GDS Holdings Limited

Hello ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by for GDS Holdings Limited fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Laura Chen, Head of Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, Laura.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call of GDS Holdings Limited. The company's results were issued via Newswire Services earlier today and are posted online. A summary presentation, which we'll refer to during this conference call, can be viewed and downloaded from our IR website at investorsgdsservices.com. Leading today's call is Mr. William Huang, GDS founder, chairman, and CEO, who will provide an overview of our business strategy and performance. Mr. Dan Newman, GDS CFO, will then review financial and operating results. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain full statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and certainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and certainties is included in the company's prospectus as filed with the US SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable law. Please also note that GDS earnings press release and its conference call include discussions of unaudited gap financial information as well as unaudited non-gap financial measures. GDS press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-gap measures to the unaudited most directly comparable gap measures. I'll now turn the call over to GDS founder, chairman, and CEO, William Huang. Please go ahead, William.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. This is William. Thank you for joining us on today's call. 2025 was a great year for GDS in terms of performance. We recorded 11% growth in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We beat the top end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance And with the contribution from asset monetization, we were free cash flow positive. AI in China has really taken off. Increasing availability of domestic high-performance chips is a key enabler. All our major customers are investing in hyperscale computing infrastructure to support AI adoption. As a result, We are seeing robust recovery in data center demand across both new markets and established markets. It is exciting times to be a data center company again. To address this opportunity, we are building up our resources and the funding. On the resource side, we are working on a three gigawatt pipeline, comprising big clusters in new growth markets. This will complement the 700 megawatts of powered land which we are holding for future development in low latency established market. On the funding side, we have increased our cash reserves to over US dollar 2.8 billion, including proceeds from the recent sell down of our stake in day one. and the CPS new issue. Furthermore, our success last year in opening up channels for asset monetization gives us a competitive advantage in accessing equity onshore. During 4Q25, our gross additional area utilized was around 23,000 square meters. For the full year, gross move-in was over 86,000 square meters, our highest ever level. Our moving target for 2026 is similar to last year. However, as our bookings step up over the current year, it will lead to higher move-in one year forward. During 4Q25, our gross additional area committed was over 21,000 square meters. For the full year, our new bookings was over 96,000 square meters or over 300 megawatts, three times the level of the past three years. In 2026, we are aiming over 500 megawatts of gross new bookings. Another big step up from the last year. We expect 60% to 70% of new business to come from AI. So far this year, we have already secured 200 megawatts of new orders plus over 500 megawatts of MOUs, which are a strong indicator of future commitment This 700 megawatts of total demand comes mainly from the three of our largest customers. It's a great start towards our four-year sales target. Now the domestic chip supply is more certain. We are moving faster to secure multi gigawatts of additional power to land in new markets, which can support big-cluster deployments. We are focusing on the three locations, Horinger in Inner Mongolia, Zhongwei in Ningxia Province, and Shaoguan in Guangdong Province. We have already won over 400 megawatts of new orders and MOUs for these locations. These new growth markets, all of which are official national hubs, integrate well with our existing platform, enabling us to serve the different needs of our diversified customer base. We are very excited about the opportunities in front of us and look forward to growth in sync with China's AI development. I will now pass on to Dan for the financial and operating review.

