Equinix, Inc.

Q2 2019 Earnings Conference Call

7/31/2019

speaker
Operator
Host
Good afternoon and welcome to the Equinix second quarter earnings conference call. All lines will be able to listen only until we open for questions. Also, today's conference is being recorded. If anyone has objections, please disconnect at this time. I'd now like to turn the call over to Katrina Reimel, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
speaker
Katrina Reimel
Vice President of Investor Relations
Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to today's conference call. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the statements we'll be making today are forward-looking in nature and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may vary significantly from those statements and may be affected by the risks we identified in today's press release and those identified in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K, filed on February 22, 2019, and 10-Q, filed on May 3, 2019. Equinix assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or comment on forward-looking statements made on this call. In addition, in light of regulation fair disclosure, it is Equinix's policy not to comment on its financial guidance during the quarter unless it is done through an explicit public disclosure. In addition, we will provide non-GAAP measures on today's conference call. We provide a reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, and the list of the reasons why the company uses these measures in today's press release on the Equinix IR page at www.equinix.com. We have made available on the IR page of our website a presentation designed to accompany this discussion, along with certain supplemental financial information and other data. We would also like to remind you that we post important information about Equinix on the IR page from time to time, and encourage you to check our website regularly for the most current available information. With us today are Charles Myers, Equinix's CEO and President, and Keith Taylor, Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we'll be taking questions from sell-side analysts. In the interest of wrapping this call up in an hour, we'd like to ask these analysts to limit any following questions to just one. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Charles.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Thank you, Katrina. Good afternoon, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. As you can see in our results, we continue to enjoy significant momentum in our business. Our ability to deliver distinctive and durable value for our customers as they pursue their digital transformation agenda is is fueling strong bookings performance and accelerated new logo capture. Our platform continues to be highly differentiated due to our superior global reach, vast operating scale, and the power of our interconnection platform, separating us from other data center providers and positioning us as the trusted center of a cloud-first world. We continue to execute well against our strategy, achieving our second-best gross bookings quarter with incremental deals from more than 3,000 of our customers and strong cross-border bookings driven largely by the Americas team. We achieved our 66th consecutive quarter of revenue growth, tops among S&P 500 companies, and we now serve more than half of the Fortune 500, with a record number of Fortune 500 and Global 2000 prospects still in the pipeline. The diversity, volume, and velocity of our selling engine continues to shine, generating over 4,000 deals in the quarter, with the majority comprised of small to mid-sized multi-metro deals, reflecting the tremendous health of our interconnection-centric retail business and foreshadowing future land and expand opportunities as these customers use Equinix as the nexus for implementing their hybrid and multi-cloud aspirations. Our global reach continues to fuel our top line, with revenue from customers deployed across all three regions ticking up to 61% and multi-region revenues at 73%. We saw substantial progress against the six priorities I outlined at the start of the year, including evolving our portfolio of products, expanding our go-to-market engine, including channel, and delivering on our hyperscale strategy. We signed our first hyperscale JV, a greater than $1 billion deal with GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, targeting development projects across Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, and Paris to serve the unique core workload deployments for a targeted group of hyperscale companies. And we continue to expand our global platform with 30 projects underway, including five Xscaler builds and Q2 openings in all three regions, including Chicago, Madrid, Osaka, Perth, Seattle, Sophia, and Tokyo. Digital transformation continues to be a top priority for our customers, and a variety of key trends are making them think differently about their infrastructure. We are responding to this changing demand by both investing across our traditional strengths and layering in incremental capabilities. We're expanding our data center footprint, enhancing our market leading interconnection platform, and have now launched the first offering in our planned edge services portfolio, positioning Equinix as an easier to use, more valuable, and more accessible platform, and driving attach rates that will help us sustain and enhance cabinet yields over the coming years. Turning to the quarter, as depicted on slide three, Revenues for Q2 were $1.385 billion, up 10% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was up 12% year-over-year, and AFFO was meaningfully ahead of our expectations due to strong operating performance. Our interconnection platform continues to perform well, once again outpacing colocation revenues, growing 13% year-over-year as our ecosystems continue to scale. These growth rates are all on a normalized and constant currency basis. We now have 348,000 interconnections, over four times more than the next closest competitor. In Q2, we added an incremental 7,000 interconnections, with strong growth in virtual connections. For our Internet Exchange platform, we're seeing strength in the APAC and EMEA markets, with IAC's provision capacity up 30% year over year. ECX Fabric, our SDN-enabled interconnection service, now has over 1,600 customers. We're seeing increasing adoption of ECX for new use cases, including a diversification of ICX end destinations and more frictionless hybrid multi-cloud deployments enabled by API-level integration between ECX and market-leading cloud and network providers. In Q2, we also launched Network Edge Services, an NFV offer that provides enterprises a faster, easier, and more efficient way to deploy virtual network services at Equinix as we extend our portfolio of interconnection offerings. Customers can choose virtualized services such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers from industry-leading partners, including Cisco, Juniper, and Palo Alto networks. Early customer response has been great. We have a healthy pipeline ahead, and we're working to build out the service offering with additional partners and locations over the coming quarters. Now let me cover some highlights from our verticals. Our network vertical experienced solid bookings led by growth in EMEA and strong resale activity from our top global network partners. We also continue to deepen our network density, with over 1,800 networks now available on Platform Equinix, including every network provider in the Fortune 500 and 90% of those in the Global 2000. New wins included a Chinese telecom provider serving 40% of China's Internet users and Wander, a U.S. regional ISP, deploying infrastructure to launch wireless services for West Coast residential customers. Our financial services vertical achieved record bookings led by capital markets, banking, and