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F500-2021-461-Equinix

The internet and data company is currently the largest data center colocation provider, providing private companies and public organizations with internet and data services.

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Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Equinix is a digital infrastructure company, empowering digital leaders to accelerate innovation and scale with agility. By harnessing Equinix’s trusted platform, organizations can interconnect foundational infrastructure at software speed—assisting in the launch of digital services, delivering exceptional experiences, and driving greater value, all while advancing sustainability goals. Equinix powers this transformation through the world’s largest and most interconnected global data center network, spanning 270 data centers across six continents. With a vibrant ecosystem of more than 10,000 customers, Equinix connects businesses directly to the partners and providers they need to succeed in the digital age.

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Equinix (EQIX): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Equinix

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Good afternoon and welcome to the Equinix Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines will be on a listen only until we open for questions. Also, today's conference is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, please disconnect at this time. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Chip Newcomb, Senior Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to today's conference call. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements that we will 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've identified in today's press release as well as those identified in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10 ks filed 02/12/2025 and our most recent Form 10 Q. 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's done through an explicit public disclosure.

On today's conference call, we will provide non GAAP measures. We provide a reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and a list of the reasons why the company uses these measures in today's press release on the Equinix Investor Relations page at www.equinix.com. We've 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 Adair Fox Martin, Equinix's CEO and President and Keith Taylor, Chief Financial Officer.

Following our prepared remarks, we will be taking questions from sell side analysts. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Adair.

Thank you, Chip. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to our earnings call for the second quarter twenty twenty five. Our Q2 results demonstrate that our strategy is meeting the opportunity. This is evidenced not only by strong financial metrics, but also by our continued customer momentum and strong delivery in key areas of our business.

By way of highlights, first, from a financial perspective, the Equinix team delivered. In Q2, our revenues, adjusted EBITDA and AFFO were all in line with or better than expectations. This performance was underpinned by strong recurring revenue growth and solid operating flow through, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margins hitting 50%. Second, our relevance to existing and new customers continues to deepen. In Q2, we closed 4,100 deals across more than 3,300 customers, resulting in three forty five million dollars of annualized gross bookings for the quarter, a new metric that we disclosed at Analyst Day.

Our teams delivered this performance through strong small and medium sized deal activity with a notable uptick in inter and intra region sales, all whilst maintaining favorable pricing across deal sizes. Third, our performance translated into solid non financial results with substantial net interconnection additions, solid cabinets billing led by The Americas and strong MRR per cabinet yields. Our diverse interconnected ecosystems continue to drive industry leading returns as seen in the performance of our stabilized asset portfolio. Now before we take a closer look at Q2, I want to focus for a moment on our long term vision. It was a pleasure to connect with many of you at our Analyst Day last month.

At that time, we outlined the opportunities we see in the market across AI, hybrid and multi cloud and networking. We presented the strategy we have defined to unlock these opportunities and against which we are already rapidly executing. And we shared important financial guidance for the next five years. Since Analyst Day, we have had a fruitful dialogue with many of our shareholders and analysts to listen to your feedback and to answer your questions. With those conversations in mind, I would like to offer some key points of clarity on the Build Bolder component of our strategy, whilst Keith will provide additional commentary on the long term financial outlook in his remarks.

First, as outlined on Slide six, our capital expenditure is about capacity expansion with the aim of accelerating revenue. The vast majority of our investments over the next five years are expected to be allocated to our future growth. This includes the purchase of land, the construction of new IBX data centers, investment in our XScale joint ventures and developing our digital product offerings. As I outlined in my presentation at Analyst Day, we see a significant addressable market opportunity in front of Equinix and this opportunity is affirmed by the demand signals from our customers. Our customers rely on Equinix for the digital infrastructure necessary to support and scale their AI models.

They look to us as they embrace hybrid and multi cloud strategies for their application architecture. Our customers are the motivation for the expansion and scale of our capital investments. Second, only about 1% of our non recurring capital expenditures will be allocated to the redevelopment of select high value IBX assets. The redevelopment of key ecosystem facilities like Washington DC and Miami One will not only extend the economic lives of these assets, but at the conclusion of these projects, we believe we will be able to yield meaningful additional space and power capacity at attractive returns. Third, with regard to returns, we expect to underwrite our investments in assets that will yield approximately 25% at stabilization, in line with our current stabilized portfolio.

