VALUES AIRTRUNK AT AU$3 BILLION

Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA) has just acquired an 88 percent stake in AirTrunk, a Sydney-based hyperscale data center company.

Macquarie purchased these Airtrunk shares from Goldman Sachs, Sixth Street Partners (formerly TSSP) and the company’s founder Robin Khuda in a deal that values the data center firm at more than AUD 3 billion (USD 1.9 billion).

“The global data center industry has grown significantly in recent years, driven by an exponential increase in data consumption, increasing cloud applications and the shift from internal IT infrastructure to outsourced resources,” said Frank Kwok, regional head for MIRA.

“In the Asia-Pacific, this thematic is amplified by the region’s emerging economies and growing populations, leading to increasing data usage and a greater need for in-country computing workloads and storage.”

Airtrunk started in 2017 with its first data center in Western Sydney, the firm has now grown to boast of four other facilities in Sydney North, Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong. According to AirTrunk, the full development of these data centers will result in the delivery of a combined capacity of more than 450 megawatts. The acquisition is therefore, expected to help accelerate AirTrunk’s expansion across the Asia-Pacific.

Conducted by Goldman Sachs, Aitrunk was up for auction last year, it then valued the company at $2.06 billion (USD). As of then, the top bidders were Macquarie, and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), a pension fund which is a top institutional investor in Canada.

“Our investors are attracted to hyperscale data center providers such as AirTrunk because they have attributes such as long-term revenue streams and demand resilience throughout market cycles,” said Robin Khuda, CEO of Airtrunk.

“MIRA’s strong track record with infrastructure investments in APAC will provide valuable experience as AirTrunk consolidates and expands its Asia-Pacific presence.”

Khuda will still have a material interest in the company and continue in his role as CEO under a long-term arrangement.