insurance subsegments as firms embraced digital transformation. Expansions included a key win with CME Group, a top three global exchange, re-architecting their network and securely connecting to ecosystem partners, and Hanover Life Reassurance, a top five global insurer, deploying infrastructure and connecting to ECS Fabric. Our content digital media vertical produced solid bookings led by the Americas and strong growth in gaming and publishing sub-segments. Expansion wins included Akamai, a top content distributor, extending coverage and scale and supporting existing security solutions. And Zynga, a leading mobile gaming developer, expanding across platform equinix to support enterprise IT. Our cloud and IT vertical captured record bookings led by the APAC region and the infrastructure and services sub-segments. Equinix continues to be the leading solution for cloud connectivity today, with over 40% of all cloud ramps from the top cloud service providers in our IBXs across our metros. Expansions this quarter included a Fortune 75 technology company hosting unified communication services and ServiceNow, expanding its footprint to support its rapidly growing customer base. Our enterprise vertical experienced diversified growth with particular strength in travel, legal, and healthcare subsegments. New wins included a global builder and operator of toll roads, enabling IoT smart transportation systems, and Tapestry Premium, a leading fashion brand implementing a multi-cloud strategy, as well as expansions with a top three food services company re-architecting their network to enable data access and analytics. Our channel business had another great quarter with broad-based strengths. driving over 25% of bookings and accounting for 60% of our new logos as we deepen our engagement with high-priority partners to significantly amplify our go-to-market reach. We are focusing our efforts on driving more productivity and joint offer creation across our reseller and alliance partners, which include Amazon, AT&T, Microsoft, Oracle, Orange, Telstra, Verizon, and WWT. New channel wins this quarter included a win with Telstra for Genomics England, solving for cloud connectivity to increase computing, storage, and resiliency. Now, let me turn the call over to Keith to cover the results for the quarter.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Great. Thanks, Charles, and good afternoon to everyone. Well, after a very strong Q4 to enter the year, followed by our best-ever first quarter, it's great to now discuss the continued momentum we see in the business as reflected in our Q2 results. We had better-than-expected gross and net bookings in the quarter. including strong cross-border activity in addition to healthy core operating metrics. This is simply another positive indication that our strategy is bearing fruit as Platform Equinix continues to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. As a result, we're raising 2019 guidance across the board, including a substantial raise in our key AFFO and AFFO per share metrics due to better-than-expected revenue performance and improved operating leverage in the business. And as you might expect, we're delighted to have received our second investment grade credit rating from Fitch, a clear recognition of our efforts to improve our debt leverage and liquidity position. Also this quarter, we're very excited to announce our hyperscale JV partnership with GIC. This joint venture will provide us the opportunity to make significant capital investments to capture targeted and strategic large footprint deployments while maintaining a strong and flexible balance sheet. Upon closing of the joint venture, we expect to receive net cash proceeds from the sale of our London 10 and Paris 8 IBXs and other development properties, as well as other proceeds related to the reimbursement of net costs incurred and fees earned from the joint venture. We're delighted to be partnering with GIC and will continue to work hard to close the transaction in Q3. Now let me cover the quarterly highlights. Note that all growth rates in this section are on a normalized and a constant currency basis. As depicted on slide 4, global Q2 revenues were $1.385 billion, up 10% over the same quarter last year, reflecting better-than-expected recurring revenues and lower-than-expected non-recurring revenues, due in part to the mix of small and medium-sized deals closed in the quarter. As we've stated before, NRR activity is inherently lumpy. We expect NRR as a percent of revenues to decrease modestly from current levels for the second half of 2019 consistent with our comments on the prior earnings call. Global Q2 adjusted EBITDA was $677 million, up 12% over the same quarter last year, and better than our expectations, largely due to strong recurring revenue performance and timing of certain costs incurred. Over the second half of the year, despite the increased adjusted EBITDA guidance, we expect to continue to invest in our growth and scaling initiatives, which includes expansion drag related to new markets and leases, while also incurring higher utility spend across the platform. Global Q2 AFFO was $498 million, a 14% increase over the same quarter last year, largely due to strong operating flow-through and lower net interest expense. Recurring capital expenditures increased $16 million over the prior quarter, as planned. Q2 Global AMR return was 2.4%, better than expected. We expect MRR churn to remain within our guided range of 2% to 2.5% per quarter over the remainder of the year. Now turning to regional highlights, whose full results are covered on slides 5 through 7. APAC came here with a fasted MRR growing regions at 17% and 13% respectively on a year-over-year normalized basis, followed by the Americas region at 5%. The Americas region saw continued momentum, including strong net bookings, solid pricing, as reflected in our MRR per cabinet metric, and a high mix of small deals, including a healthy level of cross-border activity. It's fair to say the Americas region fully embraces the global platform vision and remains a strong source of deal flow for the other two regions. Our EMEA region had another very strong quarter led by our UK and Dutch businesses. we saw a robust increase in billable cabinets and interconnections. As you're aware, we've been opening meaningfully new capacity across our flat and emerging markets and nicely consuming this inventory. We opened new capacity in London, Madrid, and Sofia this past quarter. And the Asia-Pacific region delivered solid bookings across the region, mostly driven by small to medium-sized deals led by our Singapore and Australia businesses. and we booked our first deal into our soon-to-open sole IBX. And now looking at the capital structure, please refer to slide 8. Our unrestricted cash balance is approximately $1.6 billion. Flat over the last quarter, as the operating cash flow and proceeds from the ATM program were offset by higher capital expenditures, debt repayment, and our quarterly cash dividend. Our balance sheet and liquidity position continues to create a strategic advantage for us Our net debt leverage ratio dropped to 3.4 times our Q2 annualized adjusted EBITDA, well within our targeted range. Our strategic strength, lower debt leverage, increased asset ownership, and a commitment to use both debt and equity to fund our future growth drove our second investment grade rating from Fitch and established us as a full-fledged investment grade rated company. Reaching this milestone ensures that we have market access to a deeper pool of investors at a lower cost of capital, and provides a greater set of immunity to the microeconomic environment we now operate in. We also expect to drive substantial interest rate savings into the business over the next few years, both as we refinance our current outstanding debt load and as we borrow new incremental funds to invest in our future growth