GOLDMAN SACHS CALLS FOR BIDDERS

Australia-based hyperscale data center company Airtrunk, is now up for an auction conducted by Goldman Sachs which values the company at $2.06 billion.

Goldman Sachs is reported to have started reaching out to bidders, as early as September on behalf of Airtrunk. However, it has extended the deadline for the auction to the New Year’s Eve.

AirTrunk current top bidders include Australian investment firm Macquarie Group, and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), a pension fund which is one of the largest institutional investors in Canada.

OMERS is said to have partnered with the Chicago based investor IPI Partners to make its bid, while Macquarie is making its bid via funds manager Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets.

Just last month, Airtrunk confirmed it plans to build a new 110MW data center SYD2. With the backing of its investors, TPG and Goldman Sachs, the company has set an investment of 1 billion AUD (approx. 680 million USD) to have the new data center join its existing Sydney data center SYD1. The new facility will be Airtrunk’s third in Australia – having MEL1 in Melbourne which has been operational since 2017.

The data center company has more projects under development such as the building of its 60MW facility SNG1 in Loyang, Singapore. SNG1 has cost Airtrunk about SG$450 million (approx. US$332 million). Also, the company is revamping a building in Hong Kong into a data center, which will have an IT capacity of around 20MW, this is a smaller project than AirTrunk has done previously.

The data center arm of Macquarie Telecom Group broke ground for its third data center in Sydney, earlier this month. The new facility is an expansion of the existing Macquarie Park Data Center Campus and the company is already planning another data center as part of a Phase 2 expansion which will add 17MW to its portfolio.

If successful in the auction, the company will enjoy more expansion of its portfolio by bringing in AirTrunk’s assets under the Macquarie Group.