All right. Good morning, everybody. You're here to listen to Equinix. My name is Brandon Nispel. We have Ryan Burke, who's Head of Investor Relations, and Guy Danskine, who's the Managing Director of Americas West at Equinix. Guys, thanks for being here.
Thank you.
Pleasure. Thank you.
Ryan, I'm going to turn it over to you for your safe harbor.
Yeah. As many know, we will talk about forward-looking statements over this next 25 minutes. As always, give our SEC filings a look for factors around those statements.
That was excellent. Well, Guy, we haven't had a chance to speak before, and I haven't heard you speak publicly, so why don't you just give investors your background and your role at Equinix?
Yeah. Good morning, everybody. Guy Danskine, Managing Director for our U.S. West region. It's a new role at Equinix. Prior to this, I was leading our Australian business, so I was the Managing Director there for the last six years. Before that, I was back in the U.S. leading a couple of our hyperscale relationships. The role is new in the U.S. because we've had it around the rest of the world for a long time.
We had country managers in place. We've introduced it into the U.S. to introduce even more discipline and thinking around the assets that we have within a sub-region, the return on invested capital that we are getting from there, a little bit more scrutiny around asset optimization, how we think about risk mitigation. Just those are the kind of vectors that we just want a little bit more focus on.
Got it. I want to start maybe just going back to earnings a couple of weeks ago. Equinix just raised their long-term guidance. You guys are now guiding investors to 10%-13% annual revenue growth and 9%-12% AFFO per share growth. Can you help us understand what informed your view that this is the right range in terms of long-term growth rates?
Yeah, I'll lead off and then Ryan can jump in. We've spent a lot of time with our customers looking at the demand that we're all seeing and you're hearing about, but really thinking deeply and talking to those customers about the durability and how robust that demand is. The more of those conversations we've had, the more conviction we've had just around our forward-looking guidance. I think that's what you saw come through in the print.
We feel like we have a pretty good feel for demand and supply conditions in our target market. One of the big differentiators for us is that we are focused on core markets, critical workloads, co-location, enterprise serving, and that's very different than the broader spectrum of the data centers place. There's decent barriers to entry, both from an operational perspective and from a new supply perspective. We've done a lot of work there. As you imagine, we've been around 30 years, so there's a lot of good proprietary analytics and data that we can put to use in terms of forming our outlooks.
Can you unpack that maybe a little bit? Help us understand actually what went into this analysis. Guy from a regional perspective, how did you contribute to the buildup of what you guys are going to be doing over the next couple of years?
Yeah. So the west region for U.S., just so folks in the room here know, that includes Texas, includes Illinois. So a couple of our very large markets in Chicago and Dallas. Really thinking from a bottoms-up and both top-down perspective. The important thing to note is in this demand that we're seeing, yes, there are some neoclouds and some of the AI folks coming through in that, but a lot of it is also just our core enterprise business. Meeting with those enterprises and just talking to them about their outlook over the next three to five years, that really goes back to that conviction I was talking about that there's some banks, there's some enterprise-
To us. We feel like we've taken what was good visibility for the company historically and made it even more clear.
Okay. Guy, as you think about the Americas west region, your responsibilities, how would you characterize your strategic priorities or your operational responsibilities over the next couple of years?
Yeah. So it's quite a broad region, right? As I said before, we've got Texas, Illinois in there, all the way to the Pacific. So you got California. Very different markets with some very different opportunities and challenges. No surprise to anybody in this room or online that capacity is the number one priority for us right now, so unlocking capacity that we have in existing assets, how we think about strategic expansion in existing markets, how we're evaluating new markets within my purview.
So it's all on the table. But even to the sense of we've got capacity coming back to us for whatever reason, an asset, how can we optimize that from an infrastructure point of view to unlock some additional power or space or whatever it may be? All the way through to the individual in a data center asset level, the way through to M&A and how we are thinking about the broader region.
Okay. One of the things I wanted to ask you specifically about Texas, because I think Texas is in the headlines for obvious reasons with the governor recently putting a halt on new data center expansion. But we have seen a lot of demand in West Texas. How do you think about Texas as a market for you going forward?
Yeah. For Equinix, I would think about it more like Dallas, not Texas.
Okay.