initiatives. Turning to slide nine for the quarter, capital expenditures were approximately $444 million, including a recurring capex of $37 million. We opened seven New builds, including two new IVXs, one in Sofia and the other in Tokyo. For the quarter, we added 3,300 cabinets to our available inventory. And we continue to purchase land for future expansion. This quarter, we acquired land for development in Madrid. Lastly, revenues from owned assets remained at 55%. And our capital investments deliver strong returns, as shown on slide 10. Our 138 stabilized assets increased recurring revenues by 4% year-over-year on a constant currency basis and an improvement over the prior quarter. Our stabilized asset count increased by a net four IBXs as we're now including the applicable Metronode assets in our stabilized count. The stabilized assets are collectively 85% utilized and now generate a 30% cash-on-cash return on the gross PP&E invested. Finally, refer to slides 11 through 15 of our updated summary of 2019 guidance and bridges. Please note that quarter-over-quarter growth rates for both revenues and adjusted EBITDA are now updated to include the expected impact of the hyperscale joint venture closing in the third quarter and certain other one-time adjustments as shown in our earnings deck. For the full year 2019, after absorbing a $7 million reduction in revenue, attributed to the sale of our IBXs to the EMEA Hyperscale JV. We're raising revenue guidance by $10 million and our adjusted EBITDA guidance by $15 million, primarily due to strong operating performance in the business. This guidance implies a revenue growth rate of 9% year-over-year and a healthy adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 48%. Also, we're reducing our 2019 integration cost to $11 million, a $2 million reduction. And given the operating momentum of the business, we continue to improve our AFFO and our AFFO per share metrics. After observing a net $5 million reduction in AFFO from the sale of our IBXs to the joint venture, we're raising our 2019 AFFO by $25 million, a growth rate between 13% and 14% compared to the previous year, largely due to strong adjusted EBITDA performance and lower net interest expense. AFFO per share is expected to grow between 8% and 9%, which includes the dilutive impact from both our ATM program and the prior equity raise. We've assumed a weighted average 84.6 million common shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis. And we expect 2019 cash dividends to now increase to approximately $825 million, a 13% increase over the prior year and reflects an 8% increase year-over-year on a per-share basis. So with that, I'm going to stop here and turn the call back to Charles.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Thanks, Keith. In closing, we're delighted with the performance of the business, and we continue to execute with focus and urgency against our priorities. We see a large and expanding market opportunity and believe we are uniquely positioned to capture this opportunity as customers embrace digital transformation and adopt hybrid and multi-cloud as their architecture of choice. We remain confident that the reach and scale of our global platform will The breadth of our ecosystems, the strength of our interconnection portfolio, and the depth of our balance sheet will allow us to further extend our market leadership. We are continuing to scale our go-to-market engine and will maintain our focus on operating leverage, balancing margin expansion with additional investment in developing innovative new services and curating a robust partner ecosystem that will help us drive top-line growth and sustain our industry-leading return on capital. we remain firmly focused on building a company that attracts, inspires, and develops the best talent in our industry, delivering distinctive and durable value to our customers and sustainable long-term value creation to our shareholders. Bottom line, the company is executing well on a highly differentiated strategy to become the trusted center of a cloud-first world. We're excited about the road ahead and look forward to sharing our continued progress. Let me stop there and open it up for questions.
speaker
Operator
Host
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1, unmute your phone, and record your name clearly. If you need to withdraw your question, press star 2. Again, to ask a question, please press star 1. Our first question comes from Philip Cusick with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.
speaker
Philip Cusick
Analyst at J.P. Morgan
Hey, guys. Thanks. Let's talk about the company's potential to grow either organically or inorganically from here. Outside of price, what are the important strategic characteristics that drive your decision to do acquisitions from here? And are there significant holes left in the portfolio? You've moved into South Korea in the last year. What else is left that you really need to do? Thank you.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Sure. Phil, I'll start and Keith can add on as needed. Look, I mean, we definitely think there are, you know, substantial remaining growth opportunities for the business, both organically and inorganically. I think, in particular, I think I'd focus on the organic side, which is, you know, our customers are responding exceptionally well to our value proposition. We're seeing strong bookings growth, new logo capture, and really, you know, strong land and expand activity with those customers. So we're going to continue to focus on that as our primary growth vector. That said, I do think that there are – we've said it on multiple occasions. We think M&A is still a tool in the toolkit for us. We have said that we think there are gaps in the platform in terms of our opportunities to expand it and add to our market leadership in terms of global reach. We've talked specifically about a couple opportunities and areas where our customers – are asking us about, you know, our future plans. Those include India. Eventually, I think they include the African continent for us and probably another, you know, other select opportunities, you know, including potentially Mexico as an opportunity for us south of the border here. And so I think there, you know, as you said, we'll, you know, there's, we'll have to look at those carefully in terms of, you know, understanding the price for those, you know, assets that might be available and, And we'll be disciplined about that, but I do think that those represent an opportunity for us for growth.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Phil, if I would just add what I'd add on just to what Charles said is there's two other things that certainly come to the top of my mind. It's new products and services, and Charles alluded to NFV as one example of a new service that we're going to deliver, but we're going to continue to invest around product and service offerings and think of that as a potential for growth. certainly continuing to invest in, including that as the hyperscale initiative, albeit it's going to be in a JV, and the majority of that, the growth, at least on a cash flow basis, would come below the line. And then the last thing that sort of, you feel it today for certain, given the macro environment we're operating in, and with the strength of the U.S. dollar, as a reminder, 60% of the business in rough numbers is outside of the U.S., and we've got a, with a strong dollar policy, and soon to be maybe a, a weaker U.S. dollar policy and a go-forward basis, there's an opportunity on a currency basis as our hedges flush out that that would provide an element of growth, whether it's how we think about Brexit and the implications of that and how that's affected our revenue base out of the U.K. to other markets in Europe and beyond. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for growth in addition to what Charles has alluded to.
