NextDC Sees Double Digit Jumps In Revenue And EBTIDA Over FY20

In underlying terms, NextDC had a bumper year to June 30 with revenue for the data centre business increasing 14% to AU$205 million, and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBTIDA) up by 23% to AU$105 million.

Once interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation were accounted for, the company walked away with a AU$45 million statutory loss, a AU$35 million bigger loss than last year's result. Driving the loss was the company recording a AU$33.5 million "derecognition of carried forward tax losses and timing differences", AU$57.7 million in finance costs, and AU$69 million in depreciation and amortisation.

The company showed the extent to which it has planned capacity to bring online.

In NSW, the company has 38MW built, is planning on 126MW in the state once construction is complete, and has 36% utilisation contracted. The company expects to have S3 in Sydney completed by the end of fiscal 2022.

For Victoria, it has 25MW built and is going to take that number to 75MW once its expansion of M2 in Melbourne and construction of M3 is complete. It has 27MW of contracted utilisation in the state.

Western Australia currently has 7.5MW of capacity, and NextDC plans to take it to 26MW. It only has 3MW of current utilisation.

Across Australia, the company has just shy of 79MW of current capacity, with a total capacity of 246MW planned, and 70MW under contract.

During its 2020 fiscal year, the company added 17.4MW of capacity which represented an increase of one-third, and its customer base grew 15% to 1,364.

For the coming year, the company expects its data centre services revenue to increase from AU$201 million to a range between AU$242 million and AU$250 million, with EBITDA to be between AU$125 million and AU$130 million, and spending to be between AU$380 million and AU$400 million on capital expenditure.

In April, the company said it was looking to raise AU$672 million to fund construction of new data centres, with the company saying in its results on Friday that it has raised AU$862 million throughout the year.

The company said at the start of August that COVID-19 was increasing the need for its product.

"In the last three to four months, with the current pandemic challenges, a lot of businesses are questioning whether they need an office going forward or whether they need an office the size that they have today, going forward," NextDC head of channels Steve Martin said.

"We've seen quite a few businesses in the last few months with customers that have chosen to get their data centre out of their office so that they can move offices because it's very, very hard to move an office when you've got a data centre; very complex piece of infrastructure and you need to pick it up, lots of connectivity, lots of risk in moving technology."

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