Our growth investments are intended to skew towards our major markets, where we generate over $100,000,000 in annual revenue. By prioritizing our large markets, we can leverage our diverse and deep customer relationships and our in place operating capabilities to derisk our investment plans and drive efficiencies at scale. Finally, with regards to timing of revenue, whilst it takes approximately eighteen to twenty four months to build core Shell and first phase of an IBX asset, we are anticipating an accelerated path to stabilization relative to historical trends. Hence, whilst we guided through 2029, our near to medium term investments will support our durable growth beyond 2029. We see a path to drive the business to double digit revenue growth as our Build Bolder strategy becomes fully operational.

Our capital expenditures and data center expansion are grounded in the demand signals we see from our customer base. Organizations are moving beyond the experimentation and pilot phase of AI adoption into the phase of agentic integration and automation. Many of our customers have deployed AI centers of excellence. These teams are working to establish standardized governance policies and TCO based management of enterprise AI roadmaps. These are the necessary prerequisites to enable the scaling of AgenTeq use cases and their integration into core systems, resulting in always on AI that is compliant to policy.

The use cases that we see are far ranging from those that are grounded in privacy and sovereignty requirements to use cases requiring distributed delivery and secure interconnection to those that have at their core predictable performance coupled with neutrality and control. Customers' priorities are unique, but Equinix is uniquely positioned to address these priorities. Alembic, Block, Bristol Myers Squibb, Continental, Harrison AI and ServiceNow, amongst many others are working with us to support their AI ambitions and their growth objectives. As I noted at our Analyst Day, we firmly believe that Equinix has been built for this moment. We are investing in our future, in service to our customers and in service to the opportunity ahead.

Through these efforts, we believe we will continue to deliver attractive revenue growth, expanded margins and accretive value to our shareholders over the long term. Now I would like to take a closer look at our financial results for the quarter and our customer momentum. As a reminder, the growth rates shared are all on a normalized and constant currency basis. In Q2, we delivered revenues of $2,260,000,000 up 5% year over year. This was driven by strong recurring revenue growth, up 7% year over year, the result of our continued strong bookings performance.

As previously stated, our second half outlook implies underlying recurring revenue step ups, a reflection of our strong first half bookings and conversion of backlog. For non recurring revenues in Q2, we had lower XScale fees, which was as expected and planned for. Based on our current pipeline for XScale and consistent with our initial full year guidance, we are anticipating a meaningful step up in NRR in the second half, more specifically in Q4. Adjusted EBITDA margins increased to 50% of revenues for the first time in our history. AFFO per share increased 8% year over year.

In both instances, results were above our expectations due to strong operating performance and lower than expected SG and A expenses in part due to the timing of spend. Keith will provide additional insight into these numbers shortly. Turning to our customer momentum, we continue to cultivate and win opportunities across our product set and in service to the enduring demand for AI, hybrid and multi cloud deployments and networking requirements. Lyceum Technologies, a German GPU as a service provider, recently added a liquid cooled AI deployment in EMEA to bring automated cloud experiences to their customers. Schneider Electric chose Equinix to lower the overall carbon footprint of their digital infrastructure as they build out a multi cloud solution leveraging Fabric Cloud Router.

Woolworths, the largest retailer of food and everyday essentials in Australia and New Zealand has developed a payments platform called WPAY, utilizing HPE GreenLake and Equinix data centers. This end to end solution features a robust architecture that not only offers scalability, but also enhances cost efficiency for both WPAY and its merchant partners. EBay leverages Equinix to ensure low latency connectivity and high performance for its global marketplace with distributed network hubs. This infrastructure enables eBay to deliver a seamless user experience, reducing delays and optimizing interactions for buyers and sellers worldwide. And finally, SLR Luxe Optica, a global leader in advanced vision care products, eyewear and medtech solutions chose Equinix to enhance operational efficiency and support seamless global expansion with high performance connectivity.

This breadth of customer use cases across geography, segment, industry and product set underscores the distinct value of Equinix and the diversity of the opportunity ahead. We intend to build on this momentum through the remaining quarters of 2025 and beyond. We continue to execute against our three strategic moves in pursuit of our long term accretive growth ambitions. Our Serve Better strategic move is focused on our customers, who are at the heart of everything we do. The differentiating force behind serving better is our customer and revenue organization.

I would like to take a moment to welcome Shane Paladin as our new Chief Customer and Revenue Officer and a member of our executive team. Shane brings with him over two decades of global expertise in go to market strategies, close collaboration with product organizations and the delivery of transformative results. I'm also pleased to share that we are already off to a strong start in Q3. Through presales from prior quarters and continued momentum from our sales team, as of yesterday, we have closed more than 40% of our bookings plan for Q3. We have a strong pipeline to support our remaining bookings ambitions for the quarter.