Thank you, William. Starting on slide 17, in FY25, revenue and adjusted EBITDA increased by 10.8% year-on-year. During the year, we completed two asset monetization transactions, an ABS in 1Q25 and a CREIT IPO in 3Q25, following which we deconsolidated the underlying data center project companies. If we add back the deconsolidated revenue and EBITDA, the pro forma growth rates were 13.2% for revenue and 14.2% for adjusted EBITDA. Turning to slide 20, now MSR per square meter has been declining due to a combination of lower market selling price and change in location mix to include more edge of town sites and going forward new growth markets. Comparing 4Q25 with 4Q24, the decrease was 2.4%. At the same time, we have also seen a comparable decrease in unit development costs. As a result, the overall yield on our portfolio, as measured by adjusted gross profit divided by gross PP&E, excluding construction in progress, has remained steady at around 11%. Looking forward, we expect further MSR reduction of 3% to 4% by the end of 2026 due to the same combination of factors. However, the yield on our new investments in both established and new markets continues to be in the 10% to 11% range. Turning to slide 23, in 2025, our organic CapEx was 4.7 billion RMB in line with our guidance. Net of the cash proceeds from asset monetization was 2.3 billion RMB. Our CapEx was around 2.4 billion RMB. As shown on slide 24, our operating cash flow for the full year was around 3.4 billion RMB. The significant improvement year on year was helped by a reduction in AR days from 109 in 4Q24 to 82 days in 4Q25 as a result of our tight control of collections. After taking into account asset monetization proceeds, we achieved positive cash flow pre-financing of 1 billion RMB. In 2026, we are guiding for organic CapEx at around 9 billion RMP, which corresponds to our 500 megawatt plus sales target. This year's CapEx will contribute to next year's growth. We have started work on a follow-on asset injection into our CREIT. We have selected an asset which is larger than the seed asset for the IPO. We aim to complete the ACIDS injection in the second half of 2026, if possible. However, we have not included any assumed proceeds in our CapEx guidance. Turning to slide 25, during the first quarter of 2026, we raised $385 million through the partial sell-down of our stake in day one. After the sell-down, our remaining stake is worth $2.2 billion, or $11 per GDS ADS, benchmarked to day one's Series C in USU price. We also issued $300 million of convertible preferred shares to Huatai Capital Investment. As a result, we are now sitting on nearly 20 billion RMB, or $2.8 billion of cash, This is an ideal situation to be in as we prepare for a new gross pay. Turning to slide 26 and 27, our net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA decreased from 6.8 times at the end of 2024 to 5.8 times at the end of 2025. The decrease is mainly due to a combination of positive cash flow pre-financing, the deconsolidation of debt of the project companies sold to the AVS and CREIT, and the proceeds of the equity capital raise, which we did in 2Q25. If we add back the purchase of time deposits, which is included in our reported investment cash flow, and the proceeds of the capital recycling a new issue in 1Q26. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio decreases to 4.8 times. At the beginning of 2023, we set a target of achieving positive cash flow pre-financing and net debt to EBITDA of below five times within three years. Looking back, it was an aggressive target, but I'm pleased to say that we made it. Turning to slide 29, for FY25, we achieved the midpoint of our revenue guidance and beat the top end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance. For 2026, we expect total revenues to be between 12.4 to 12.9 billion RMB, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 8.5 to 12.8%. For adjusted EBITDA, we expect between 5.75 billion to 6 billion RMB, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 6.4 to 11%. As a result of the asset monetizations during 2025, the year-on-year growth rates are not directly comparable. If we add back the forecast revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the data center project companies sold to the ABS and CREIT, the implied growth rate of our pro forma revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance is approximately 1.6 percentage points higher. This is shown on slide 30. We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator, please.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We'll now go to our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Yang Liu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions and first congratulations on the very strong booking here today. I have two questions. The first is about the conversion from MOU to contract. What is the timetable behind this kind of conversion? What is the potential risk for this kind of conversion? What do we need to do or what do our customers need to do behind this kind of conversion? That's my first question. And the second question is about the competition in the new key focus area like in the Mongolia, Zhongwei and Shaoguan. We know that GDS has been far leading in tier one market, but how about in those new focus areas? Are we seeing more competition or less competitor in those places? And what is the GDS advantage there?