Okay? All the stuff that is happening out in West Texas, there is a ton of attention and scrutiny on that, and not without some good reason. Do not think about Equinix in that context. We have an incredible asset in the Infomart in Dallas that we acquired seven or eight years ago now. Everything we are doing in that market, we want to be proximate to that asset because it drives just fundamentally stronger economics given the proximity to that site.
For Equinix, think about it in terms of Dallas, not so much the broader Texas region. The other thing I would add is that some of what the governor has communicated over the last week, we have obviously been very close to that. A number of our assets sit underneath that threshold, including our expansion. So we remain incredibly bullish on Dallas as one of our top markets globally. The scrutiny that is coming from the government, we welcome that. We are working very closely with them, as you would imagine.
One of the things you alluded to, and you manage a lot of very highly interconnected facilities. One of the things we have noticed is cabinet densities are rising. How do you sort of manage utilization within these facilities and balance higher density workloads and fitting the right customer in the right location?
Yeah, it is a big game of Tetris sometimes. But one of the things I just alluded to there previously, existing assets, we can drive up the density capability of those assets. So when you come to end of life equipment, think power distribution units or CRAH units, they have got a 10- 15 year refresh cycle. So we have an opportunity through natural refresh to look at next generation equipment and say, okay, that equipment is now either twice as efficient or twice as capable or maybe half the form factor.
So there are ways that we can drive efficiencies into older facilities that can then give us a greater power density. I would say that is the first thing. Our second thing is that, as we are building out our current facilities across the world, we are building them to be able to adopt to new technologies like liquid cooling so that customers can show up, plug and play, and they are away.
Okay.
I would chime in just that each data center and each market and each region are really a mosaic of customers and workloads, and I think that's one of the differentiators that we've created over time. We achieve mid 20% yields on our developments, which is high relative to the market for sure. A big part of that is just getting the mosaic right, property in and property out. We're very much focusing on the medium and the long term today, even though demand has come on so strong for the industry.
As you think about selling space and power, there's obviously more value added services that you guys can sell. How do you think about the value added interconnection service, manages services within your footprint?
Yeah. Look, interconnection continues to be a major differentiator for Equinix and one that I would venture is underestimated. When you think about the capacity constraint that is in the market, we have the ability to go to our customer base and start talking to them about basically their entire global network. That gives our sales team a second string to talk to customers about and also enables them that when we do face constraints, we have additional things to talk to our customers about.
We're also growing our managed solutions business, to help customers enable some of the infrastructure they're bringing into our facilities. That's a major differentiator for us. Then simply put, the sites where we have, or the metros I should say, where we have that density of interconnection, the economics are just far stronger. It's always an area of focus for us. Yeah.
Okay. As I am thinking about it, when you guys are expanding within a region, as you expand, how do you think about sort of the interconnection between those facilities? Is that going to be a pretty meaningful driver of sort of incremental interconnection growth?
Within a metro?
Within a metro.
Yeah. It is key to how we think about it. We are expanding in the Chicago metro down to Minooka, and that is a hybrid xScale campus. The connectivity of how we think about bringing that back to the downtown Chicago market is critical. Our customers that are going to grow there, we are expecting some significant enterprise pull-through.
You have this piece where we are talking to the customers about their individual workloads. So what will work for you, bank XYZ? What will work for you in Minooka? What would you prefer to see closer in, say, Elk Grove? Then what do you need to retain in the downtown area? We have this ability to address all three categories of workloads within a market within the one Equinix.
You also had responsibilities for managing sort of the Australia region. You recently moved to leading the West Coast. How do you see sort of the similarities, differences between those markets right now?
Well, they're both very large regions. It's a lot of ground to cover, a lot of flying. But look, demand in the U.S. is just completely, it's exponential compared to anywhere else. I'd also say that in Australia, we've, very similar to here, we've got a very strong interconnection franchise. There's been some others who have really just grown on the back of a couple of hyperscalers. The demand density is probably more focused in that market around a handful of companies. Whereas in the U.S., I think that the demand is spread across many more customers.
Okay. I wanted to ask, within sort of the West Americas, obviously you have all of California, Silicon Valley, you have Chicago and Dallas. Which metros are seeing the most demand today?
So no particular order. As I just talked about Dallas, that is a market that we are incredibly bullish on. Just the fundamentals there, just we've got a highly interconnected asset in the Infomart. We have several plots of land under control. Power is obviously, I don't want to say in abundance, but it's far better than some other markets. Just the way the Dallas market is shaping up, you're seeing financial services coming to that market. It's just a very strong pro-business environment, which we like. Obviously Chicago, a stronger financial services.
