The Macquarie Technology Group has announced today that it will be halting trading and raising $130 million to finance an expansion of its data centres, in the most significant round of equity raising for the group since they were first listed on the ASX more than two decades ago.
Key Takeaways
- Founded in 1992 as Macquarie Telecom, over the last 30 years the group has expanded to include cloud and government services, and more recently, data centres.
- The Macquarie Group has been funding its own growth for over 20 years, so this round of capital raising is unusual, marking a significant shift in focus for the company and spotlighting the potential role of digitisation and AI megatrends in the future.
- The company is raising $130m million through a non-underwritten institutional placement, with a fixed offer price of A$58.50 per new share.
- Canaccord Genuity Limited is acting as the lead manager of the equity raise. Regular trading is expected to resume on Wednesday the 14th.
- Macquarie is currently in the process of developing a major data centre in Sydney’s North Zone, with five existing data centres already in operation.
Key quote
Macquarie Technology Group CEO, David Tudehope, said the raise would “strengthen our company and enable us to invest and expand our data centre business to capitalise on cloud and AI megatrends.
“AI is the next significant megatrend for data centres and the digital economy, driving higher power density and demand for greater capacity. As these two megatrends combine, we expect to see strong demand for the latest generation of data centres.”
Global trend
Tudehope has been reliably identifying and following trends in the tech industry for the last 30 years. The Macquarie founder told Forbes Australia last year that he conducts ‘innovation trips’ – where he sends teams overseas to conduct research on the emerging trends that haven’t yet reached the Australian market.
This round of capital raising indicates increasing global demand for high quality cyber security, data storage and cloud capacity.
Update
On Wednesday the 14th Macquarie Technology Group announced that they had successfully raised a $160m institutional placement.
The equity raised exceeded the companies target by $30m due to the strong demand from institutional investors.