Thank you. OK. First the question is, I think there is a high certainty to convert to our order. This is number one. In terms of the timing, I think it's within two quarters. I think it's a high chance we can convert to the real contract. So we are very confident on that. This is number one. Number two, I think in terms of the new market, I think the current market, before we step in, I think there's some data center operator already there. But it's never too late, because now the government has set up a very high barrier right now. Number one, they will measure the criteria before they choose the partner to be able to acquire the land. They have a couple of the criteria. Number one, they will seriously look at the company's track record. Second, they will make sure you have the customer commitment behind you. And the number third, they also will look at your financial capability as well. So this is the current government, how they look at a partner. potential partner. So I think if that's the case, which it is, it's already set up a high barrier and we think we'll be able to still sit on the leading position.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Atkin from RBCCM. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks. So you referenced a lot of your orders and current interests being AI oriented. Can you talk about a little bit about the non-AI kind of traditional cloud, even enterprise types of workloads and the demand trends that you're seeing there? And then any further color around the types of AI workloads and would you associate it primarily with large foundation models or inference or what? Thank you.

I think the majority of the demand is driven by the AI, GPU type data center demand. Of course, I think the traditional cloud still grows. and they're more associated with the AI demand. So I think that's the kind of profile. It's not like before, 100% driven by the traditional crowd. Now the crowd still grows, but more associated with the AI. That's a slight change in the driver, right? So what's the second question?

What type of AI application?

Interferential machine learning, the workload.

I think, of course, the training still continues. That's for sure. Because China is still behind the U.S. for a couple of years. Now it's catching up. So it looks like the training is still a key driver to drive the data set demand. But in the meanwhile, I think the larger language model owner starts to I mean, a lot of demand is also driven by the inferencing right now. That's why our traditional markets still get the growth in the last year. And we also estimate this year still have a very strong demand from both AI type and inference type and the cloud.

And then I wonder if you could maybe just touch on the competitive environment, and it probably varies a little bit by region and market and so forth. But in terms of other projects that your peers are pursuing, how would you characterize competition that is meeting the demand? And is that at all different from the last time you gave us an update? Thank you.

I think if we are aware, if GDS seriously steps in a new market, we definitely will dominate the market. That's how we look, that's our behavior. Otherwise, we will not step in. We definitely get ready to step in and give Over time, I think we will take the absolutely leading ship in this region. So I think the competition in AI in China, data center competition in China, just a start for AI. So I think it's good timing to step in, especially if you have enough financial capability that's more easy to win the battle. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. We'll now move on to our next question.

And our next question comes from the line of Sarah Wang from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you for the opportunity to ask question, and congratulations again on the really solid new bookings. So I have two questions. The first one is on supply. I do remember that earlier last year, management took a very rational and cautious stance on taking new orders, because back then there was some uncertainties around chip supply. However, given the strong order and MOU momentum here today, should we interpret that as a sign that chip supply has improved meaningfully? And then, or in other words, from a supply-side perspective, are there any factors constraining project delivery? So that's my first question. And then my second question is that I noticed that GDS power land reservation has increased from 900 megawatts last quarter to 3.7 gigawatts this quarter. So may I ask where are the main locations of the new resources and how does the project returns in this new area differ from our existing projects? Thank you.

Yeah, I think we have the different view, right?

So we are always look more deep to the industry. So that's why we are also, that means that we are very disciplined to CapEx investment. So last year we are slightly conservative because of the chip supply steward was not that certain. So this year, the certainty is more improved. I think in terms of the U.S. export policy changes and the domestic chips also catching up. If you recall, a couple of quarters ago, when we talked about this, we would always say, we're in the sea, right? So that's the right strategy to more discipline to make the capex investment. Now we are much comfortable because the whole environment changed, adapted to a more positive, more certainty. So I think that's the, we think it's the right timing to step in in a big way. I think in terms of LandBank, I just mentioned in my script, so I think there's in Mongolia, and Zhongwei in Ningxia Province, and Shaoguan is in Guangdong Province. I think that's all the national data center hub. So I think the location will be great for future and well recognized by all our existing customers.

Thank you. And how shall we think about the project return? Thank you.

A project return.

Sarah, as I said during the script, we're still able to generate a simple cash-on-cash yield of 10% to 11%, whether we're taking on new business in established markets or new markets. And with our business model of developing, ramping up, and holding for the qualification period and then monetizing, that yield is sufficient for us to realize a return on equity above 20%.

