To date, HMC has managed to secure $2.5 billion of “strategic operating assets in Australia” and is conducting exclusive due diligence on an additional $1.6 billion of data centre assets in North America.
In an ASX announcement on Monday, HMC stated that these acquisitions would seed the DigiCo Infratsructure REIT, which, along with a new institutional unlisted fund, forms part of DigiCo and has approximately $4 billion of AUM.
HMC also confirmed that its previously proposed strategy to establish the ASX-listed DigiCo REIT by calendar year end remains on-track, with plans to raise approximately $2.6 billion of new equity which will be seeded with DigiCo REIT’s AUM.
DigiCo REIT is expected to become a diversified owner, operator and developer of data centres, targeting a global portfolio of “stabilised, value-add and development opportunities”.
iseek currently comprises seven co-location data centres located in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, holding a “leading position in attractive high-growth secondary markets” such as Brisbane and Adelaide, which are set to benefit from significant hyperscale edge deployments over the medium-term, HMC said.
Moreover, iseek offers a scalable data centre platform with 6MW of installed IT capacity and a 27.6MW development pipeline of future Expansion IT Capacity.
“iseek is a leading colocation data centre platform with a high quality and diverse customer base across government, hyperscale and enterprise customers,” chief executive David di Pilla said.
“This acquisition is also highly complementary to our recent acquisition of Global Switch Australia with a number of benefits including enhanced geographic and customer diversification.”
In October, HMC announced the acquisition of Global Switch Australia, a 26-megawatt co-location data centre in the Sydney CBD, for $1.94 billion, a seed asset for the DigiCo platform.
According to the fund manager, the DigiCo platform will now have over 100 dedicated people across iseek, Global Switch Australia and StratCap, a North American based asset manager.
This will represent a strategy “to build a world-class operating platform providing investors with exposure to institutional grade digital infrastructure assets in both Australia and North America”.
In March, HMC Capital acquired US-based StratCap, a specialist with approximately 50 employees in digital infrastructure including data centres and telecom towers, for US$28.5 million.
A growing trend
Data centres have become a growing global investment trend, driven by an increased use of cloud computing and generative AI, as well as a shift from traditional real estate investments due to recent valuation declines.
According to Blue Owl, which acquired IPI Partners for approximately US$1 billion to enter the digital infrastructure space, the soaring demand for data centre infrastructure will require over US$2 trillion in global investment by 2028.
SuperRatings noted that the demand for digital infrastructure has recently surged among Australia’s superannuation funds, as assets such as data centres, fibre optics networks, and telecommunications provide attractive diversification, aligned with long-term investment portfolios.
In October, Australia’s largest super fund AustralianSuper announced a $2.2 billion investment in US data centre platform DataBank, in a move expected to bring its global real assets portfolio to nearly $60 billion.
Elsewhere, in August, AwareSuper acquired a minority stake in London-based bandwidth and data centre connectivity provider euNetworks.