Then Silicon Valley is an interesting one because it's an expensive market, candidly, for us in terms of build and energy. But we have some customers there that if they want to be there, they really want to be there. If you think about the spectrum of Silicon Valley startups, but some of the new organizations that are popping up, they, and I was surprised by this when I started in this role, but they are really wanting us to continue to grow in that market. Just between those three, you've got three very different characteristics. You've got three very different governments, how they're thinking about things and different priorities. Then you layer on L.A., Seattle, Colorado. There's a lot going on.
Well, that's something that I wanted to ask you about. How flexible are customers being in terms of their deployment? Are they location agnostic between regions, or do they have to be in Silicon Valley if they want to be in Silicon Valley?
Depends on the workload. If I think about Silicon Valley, we've got some customers that want a showcase, right? They want that showcase to be in San Jose, so it's close for their customers, their team, and potential investors. They really want that proximity. Then you go out to other companies. L.A. actually has some characteristics around media and content.
There's a strong subsea component there, so it really depends on the workload. The one thing I would say is that customers are learning they've got to be-- They need to be a little bit more fungible in their requirements because the capacity of exactly where they want it, when they want it's not just given the constraints. It may not be there, and that's kind of forcing them to be a little bit more flexible.
Can you talk more specifically about those type of workloads that would require something that's closer to the market that they desire versus something that's further away?
Yeah, sure. If you look at Chicago, we have a number of high-frequency trading firms who are there. They absolutely have to be in that downtown area. However, their back office, that can live out in a place like Minooka. We work very closely with customers and try to help them understand that not everything needs to be in the one place and that by bifurcating those workloads, ultimately it can be better for them economically. It enables us to put the right workload in the right location.
If we switch gears a little bit, Equinix added, I think it was 9,700 net interconnections this last quarter. I think it was a new record for the company. Obviously, on the tails of AI really taking off, how would you characterize what's driving that new level of interconnection that adds?
Yeah, absolutely. We have talked about it being a core differentiator and a core component of our business that is becoming even more relevant as demand takes shape in new and different forms. A lot of the demand that we have seen from an interconnect perspective actually relates back to what Guy mentioned, which is it is being driven by not only the traditional customer base, but also by more traditional workloads with a layer, maybe an accelerator layer on top of that, driven by the early innings of AI demand. So we think the outlook for interconnect is strong.
We are already seeing strength. There typically tends to be a bit of a lag between deployment of space and power and the interconnect associated with those. So we think the outlook is certainly favorable, and customers increasingly need distributed workloads and data. They need interconnection, and we have more to offer there than anybody else in the industry.
Now, can I just add onto that as well? The other thing that we are seeing is kind of similar to what we saw with cloud, that there is a density forming from a network perspective around, say, neoclouds, around, say, LLMs. The focus for some of them have gone from where is the compute that I can get access, to now how do I distribute that compute to my customers, my users, et c? The fact is, a ton of that networking is going to happen in and around Equinix. We are kind of seeing this coalescence of density just forming in some of the interconnection markets that we have got a natural advantage in.
Do you think the neoclouds and the LLM providers, do you think they require a structurally different level of interconnections versus what we saw in the past cloud cycle?
Potentially. Potentially. The agentic side of things is interesting. That is going to, again, I think people underestimate the network lift and complexity that is required to really deliver agentic at scale. A lot of that will also happen inside just a physical cage or inside a physical data center. It is not like it needs to move around the metro. So I think it is wait and see, but there is no doubt that AI is going to drive a ton of interconnection.
Speaking of AI, obviously Equinix is very much known for more retail co-location. How do you think about the balance of investment between hyperscale campuses and more of these highly interconnected campuses within the broader capital spending bucket?
Yeah, I think in what we've communicated is that we really like our core target market, which is co-location focus. No doubt we have a moat there, which leads to competitive advantage across essentially everything that we do. There are barriers to entry, as I mentioned, both from an operational perspective and from a new supply perspective, and I also mentioned the mid-20% returns that we achieve in our development. We're developing at high yields, but we have a very good understanding of the risk profile in terms of the capital that we're being deploying. We'll take that risk-return profile all day long.
Another thing that you guys have called out, I think is a high number of neocloud customers. How do you make sure that you're attracting those customers into your campuses and making sure that they have what they need, so you can drive interconnection?