Got it very clear. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Gokul Hariharan from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. My first question is on the 200 megawatt order that you've already secured. Could we talk a little bit about the nature of the urgency of this project? Obviously, given AI demand seems to be accelerating, when do you expect to deliver this to customers? Is it also more like an accelerated schedule like we saw with the 150 megawatt order that we saw last year? That's my first question. And secondly, just trying to understand a little bit on the realized MSR trends. Previously, we were expecting MSR to start to flatten out a little bit in 2027. But now, obviously, our location mix is probably changing a little bit in response to some of the new demand trends. So, Dan, maybe you could help us understand how MSR is likely to shape up, let's say, one or two years out from now, the realized MSR based on the contracts that you're signing right now.

Sure, Gokul. The 200 megawatt new orders, you can assume for forecasting that it will take us four quarters on average to deliver. And then it will be a four-quarter ramp-up. This is faster than historically when we were doing the more traditional cloud business, and it's consistent with our parameters in terms of selecting new business. The MSR decrease, it will continue beyond next year. I think in 2028, it's probably 3% to 4% again. But the offset in terms of higher volume growth is going to lift our overall growth rate. In 2026, William said that we're expecting our move-in to be similar to last year, which is in a sort of 80,000 to 90,000 square meter range. But if all goes to plan in terms of meeting our sales target this year, we'll be looking at a move-in which could be like double that next year. So a combination of those two factors is going to drive our growth higher.

Understood. Just one follow up on the locations. As we are adding some of these newer locations, which are a little bit more remote sites, but obviously the new data center centers for the country. Is the customer concentration high in some of these new locations? Like previously when we went to build the suit, I think it became very much like very customer specific. How do we think about the customer concentration in some of these new locations like or in Mongolia, et cetera?

Yeah, I think global views everywhere, every data center company now is getting more concentrated in terms of customer. I think that maybe global, in China, maybe top three. It's after trend, right? In the global point of view, I think it's four or five companies, right? Everybody, it's after trend. If you position your hyperscale data center operator, a developer and an operator, right? It's not a traditional colo. If you look at the colo business, This looks like more diversified, right? But this is the reality.

I'd just add that the contract length for this kind of business is at the long end or longer than what we typically have been putting before. So quite often find 10-year contracts, which I think de-risks the investment in these projects.

Yeah, I think in terms of customer number, GDS already has 1,000 customers. So, of course, the new demands are mainly driven by the top three AI players in China.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Frank Lutheran from Raymond James and Associates. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. This is Rob one for Frank. Thank you for taking my question. So just looking at the demand and the bookings, what's the growth in demand that you're seeing from your non-domestic Chinese customers year over year? And what would you say is the outlook for that going forward?

Rob, the demand is from Chinese customers almost entirely. I think the market opportunity is around 3 gigawatts per annum. Concentrated, as William said, in the very largest customers. So, you know, we talk about 500 megawatt sales target. Put it into the context of that kind of scale of addressable market.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question.

Our next question comes from the line of Timothy Zhao from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you, Meghna, for taking my question. Two questions here. One is really on the resource expansion that you mentioned about the 3 gigawatt pipeline into the new growth market. Just wondering, I think, between the three key hubs that you mentioned in Mongolia, Ningxia, and Guangdong, what is the difference or similarities among the reasons in terms of customer preference or the IT workload, the pricing, et cetera? And the follow-up question related to that is that what is the regional breakdown between those three key hubs out of the three gigawatts pipeline that you have or out of the 500 megawatts MOUs? that you disclose year-to-date? And second question is on the CAPEX. I think given that you have very strong sales momentum year-to-date, and to convert that 500 megawatts into contract probably around two quarters, do you see any possibilities to further revise up the CAPEX guidance for this year?

Thank you.

