Updates about data center value
Katie from Equinix’s marketing firm sent me an e-mail today correcting my earlier post about what data centers are worth. In that post, I used a value of 6.0 million square feet of data center space for Equinix; I found that value in one of their fact sheets. This was a growth projection that didn’t quite hold up; according to Katie their current global footprint is about 3.1 million sqft. There are also more details available about the Lehman deal, so I figured I’d redo my calculations.
What I should have done last week was use the actual values Equinix post on their website. The following table sums up the current info they have on their location map as of today, converted to sqft where necessary:
United States
- SV1: 133.500
- SV2: 160.000
- SV3: 103.420
- SV4: 119.756
- LA1: 67.000
- LA2: 33.080
- LA3: 106.885
- DA1: 61.573
- CH1: 172.081
- CH2: 120.523
- CH3: 228.000
- DC1: 43.346
- DC2: 147.600
- DC3: 95.440
- DC4: 99.969
- DC5: 92.000
- NY1: 46.465
- NY2: 183.900
- NY3: 338.967
Total US footprint: 2.060.005 sqft
Europe
- LD1: 6.458
- LD2: 43.055
- LD3: 29.062
- LD4: 53.819
- PA1: 32.291
- PA2: 34.444
- DU1: 31.215
- FR1: 18.546
- FR2: 68.889
- MU1: 49.513
- GV1: 22.173
- ZH1: 5.812
- ZH2: 4.015
- ZH3: 2.507
- AM1: 32.292
- EN1: 10.764
- ZW1: 5.382
Total european footprint: 450.237 sqft (NOTE: this was converted from m2, and all values for europe are net values that only include technical floorspace).
Asia-Pacific
- TY1: 42.453
- TY2: 73.561
- HK1: 69.877
- SG1: 133.101
- SY1: 68.764
- SY2: 31.204
This is a total of 418.960 sqft.
Revised calculations
From the values above I gather that the 3.1 million sqft figure is about right; assuming about 50% overhead on the values for their european datacenters that matches the figures Equinix post on their website. With their $2.7 billion market cap, this brings the value per square foot of data center to $871. Applying that figure to the approximately 200.000 sqft of data center space Barclays is buing from Lehman gives a total of $174 million. That is a lot closer to the $330 million that was paid by Barclays. The difference might be explained by the location of the centers, or the value of the computer equipment located in the datacenters that was presumably included in the deal.
April 21st, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I’d make another modification to your calculation. Use enterprise value for Equinix instead of market cap (enterprise value reflects total firm value including market value of equity and net debt, unlike market cap which only includes equity). Equinix’s net debt is some $1.0 bil, so enterprise value would be about $3.7 bil (as of the date of your updated article), which gets even closer to the Barclays/Lehman example (assuming that $330 mil Barclays paid also includes any assumed net debt so as to keep apples-to-apples).
April 21st, 2009 at 6:30 pm
@Mike Thanks for the extra info. I’ll be doing an updated version later this year if I have some spare time to look up more data from other companies!