Yeah, we're very thoughtful about that. We have a list of customers that we want to pursue in every metro, and that's one of the things that I oversee. Because in every metro, it might be a little bit different who you want to attract to L.A., maybe different to who you want to attract into Dallas. There's going to be a lot of overlap for sure.
We're very thoughtful about ensuring that we can attract the network component at a minimum of those customers into our facilities. To be clear, this isn't the training side of things. This is from inferencing forward in the stack. But that is something like we did with cloud, like we do to financial services, that we're very intentional about cultivating.
Got it. I will say we have about five minutes left. If anybody has any questions, I'll ask in just a second. But I want to ask you about power. Obviously, you guys need a lot of power in terms of what you guys are going to develop from a facility standpoint in the next couple of years. Where are you seeing the tightness in terms of power availability? Is there a specific geography that you guys think is tighter or looser from a development standpoint?
I'm going to start with my region and then kick it over to Ryan. The power that we've announced, we have largely under control, so not so much worried about that. The other thing I would call out is that a lot of the sites that we're talking about, so take for example, Dallas, we're looking at a 60 MW build there. The threshold that the government have released is 75 MW. A lot of our builds are still very large, but they're not in this kind of hypercampus piece that I think people are most concerned about.
These are also markets that we've been present in for 25+ years. For us, it's really just a continued expansion of our core business. It's not like there's a ton of AI all of a sudden happening inside the Infomart. It's going to be happening at other locations, but the actual inferencing and the networking components of it are coming through Equinix. Is that right?
Yeah, the only thing I'd add is that we've talked about having 3 GW of land and power essentially secured, meaning it's either signed and secured or it's maybe a page flip away from being signed and secured. We've always been very thoughtful about how we do that, how we go about that, and we're also thoughtful about how we communicate that to the market in the sense that most of what you see in our reporting from a pipeline perspective, we have pretty good degree of certainty around it getting executed.
When you think about the data centers that you're going to be building today and in the future versus what you had in the past, how do those differ between those sort of different generations?
The main difference is around the power density. What customers are now showing up for in our next generation builds is they are wanting densities of 40 kW- 60 kW plus per cabinet. That fundamentally changes how we think about designing the site. The other piece would be liquid cooling. It is not going to be the be all and end all five years from now, but the fact is it is going to be taking up a larger percentage of our sites, and so we are building now with that thinking in mind.
Okay.
A lot of what is playing out from a demand perspective, AI and otherwise, depends on actually some of the stuff, some of the workloads, and the networking that exist in the older facilities. What we are doing is trying to take advantage of a multiyear period here where we can develop new properties and come out of that period with a full portfolio from the older properties to the newer properties that is fully set up to serve demand into the longer term.
How are the utilities responding to your guys' demand? Are they being more responsive to the loads that you guys are requesting?
We have great relationships with the utilities. Again, we have been operating with them in partnership for 20, 25 years in many cases. The other thing is that our business model is quite predictable, right? We are able to show up in a market and say, "Hey, we are going to need 60 MW of demand. We think we are going to need it over this period of time."
You can kind of partner with utilities like that. We are operating on similar time horizons. We are not showing up in a market saying, "Hey, I need 300 MW tomorrow." I think that is what is really causing the congestion in the system, not so much the Equinix side, and so we have got very good relationships across the board with those guys.
Okay. We got any questions in the audience? I will probably go one more. As you take on this new role, obviously the demand environment is very strong. You guys have a plan that you have outlined. What risk factors do you see, and what keeps you up at night?
Yeah. What keeps you up at night? I would say probably two things. Supply chain is something that we manage about as best we can, and I feel very good about where we sit there. However, there is a lot of people wanting a lot of the same things, and so that is something that we manage incredibly closely and generally feel good about it, but there is a lot of complexity that goes with that. The other piece that, I would not say keeps me up at night, but from a people perspective, a ton of these things are being built.
There is not enough folks, and so we spend a lot of time being very intentional, thinking about, even from middle school onwards, the communities that we are going into or operating from. How do we educate folks about what a career in data centers looks like? How do you progress that through high school into potentially vocational colleges to increase the talent pool that we have? Because at the moment, it is very constrained, and so that is something we put a lot of energy behind.
A lot of community engagement.
Yep.
Well, guys, thank you very much for being here. Guy and Ryan, appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, everyone.