speaker
Philip Cusick
Analyst at J.P. Morgan
That's really interesting on the currency side. If I can follow up once, should we think of new capabilities as sort of relatively small tack-on acquisitions to really drive the internal knowledge of the company, or do you think of bigger service acquisitions as possible? Thank you.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Well, I think that in terms of our edge services portfolio, which is probably, you know, we're going to continue to grow the interconnection portfolio in terms of reach and services and feature function. and then the edge services portfolio. The first one off the, you know, off the line, so to speak, is the network edge, which is a little bit of a blend between interconnection and these edge services. But, you know, I think that we are going to, we probably will look at augmenting our capabilities potentially through targeted M&A. But I think that, you know, we'll We'll be looking at a lot of organic development in that portfolio, you know, initially. And over time, you know, we'll have to determine whether or not that warrants a more aggressive posture there from a services addition standpoint.
speaker
Philip Cusick
Analyst at J.P. Morgan
Thanks, Chris.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Ari Klein with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.
speaker
Ari Klein
Analyst at BMO Capital Markets
Thanks. It sounds like you're seeing some better momentum in the Americas. Can you talk a little bit about that market? You know, what are you seeing there and how you kind of expect that growth, you know, that growth rate to maybe improve over the next few quarters? Sure.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, America's business for us continues to be an exceptionally attractive business. Its size, you know, the profitability of that business, you look at it from a, you know, It's really an exceptional business, large number of customers, and really good traction from the selling team, not only selling the capacity local to that market, but as a huge outbound engine for the rest of the world. And so we're super pleased with the performance of the business. It is growing at a rate that's probably roughly in line with the broader retail co-location market. But in some respects, I think that's a bit of an unfair comparison because, again, We are, you know, what I would say is our real addressable market is the market opportunity for co-location services that deliver a 30% cash-on-cash yield. And I will tell you, our share in that business is substantially higher than, you know, it's a very high share in terms of, you know, being able to grow that business at market rate is, I think, an impressive accomplishment. So, you know, we still are seeing a little bit of headwinds from, you know, the tail end. of churn in Verizon assets in particular. We talked about that. It just continues to take a little bit longer to come out than we had anticipated. Again, net-net, that's a good thing, but it does create a little bit of headwind in that business. But, yeah, we see good success, and I think now as we add new services like Network Edge and some of the other things, I think we're going to continue to have the opportunity to sustain that business in a very positive way. Thanks.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from John Peterson with Jefferies. Your line is open.
speaker
John Peterson
Analyst at Jefferies
Great. I wanted to talk about the GIC joint venture in Europe. You guys have been a little coy about the details. I think towards the end, in Keith's remarks, he said there's about a $5 million net impact AFFO for the balance of the year. But I'm hoping you can maybe give us just a little more details on what we should expect for the balance of the year and then kind of the growth of that JV over the next couple of years.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Sure. John, let me start off. I just want to make sure there's a clarifying comment. So when we talk about the $5 million impact, that is basically from us selling the assets to the JV. So we're reducing our AFFO by $5 million because of that. That all said, As you're all aware, we're going to close the transaction in Q3, and we'll certainly update you on the next earnings call with all the specific details. But suffice it to say, there's a number of things that are going to happen. The first thing that's going to be important for everybody to note is the amount of cash proceeds that come back into the business given the sale of our London 10 and Parasite asset. And, again, we've said that we're going to get – at-market or better cap rate on basically the recovery of our cash flow. We're going to get reimbursement of fees, reimbursement of costs, but we're also going to get our stake, our 20% equity interest in the joint venture, and so we're excited about that opportunity. We've announced the two assets that will go in that are stabilized. There's potentially out of the gate four more, as we've highlighted in the earnings deck, but then we're going to be active elsewhere in the world, and we really want to be clear. This is not about getting into wholesale business. This is about us being very, very strategic about the decisions we make that would add value to the overall franchise and our platform. And so we'll be very transparent about the deals that we do. We'll share with the market, but there's going to be a number of different JVs that will be established over the coming quarters and years that will give you a good sense of the momentum. And that value will come in typically through through the income from affiliated entities, which will be below the line. Some of the fees will be the fee income that we'll earn from the JV will be on the top line, and, again, it will be typically in the top line, but that will just be with the fee income. So there's a lot of discussion still to be had here. The deal has got to close, but we're very optimistic about the decisions we're making, and we're delighted by All Get Out with our partner. I think they're going to be a great global partner for us, that will go to almost any market that we choose to partner in.
speaker
John Peterson
Analyst at Jefferies
Great. And then just maybe one follow-up. I'm curious about the decision to, I guess, essentially bring in GIC as a development partner to kind of share in the development through the whole process versus finding more of a takeout partner where you can develop on your own balance sheet and then sell into a joint venture once it's stabilized, which I assume would probably carry a lower cap rate. I'm just curious of your thought process around you know, how you wanted that capital to come in?
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Well, I think first recognizing is the first two projects which are stabilized, we're going to get, you know, full return for the investment decisions we've made, including all of the development profit associated with those assets. That said, on a go-forward basis, our decision is not to take what we think is very dear capital and try and use that as a means to fund, you know, a lower-returning business. We think partnering with GIC is we're happy to share in those development profits because our focus is really on adding to the overall global platform in the retail business, and we're going to consume all the capital we have in our balance sheet and more, as we shared at the last Analyst Day, on growing the retail business. So this is about making a good decision, driving value into our shareholder base, and at the same time, augmenting. And I've said at a number of investment meetings, between the new services, which includes the hyperscale services, and the new interconnection services, we're not only sort of widening our moat, but we're also deepening the moat around our business. And I think that's just a good use of our capital and let our partner participate with us in appropriate returns. We'll get outsized returns because of the fee income that gets attached to those leveraged returns.