Looking forward to Q4, our pipeline is the most robust we have seen and speaks to the demand in the market for the products and services offered by Equinix. As we work to solve smarter, we are focused on simplifying infrastructure and interconnection solutions for our customers. Our industry leading interconnection franchise continues to perform well. Interconnection revenues grew a healthy 8% year over year on a normalized and constant currency basis, crossing $400,000,000 of quarterly revenues for the first time. We added a net 6,200 total interconnections in the quarter, driven by cloud and AI expansion activities.

We now have more than 492,000 total interconnections deployed. Our ability to connect businesses with one another and across their value chain, including through our market leading share of native cloud on ramps, continues to be an attractive differentiator for our customers. This is why Equinix has become the home to ecosystems across network, cloud, financial services and content and digital media providers. Equinix Fabric continues to over index with provisioned capacity now over 100 terabits. In the quarter, we surpassed 4,000 customers using Equinix Fabric and we saw a continued diversification of use cases with solid pull through from our Fabric Cloud Router and Network Edge products.

As I said before, AI inference use cases are growing. We believe our leading market share of cloud on ramps, when combined with fabric, will be vital to address the increased bandwidth and multi cloud connectivity these workloads will require. As we build Boulder to meet growing demand from our customers, we now have 59 major projects underway globally, including 12 X scale projects. Since our last earnings call, we added nine new retail projects in key markets such as Chicago, Dallas, London and Silicon Valley and have commenced our first build in Bangkok, Thailand. In early June, we finalized our acquisition of three data centers in The Philippines to enter the Manila Metro as we broaden our footprint in Southeast Asia.

Our XScale focus continues to expand. Our pipeline of potential North American campuses is growing and we are in late stage negotiations for additional locations, which we look forward to disclosing in the near future. We are making excellent progress on our Atlanta campus as we prepare the land for the construction process. Across our open and announced projects, our XScale assets are more than 85% leased or pre leased. And as noted earlier, we have a strong pipeline of opportunities primed for execution in the second half of the year.

Serve Better, Solve Smarter and Build Bolder are the right strategic moves for our customers and for our business, and our continued execution against them is paying off. Now I'm going to turn it over to Keith to share more on the quarter's financials and our outlook for the balance of the year.

Thanks, Adair, and good afternoon to everyone. Well, we had another great quarter, and we're very excited about what the future holds for Equinix. We had strong and diversified annualized gross bookings, our new metric of $345,000,000 in the second quarter. These bookings are foundational to the expected quarter over quarter recurring revenue growth in the next two quarters and as we set the stage for 2026. Also, we delivered healthy operating leverage to the business, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margins hitting 50% for the quarter, the first time in our history.

And our non financial metrics continued to trend favorably. All of this alongside stronger non U. S. Dollar operating currencies allowed us to raise our guidance across all of our key operating metrics, while maintaining flexibility to invest in the second half of the year in support of our strategic moves. Now before I get into details for the quarter, I wanted to provide some clarifying thoughts related to the long term financial outlook, which we shared with you at the June Analyst Day.

First and most importantly, our Build Bolder investment strategy is about pressing our advantage by investing in future growth through the development of new data centers, as highlighted by Adair. This build strategy is in support of our selling strategy to put the right customer with the right application into the right asset. Simply Build Bolder is about creating new capacity to meet the future demands for digital infrastructure. Second, the Analyst Day five year plan made a number of assumptions about the funding of our growth. As you've seen over the past couple of years, we've benefited by accessing many foreign debt capital markets where interest rates are not only lower, but where we can also mitigate potential FX exposures while also being tax efficient.

It is our intention to continue to access these four markets to our fullest ability while not exposing our balance sheet to undue FX risk. Over the short term, you should expect us to continue to access lower capital cost markets in Canada and Singapore, while raising more debt capital in Europe in 2026. And finally, when rates and spreads move in the right direction in The United States, you should expect us to appropriately move to access this market while looking at the appropriate tenor for these capital raises. As it relates to our forecasted interest expense, we fully expect to capitalize a portion of our interest expense, which will be determined by the cost of the debt raised, the amount of assets under development, including land and the timeline to operationalize these assets. Later this year, as we work through the annual planning cycle for next year, we plan to refine our estimate of net interest expense after interest capitalization, and we'll share these details with you in early twenty twenty six.

