-positioned, geographically distributed infrastructure in proximity to the digital ecosystems that matter and interconnection services that allow people to connect those things to architect hybrid and multi-cloud? We are by far the share leader in that. Now, I think that is also a very compelling growing market. In the broader data center world, I think we're a share gainer.
You know, we're focused on the pieces of the market where we provide really distinctive advantage.
The results, to share them, they're still trickling in. 30% direct competition, 10% demand shifts from hybrid IT to cloud, 18% is the dilution to interconnection, 9% higher energy, 18% higher SG&A, and 8% no immediate threat.
Sure.
Anything, there that you just wanna unpack?
No, I mean, I don't, you know, it's interesting 'cause I think on the competition front. I always wonder what people think about when they're entering that in terms of who they are thinking about as that competition, you know? That's, 'cause I think the competition is more, I think, in terms of an evolving set of propositions and technologies that support hybrid and multi-cloud, and I don't think about it as. I think the way most people think about direct, you know, sort of competitors differently than what keeps me up at night, you know? Then, you know, the other one that's not on there, I think, is just, you know, just continuing to make sure that.
'Cause I believe the demand side of our business continues to be in really good shape, and I think we need to continue to make sure we're focused on the supply side in terms of building the right projects, building them sustainably, being able to get the energy we need, all those kind of things. Those are key areas of focus for us as well.
Charles, thanks for being here today.
Pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you.