speaker
John Peterson
Analyst at Jefferies
Great. That's very helpful. Thank you.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Colby Sinasol with Cohen and Company. Your line is open.
speaker
Colby Sinasol
Analyst at Cohen and Company
Great. I just have two modeling questions, actually. One is on the ATM, the $348 million that you raised in the quarter. A bit surprised just considering you had just done the equity raise the quarter before. Can you give us any color on expectations for the remainder of this year to the extent possible? And secondly, Cabinet and CrossConnects, they were down quarter over quarter, and just taking into consideration the developments and how much you are building out, any color on what we can expect for both cross-connects? And I'm talking about physical cross-connects and cabinets as we go into the back half of the year as well. Thank you.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Why don't I take the first one? Colby and Charles will take the second one. On the ATM, we've always said that we would use it appropriately, you know, at the right time. And as a company, we knew what our funding needs were between now and the end of the year and as we looked into 2020. And we always felt that there'd always be a little bit of ATM that we'd take off the table at the right time. And certainly with market conditions being as volatile as they were, us doing this deal using this ATM at roughly an average price of $485 a share, we thought it was the right thing to do. Having said that, in my prepared remarks, I was trying to highlight or nuance that as we look forward, a lot of our capital needs will come from debt. We want to make sure that we continue to balance that debt, the capital source with debt and equity. This was a unique opportunity because, one, we knew that we could get to the market. We got a good price to sell the equity for our shareholders. Yet at the same time, it also assured us of that second investment grade rating. And so you saw the market reaction after that. It was very, very positive. And ultimately, when I step back and I now reflect on what we potentially could do to save from an interest perspective, we historically said it could be $100 million. I believe today, given market conditions and also because of that second investment grade rating, that that number can now be between $100 and, say, $130, $140 million of cash interest savings over some period of time. And that's what really excited us, is making sure that we had the liquidity to position the strong balance sheet. We'll use the ATM sparingly, but on a go-forward basis, I would tell you that absent any M&A or any other sort of strategic thing, we would typically focus more on debt than anything else at this point.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Taking the second one, Colby, relative to cabinets, you know, we feel very good about the momentum in the business. We've always said that, you know, sort of cab ads is one that can be a little lumpy and depending on timing and various other factors. And so we really encourage folks to look at sort of rolling four-quarter average as sort of an indication of health of our ability to translate capacity into, you know, sort of utilized and billable cabinets. When you look at that, we think that the trajectory across all three regions continues to be very strong. Again, we have added a lot of capacity. It also is important to note that we're doing that with a very attractive deal mix. Large deals are a way to add a lot of cabinets. They're just not a way to add as much value. I think what you're seeing is shifting in our mix. and still being able to deliver the cabinet additions that we think are, you know, appropriate and attractive by doing that at, you know, much higher returns. And so, we feel good about that overall. And again, we encourage you to really look primarily at the rolling four-quarter average as the primary metric. And then relative to interconnection and cross-connects, physical cross-connects in particular, you know, solid quarter, we were sort of right at the bottom end of our range. I do think that we're seeing, you know, a little bit of the continued 10 to 100 gig migration, you know, sort of impacts in terms of slowing that down a little bit. But gross ads continue to be very strong. And when you combine that and you look at, you know, then you add in the virtual, I think you're seeing, you know, a number that looks very good. and recognize that both of them are very important to us and actually with very similar economics. We've talked about that previously, which is our ARPU and return profile on virtual interconnection is actually every bit as good as physical. And so it's a matter of just the customers choosing different tools for different jobs, so to speak. And so I do think that we're going to see, you know, I think we would kind of stick by our prior views on the sort of evolution of 10 to 100 gig migration, you know, flattening out at the end of this year. And we think that will represent some upside in the Americas as we go into next year. So interconnection overall, we feel great about 13% year over year of growth. I think we're seeing some improvements in pricing globally. And again, you know, strong performance on the platform overall.
speaker
Colby Sinasol
Analyst at Cohen and Company
Great. Thank you.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Frank Loudon with Raymond James. Your line is open.
speaker
Frank Loudon
Analyst at Raymond James
Great. Thank you. Can you comment a little bit on the Americas business and what you're seeing in pricing, particularly in Northern Virginia? And then I have a follow-up.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because I think that revolves around some of the others who have reported some of the challenges in Northern Virginia, which I think revolve primarily around the hyperscale business and large footprint capacity and sort of supply-demand dynamics of that business. I think that, as we've said in the past, we're kind of taking a path on playing in that market relative to hyperscale in Northern Virginia. Instead, we're kind of the center of that universe relative to interconnection and relative to sort of the overall ecosystem in that market, which, again, continues to be the largest COLO market in the world. And so, you know, I think there is going to be – I think there is some sorting out at the hyperscale side that is impacting pricing, but it's not really having a significant effect on our business there, which we continue to see strong levels of interconnection good solid cabinet yields in pricing and feel like we really play a differentiated position there in terms of the center of that ecosystem.
speaker
Frank Loudon
Analyst at Raymond James
Okay, great. I believe you all raised pricing in Europe earlier in the year. Was that pretty much – have those price increases pretty much played out at the end of the quarters anymore to bleed in to impact the back half?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
No, they're going to bleed in actually over a long period of time. We took a very measured approach in terms of how we wanted to go about normalizing those to what we thought were appropriate market rates. And we did that for a variety of reasons because we really value the long-term relationship with the customers. We want to do that in a way that is measured, but we also want to make sure that we're getting a fair return on what we think is an exceptionally high-value service. The way we've done that is we've rolled them in at renewals typically, and so they're coming in as, you know, we've already changed the price on new ads, and so those will begin to obviously have an impact, and then others will roll in on renewals over, you know, over the coming quarters and years. So it'll be a bit of a slow growth there, but we think it'll have a positive impact and sort of ongoing lift in that business.
