Data centre craze continues as Infratil raises cash

The global need to build new data centres is growing by the day/

Infratil’s $NZ1.15bn ($1.06bn) raise announced on Monday was understood to be its largest ever since it became a publicly listed company in Australia and New Zealand almost 30 years ago, and continues the data centre craze among investors.

The global need to build new data centres is growing by the day, and they are not cheap, hence Infratil’s decision to cash in on their popularity and take money from investors while it can.

It comes just weeks after data centre operator Next DC did the same thing, raising $1.3bn.

Australian institutional investors were keen to gain more Infratil shares as it becomes one of the largest stocks within the ASX 200 and a $8bn-plus market value and the need for data centres grows as AI grows.

They accounted for $NZ1bn of the take-up and the remainder went to retail investors.

It says it plans to spend $600m of the money on data centre development in two years for its data centre unit, that is now valued at $NZ4.42bn.

Infratil, which raised about $750m last year when the share price was $9.20, tried to raise at a premium to its share price, but this raise was at $NZ10.15, a 6.8 per cent discount on the last closing share price on the NZX.

Barrenjoey, Goldman Sachs and UBS worked on the deal.