I think there are three new markets. I think the workload is similar. Major workload is still training, plus partially is inference. In the meanwhile, we just mentioned that in the traditional market, which is a low latency market, we also got a lot of orders from our customers, the larger-level model customers. they already start to deploy the inference workload. So I think it's quite balanced. In general, I think maybe it's 65% to 70% will go to the new market, and still 30% to 40% will go to traditional market, which we used to call the Tier 1 market. That's sort of the difference of workload.

Tim, on your question regarding capping, as I mentioned earlier, you should assume that it takes us four quarters to build. In many cases, we're talking about new build in a site which is where we have no previous presence. So we commence the construction in 1Q26. It's for delivery to the customer in 1Q27. So as we win, new business going through this year, that will lead to more starts. But I think the CapEx guidance of $9 billion is adequate. I would not expect to change that.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ellie Zhang from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you so much, management, for taking my question. I just have one question that's more longer term. Just now, management talked about the data center demand in China is just at the beginning of picking up. Would it be fair if we look in the next three to five years to kind of narrow the U.S. trajectory, especially on kind of how the large hyperscalers have been accelerating the CapEx deployment phase. And do you see similar commitments from our key customers? And lastly, you know, how do you really see the longer term kind of market size and positioning in that trajectory? Thank you.

Yeah, if you look at it for our estimation, I think I think, yes, China demand will grow trajectory more like the U.S. because it's just behind a couple of years. That's happening right now. Last year, we talked about that demand is already there. It's all just about the chip supply. Now it looks like it's getting much better, more positive right now, more certainty in terms of the chip supply. So it will go at the same pace, similar pace as the US. If you look at the last two years, all the big AI companies, tech companies, continue to raise their CapEx guidance, just like what's happening in the U.S.

Got it. Thank you very much. And if I may, sorry, if we continue on that route, Would it be possible at one point, because just now management talked about the MSR still declining, you know, slightly all the way until 2028, but would it be possible at some point we still see, you know, hyper demand really building, especially given how, you know, the open clause or all these agentic integrations seems to be driving token consumptions by 10x or even 20x. Then at some point, would it be possible for us to see even stronger pricing power down the road?

Yeah, it could be. I think it could be. I think if you look at the U.S. price, let's say adoption profile in the last five years, if you look at it five years ago, the U.S. price used to be down to $60 per KW, right? Now it's three times average, right? So two or three times average. So that's profile. I think that will be, high chance it will be, right?

Understood. Thank you very much.

I give you the sense in the whole, I mean, the western part of China, the total power capacity now, as of now, just 30 gigawatts. to available to supply the future growth. In general, it is still limited, right?

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Daily Lee from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, Benjamin. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the strong orders for year-to-date and for the MOU. My first question is about the 500 megawatts MOU. Can Benjamin introduce, is this mainly for 2026, sorry, 2027? And it's how many years? What could be the time horizon or time period? Is it like a one or two year or like three year contract? potential contracts. My second question is about the capex and their financing, the update. And given the net bidding RMB capex, how do we see the financing and the need, and given we have strong cash on hand right now? Thank you.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, the delivery time is, as I mentioned before, is four quarters. So the business that we're winning in the current first quarter of this year is going to contribute to moving in next year. And it's logical that if we meet our sales target of 500 megawatts, then next year's move-in could be around double current year's move-in. It would flow through like that. The contract length, I think, is much longer than what you mentioned. It would be seven to 10 years, mostly at the 10-year end of that. For financing, last year we were self-funding in China. But that was achieved when our CapEx was 5 billion RMB, and we were able to complete two asset monetizations last year, an ABS and a CREIT. So now our CapEx has gone up to 9 billion RMB, and we have a plan for an asset monetization that we can't be sure, but we aim to complete that in the second half of the year. So I don't know whether we will be self-funding in China Let's say CapEx is $9 billion, operating cash flow is $3 billion, and maybe there's some proceeds from asset monetization. If there's anything left, it will be very easy for us to finance that in the traditional way with project debt. Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to Laura for closing remarks.

Thank you once again for joining us today, and see you next time. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.