speaker
Frank Loudon
Analyst at Raymond James
Any competitive reaction from that?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Well, I think that what we've seen is that there's, you know, general stability in that market in terms of people delivering. You know, I think there's been some upward lift in the overall market pricing. And, again, I think that's a reflection of the value delivered to the customer. And so, overall, it seems to be going well.
speaker
Frank Loudon
Analyst at Raymond James
Great. Thank you very much.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
You bet, Frank.
speaker
Operator
Host
Next, we will hear from Tim Horan with Oppenheimer. You may go ahead.
speaker
Tim Horan
Thanks, guys. The 40% of all cloud on-ramps, could you just elaborate on that a little bit? What do you mean by that? And do you think that's been growing as a percentage of share? And will, you know, platform Equinix, is that designed to capture more of those on-ramps, broadly speaking? Thanks.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know that we'll continue to grow share on the on-ramps because I think that most of the providers are looking for some level of redundancy, and they're looking for oftentimes multiple on-ramps in a market. They've very frequently led with us, and so that is why I think we jumped out with a very large share position. And so I think we can we can continue to grow with them, and as our geographic footprint expands, you know, hopefully continue to maintain, you know, very, very high market share ratings there. If you look at it in terms of a coverage, from a coverage standpoint, in the markets in which we operate, we have a 70% coverage of on-ramps with the largest cloud service providers and 40% share overall. So, It's going to continue to be an area of focus for us. We think that the combination of us being able to continue to invest in sort of the retail-centric portions of our hyperscale relationships with Equinix and focus our balance sheet firepower on that, and then being able to leverage the strength of our X-scale JV with GIC to pursue the large footprint is really absolutely spot on the right strategy for us, and we think we're going to continue to play a very differentiated position in the overall cloud ecosystem.
speaker
Tim Horan
And can you add many new products to Platform Equinix, and I guess can it be like a material business for you?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yes and yes. I think that, you know, the edge services portfolio that we're looking at, I think network edge services is absolutely capable of being a meaningful contributor to the top line over a over a period of years. And as we look at other augmentations to our edge services portfolio, I think we absolutely think those can be meaningful, you know, additions. And we think that they can, you know, come at attach rates, you know, strong attach rates and low cost to sale that we think will prove out to be very, very attractive economics and will be able to allow us to sustain our return on invested capital at our market leading rates. Thank you.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
speaker
Tim Horan
Analyst at Oppenheimer
Thanks so much. Good evening. I think, Keith, you talked about on the EBITDA some delayed spend. Can you just give us a little bit more color around that? And then just coming back to your comment on the currencies, can you just remind us of the hedges that you have right now and what the remaining term are you Do you have any hedges that extend deep into 20, or is it pretty much, say, six, nine months left on the existing hedges? Thanks.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Thanks for the questions, Simon. I think as it relates to EBITDA and when we talk about delayed spend, again, as a company, as you recognize, we've been able to increase our EBITDA guidance this year relative to the beginning of the year, roughly $45 million and $70 million at the AFFO line. And part of that, of course, is timing. And timing relates to things that we talked about at the outset. When we highlighted some of the areas that we exposed the P&L to this year, it was about expansion growth at a rate that we've never seen before. Through the second half of the year, you're going to see some of those costs come in, whether it's Seoul or Hong Kong, Singapore, where we're making substantial investments for future opportunities. and those costs will run through the P&L. That will affect us by roughly $7 million through the second half of the year, incrementally. And then utility spend, as we've said, utilities are going up, and we've felt it. We've experienced a lot of it, both from a pricing perspective and a consumption perspective, and that's going to hit us by roughly another $7 million. So there's $14 million of costs that we anticipate, or at least we've embedded into our guidance that reflect reflect that outcome. As it relates then to just currency, we hedge out typically over eight quarters. And as you can see in the stated guidance that we delivered with our press release, you can see that we break down what I call the blended rates, or not only the spot, but also the hedge rates. And right now, the euro is roughly at 111, and we're hedged out at 117. Pound is trading at 121, and we're hedged at 134. And so it just gives you a sense, and I'm sorry, let me size that for you. The euro is roughly 20% of our revenues, and pound is 9% of our revenues. And one of the things that was really telling to me, so we've got a good hedge position. Of course, those will fall off over again the next six to eight quarters, and we'll continue to feather in future hedges and sort of smooth the impact of of the currency movement. But the thing that was very telling to me is if you think about the UK sterling alone, and from pre-Brexit to where we are today, the rate differential is roughly, it was 160 dollars to the pound, and today it's roughly 120. So there's a 40 cent movement, and we have 500 million dollars, roughly 9% of our revenues, or 500 million dollars Just for the pound to go back to its level pre-Brexit, that's roughly $170 million to us on the top line. You get a sense of how substantial these currency movements have been and the impact that we've absorbed in the business over this relatively short period of time. We're optimistic as things get back to normal one day, whenever that one day will be. It's hard to imagine any time soon. you're going to see the benefit that will accrete to this business because of our diversified portfolio with a lot of growth occurring in markets outside of the U.S.
speaker
Tim Horan
Analyst at Oppenheimer
Great. Thank you.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Michael Rollins with Citi. Your line is open.
speaker
Michael Rollins
Analyst at Citi
Hi. Good afternoon. Just thinking back a little over a year ago, you provided some long-term financial goals. And you now have a little more than a year of operating results and progress. And I'm curious how you see future performance relative to some of those annual goals, including the revenue target of 8% to 10% annually. Thanks.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yeah, Mike, I think, you know, relative to our analyst day, what we talked about at our analyst day last June, you know, we continue to feel good about that. And I think that we've delivered well. in retrospect over the past year plus in strong fashion relative to those expectations. And I think the results today are another step in that direction. So, again, I think our business is performing very well. I think we're comfortable with kind of what we had laid out there. We think there's a huge opportunity for us. We think the addressable market is actually expanding. We think we are actually adding to it by continuing to deliver, you know, new and incremental services on top of what we're already doing. And so, yeah, we feel good about what we articulated.
