SINGAPORE (Sept 16): Mapletree Industrial Trust (MIT) and Mapletree Investments have formed a joint venture to acquire a US$1.4 billion ($1.9 billion) data centre portfolio in North America. The acquisition is expected to be DPU and NAV accretive to unitholders, says the manager of MIT.
The manager of MIT said it plans to raise at least $350 million via a private placement to partially fund the acquisition. It plans to sell 158.3 million new units priced at between $2.211 and $2.265 each. Debt financing will also be used to fund the remainder.
The portfolio consists of 10 data centres from seller Digital Realty at a purchase consideration of US$557.3 million ($774.2 million). The JV will also enter into a joint venture with Digital Realty to acquire an 80% stake in three existing Digital Realty hyper-scale data centres at a purchase consideration of US$810.6 million ($1.13 billion).
In total, the two acquisitions consist of 13 data centres in North America, with 12 across six states in the US and one in Canada. With a net lettable area of 2.1 million sf and 130 megawatts total critical power.
All the properties are 100% leased to nine tenants -- which comprises a mix of cloud, colocation and enterprise users -- with a long weighted average lease to expiry of 9.1 years by gross rental income. Approximately 92.2% of leases by gross rental income have fixed annual rental escalations of 2% or more. Approximately 91.5% by gross rental income is also derived from triple net leases whereby all outgoings are borne by tenants.
Digital Realty will continue to manage the three hyper-scale data centres and 10 Powered Base Building data centres for a one-year transition period.
The manager of MIT says that the joint venture and acquisitions are in line with its investment strategy to acquire data centres worldwide beyond Singapore, and positions it in a place to capture growth in the data centre sector.
Units in Mapletree Industrial Trust closed flat at $2.33 on Monday, before the announcement.