speaker
Michael Rollins
Analyst at Citi
Thank you.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Thanks, Mike.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Jeff Kowal with Nomura Infinite. Your line is open.
speaker
Jeff Kowal
Analyst at Nomura Infinite
Yes, thank you very much. I'd like to follow up on Mike's question a little bit. It sounded as though in your prepared remarks that your organic growth is in the 3% range, and it also sounded as though your intention over time is maybe to lean a little bit more on organic than inorganic. for growth. So I guess if organic is only growing at 3% of that 8% to 10% growth rate, are you suggesting that the organic growth should tick up a little bit with some of these new products? Or how should we think about that?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
I think you're referencing our stabilized asset growth at 3%. But our Our combined growth is a much higher number. So I think our organic growth, again, we're comfortable in the range that we just had articulated. So I think, in fact, we just delivered a quarter that was 9% year over year. And so we feel very comfortable that the organic growth can sustain in the range that we had articulated.
speaker
Jeff Kowal
Analyst at Nomura Infinite
Okay, so ongoing CapEx, that makes sense.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, and Jeff, just to be clear, I mean, we've stated over a five-year period when we deliver it, our guidance to our investors at the June 18 Analyst Day, we said over the next five years, you should expect growth to be an eight, and this is what I call non-acquisition growth, eight to 10% on a normalized basis, normalized for currency movements and the like over that five-year period. And that was not a CAGR, it would play in that range depending on inventory development and timing of bills and the like. we feel 8% to 10% is a reasonable expectation from that 2018 through 2022.
speaker
Jeff Kowal
Analyst at Nomura Infinite
Okay, thank you. And then on follow-up, I think, Charles, you talked a little bit about being resilient to the macro. It's been quite a while since there's been a bit of a downturn in some respects, and I'm wondering if you can sort of help us understand how your business has played in prior down cycles or how the business is different now from prior down cycles?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Well, again, I think our history in terms of our performance during down cycles has been very, very good. And so I think that – and I think the importance of the infrastructure that we provide to our customers in terms of how they operate their businesses I think makes it quite resistant. I think that's particularly true as you look at how they use us in terms of, you know, thinking through, you know, things like, you know, priorities for our customers like WAN re-architecture, which is a way of improving the performance of their business, but also, you know, taking cost out. And so, and, you know, as they implement hybrid and multi-cloud as a way to, you know, stretch their CapEx dollars and, you know, drive application performance, Those are things that we think, you know, are going to be very resistant to sort of fluctuations or macroeconomic conditions. So, again, we feel good about the strength of our business, you know, and believe it will be very resilient through the macroeconomic cycles.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Jeff, let me just add one other couple of quick comments here. First and foremost, as Charles said, we love the fact that we can be resilient, and we've historically thrived in periods of economic turmoil. And, yes, we can't sort of influence how the market reacts at times and values our stock, but we certainly can take advantage of the opportunities, and we've done that over the years. The other part that I think we really tried to highlight that today, being an investment-grade rated company, but understanding that we have $1.6 billion of cash on our balance sheet. We have an unused line of credit of $2 billion. We're generating AFFO of $1.9 billion a year that, and we said we think it can grow meaningfully over that five-year period. Our leverage is 3.4 times. We've just partnered with GIC for our hyperscale initiative, and our payout ratio over an extended period of time is going to be in the low to mid-40s. And so that gives us a lot of strategic flexibility as a company, and to the extent we have to pull back, We're absolutely – we've always felt we can push and pull on the levers as needed, whether it's the operating spend or the capital spend. So we have a lot of comfort in who we are and what we're doing. As we said in the prepared remarks, we think we're strategically advantaged relative to anybody else in our space.
speaker
Jeff Kowal
Analyst at Nomura Infinite
Okay. Thank you both very much.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Nick DelDeo with Moffitt Nathanson. Your line is open.
speaker
Nick DelDeo
Analyst at Moffitt Nathanson
Hey, thanks for my question. You know, first, as we think about the new products and services that you're introducing or planning to introduce, are there boundaries we should consider regarding how far you're willing to push out? You know, for example, you know, limits in terms of your willingness to own hardware that customers consume virtually or services that might compete with customers, things of that nature?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yeah, Nick, what I would say is that I think that we view ourselves really as an infrastructure company. But I do think the way people think about consuming infrastructure is changing. And I think we have to adapt to those changing market needs and be willing to adapt how we deliver our underlying value proposition, which is centered around global reach, ecosystem access, interconnection, and service excellence. I think that we will, you know, we are probably not likely to go way up the stack. You know, I think we are very comfortable being an infrastructure provider that is an enabler to people's sort of broader digital transformation aspirations. You know, we believe we unlock ecosystem value by combining our infrastructure value proposition with sort of higher layer value propositions of our partners. And I think that's proving out every day, whether those be partnerships that we have with the likes of our network service provider partners or the hyperscalers themselves or other things that we'll continue to look at further down the road. So I think that we're not going to go too far away from what we believe we're really good at, but I also think that you know, we certainly wouldn't shy away from things that are slightly different than what our traditional business has been if that's what's needed to deliver the value proposition to our customers. And in terms of, you know, competitive overlap, I do think that we are, you know, we really believe that we need to continue to be that trusted partner. We have a, you know, our business has been built on an ability to, be a sort of neutral provider that gives people broad choice and access to, you know, a broad value proposition. And I think, you know, our strategy will still, you know, within a reason need to, you know, stick to that underlying heritage.
speaker
Nick DelDeo
Analyst at Moffitt Nathanson
Okay. Okay, that's great. And then I was hoping to get a few more details on X-scale. How do you determine what deployments go into X-scale versus what goes into Equinix? Will the material amount of your current leasing shift into X-scale? And how tight or loose is the exclusivity component of the agreement with the GIC?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yeah, let me take some and then Keith can add on as needed. But, you know, really there's a pretty distinct difference typically in terms of a very large multi-megawatt footprint and the requirements of that for hyperscalers as they look at availability zone type of deployments. And they look very different than a typical either sort of on-ramp platform or network node. And so most of that business, I think, on the very large side of that, we will try to direct to the X scale facilities because we think that that's a better way to allocate our capital. And so there are mechanisms in place for us to evaluate that. And again, if we have availability of capacity in an X scale environment to take on those very large footprint, we would prefer to do that just because that provides better returns overall.
speaker
Nick DelDeo
Analyst at Moffitt Nathanson
Okay. Just to follow up real quick, I mean, my understanding is that you've been willing to take some large deployments in your European footprint. You're saying that what X-scale is targeting is even larger than what you've done there historically?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Well, now, if you look at what we did in London 10, for example, that was exactly that type of footprint, and it was in a hybrid facility. Now, that facility is being sort of recaptured, being sold to the JV. And so, yeah, we were doing some of those, and I do think that there are – we talked a little bit about this on either the prior earnings call or last one or the one before that. But we've been – we've selectively done some of that in our hybrid facilities in Europe, I think our preference would be to do that in the X-scale data centers. That's not to say it's out of the question that the dynamics of a market, either from a capacity or availability standpoint, would preclude us from doing something different. But given our druthers, we would prefer to move that capacity into the X-scale JV. Okay.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
And then regarding the exclusivity component? So on exclusivity, neither party is exclusive to the other but there's a lot of compelling reasons that we want to partner for a long extended period with each other and again there's the flexibility that if we choose to do something that they're not interested in then we can go do it ourselves or they can go do something themselves but overall we have to be careful there's no competitive tension in the markets that we operate in and that's sort of the the understanding of the parties that, you know, we're not going to compete against each other in market, but there could be markets where, again, one or the other chooses to be in and the other is not interested.
speaker
Nick DelDeo
Analyst at Moffitt Nathanson
Okay.
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
That helps. Thanks, guys.
speaker
Operator
Host
Our next question comes from Eric Rasmussen with Stiefel. Your line is open.
speaker
Eric Rasmussen
Analyst at Stiefel
Yeah, thanks. And maybe just continue with X scale. You know, how should we think about, you know, the particulars of, you know, the X scale opportunity, especially around, you know, capacity at full build out? I know you put out an announcement, you know, what you expect the capacity of would be. And then just the number of sites initially in relation to what was laid out at analyst day, maybe just compare, you know, how that compares to what was laid out.
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yeah, I mean, I think it's very much the first step along the vision of what we painted at Endless Day. So, you know, we continue to feel like that we can, you know, I think that that, you know, that if you recall that slide and from there we were talking about, you know, you know, a larger number of markets and a, you know, probably 500 megawatts, I think, you know, over time. Those are things that I think are absolutely doable through a series of joint ventures. And so obviously this one covers, you know, sort of four key markets that are, you know, really we think critical to the overall ecosystem. And as we add incremental JVs, we think we'll add additional metros, And so, yeah, I think that, you know, the vision that we laid out is, I think, very accessible. If not, you know, I think we may even have the opportunity to grow, I think, the overall collection of JVs for X scale to something that is better than that. We think there's a big opportunity there. We think we're going to operate at the sort of deep end of the demand pool there. And, you know, so I think this is a great first step for us and several more, I'm sure, to come in the not-too-distant future.
speaker
Eric Rasmussen
Analyst at Stiefel
Okay, great. And then maybe just related to that, one of the properties that was, I guess, committed and will be under development would be in Amsterdam. And I guess it relates to what we've heard recently about the 12-month moratorium on data center construction. Do you have any thoughts on the potential impact and what that might mean for this project and maybe just in relation to others?
speaker
Charles Myers
CEO and President
Yeah, I mean, obviously Amsterdam is a significant market for us in the sort of global scheme of things. We've stayed very close to that. And the good news is that I think we have the runway on our projects that are already sort of grandfathered in. And so we're going to have, I think, plenty of capacity to keep things moving as we sort through that moratorium period. And I think, you know, we'll stay very close to that. But I also think that, you know, we're going to have the opportunity as the market leader there to, you know, to really continue to serve that market well. And because we have so much already committed development to do, I think we're going to be well positioned as we go through that phase.
speaker
Eric Rasmussen
Analyst at Stiefel
Okay, thank you.
speaker
Operator
Host
We do have time for one more question. Our last question comes from Robert Gutman with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is open.
speaker
Robert Gutman
Analyst at Guggenheim Securities
Thanks for taking the question. Regarding the $12 million portion of the revenue guidance that Ray's attributed to outperformance, can you point with any more specificity to what is performing better than planned? We've talked about a lot of stuff in this call, but You know, something is going faster than you thought it would. Is it, would you say it's Europe? Would you say it's services uptake? Is it the channel deals? Is it multi-region deal demand? Would you highlight anything in particular that's pushing you ahead faster?
speaker
Keith Taylor
Chief Financial Officer
Robert, I mean, part of us just highlighting that is that where we try to sort of give everybody an indication of where the strength is coming from is in the recurring element of our revenue stream and That was important for us to highlight on the prepared remarks, number one. Number two, when you look at our forward guide for Q3, it's relatively modest to the overall guide for the second half of the year, which really is telling you that the momentum is going to come in the fourth quarter more so than that of the third quarter, based on some book-to-bill differentials. And then there's some one-off anomalies that are going through our results in Q3, from asset sales to how we get reimbursed for some costs under a favorable tax ruling situation in Dallas. But overall, I mean, there's momentum right across the portfolio, across the platform, and we're delighted with all three regions and how they're performing. And that was really what Charles alluded to earlier on today.
speaker
Robert Gutman
Analyst at Guggenheim Securities
Okay, great. Thank you.
speaker
Katrina Reimel
Vice President of Investor Relations
Great. That concludes our Q2 call. Thank you for joining us.
speaker
Operator
Host
That does conclude today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.
Disclaimer

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