And finally, as a reminder, our long term goal is to deliver $50 or greater of AFFO per share in 2029. This AFFO per share target implies a 7% CAGR growth rate from 2025 through 2029. Given we expect 2026 will be at the lower end of our guided range, this outlook therefore implies an AFFO per share growth rate towards the top half of the range each year thereafter with 2029 being at the top end of the range. Now let me cover the highlights for the quarter as depicted on Slide seven. Do know that all growth rates in this section are on a normalized and constant currency basis.

Global Q2 revenues were approximately $2,260,000,000 up 5% over the same quarter last year and slightly above the midpoint of our guidance range. Our continued bookings momentum resulted in another quarter of strong recurring revenue growth at 7%, offset by decrease in non recurring revenues largely due to lower ex scale fit out revenues and fees as expected. Net of our FX hedges, there was minimal FX impact when compared to our prior guidance rates. Global Q2 adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1,130,000,000 or 50% of revenues, above the top end of our guidance range due to strong operating performance, including solid gross profit and lower than expected SG and A expenses, in part due to timing of spend. Q2 adjusted EBITDA, net of our FX hedges, included a $2,000,000 FX headwind when compared to our prior guidance rates.

Global Q2 AFFO was $972,000,000 up 11% over the same quarter last year and well above our expectations for the quarter due to strong operating performance and lower income tax expenses. Q2 AFFO included a $3,000,000 FX headwind when compared to our prior guidance rates. Global Q2 MRR churn was 2.6%, slightly above the high end of our range, primarily due to the AGEO bankruptcy. Absent the specific MRR churn, our metric would have been 2.4%. For the full year, we continue to expect MRR churn to be comfortably in our two to 2.5% quarterly guidance range.

With respect to our non financial metrics, they continue to trend favorably with global AMR per cabinet yield stepping up $33 quarter over quarter on a constant currency basis, largely the result of favorable pricing and increasing power densities from the base. Catalyst billing also saw a solid step up in the quarter led by the Americas region, and we added 6,200 total net interconnections for the quarter. Now looking at our capital structure. Please refer to Slide 10. Our balance sheet increased to approximately $39,000,000,000 including elevated cash and short term investments totaling approximately 4,500,000,000.0 higher than typical given the $1,200,000,000 of Q3 senior note repayments, one which has already been settled in July and the other expected to be settled in September.

In the quarter, we issued $1,700,000,000 of euro denominated senior green notes at a weighted average rate of 3.625%. Cumulatively, Equinix has issued $9,000,000,000 of green bonds, making Equinix a top five U. S. Issuer in the investment grade green bond market. Our net leverage was 3.5 times our annualized adjusted EBITDA.

As noted during our Analyst Day, we fully expect our net leverage to increase over the next several years as we fund our growth both from the cash generated in the business and with the incremental debt we plan to raise. Through 2029, we continue to remain comfortable raising our debt levels up to 4.5 times in support of this growth and to fund our other strategic initiatives, while maintaining our investment grade rating. Turning to Slide 11. For the quarter, capital expenditures were approximately $990,000,000 including a recurring CapEx of $55,000,000 We opened five major projects since our last earnings call, adding retail capacity in Chicago, Dallas, Toronto, Washington DC and Salalau, Oman. Over 70% of our announced retail expansion project expense is allocated to our largest metros where we have strong established ecosystems and can benefit from our economies of scale.

Now moving to Slide 12. Our capital investments have continued to deliver strong returns. Our now 189 stabilized assets increased recurring revenues by 3% year over year on a constant currency basis and are collectively 82% utilized and generated a 26% cash on cash return on the gross PP and E invested on a constant currency basis. And finally, please refer to Slides 13 through 17 for updated summary of 2025 guidance and bridges. Do note all growth rates are on a normalized and constant currency basis.

For the full year, we're raising our 2025 revenues guidance by $58,000,000 This maintains a 7% to 8% normalized and constant currency growth rate. Importantly, our outlook continues to imply a robust quarter over quarter step up of our underlying recurring revenues in Q3 and Q4 and strong NRR activity in the fourth quarter driven by our pipeline of ex scale opportunities. We're also raising our 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance by $46,000,000 Adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be approximately 49% with strong second half adjusted EBITDA margins at or near 50%. We're raising our 2025 AFFO guidance by $28,000,000 AFFO is expected to grow between 1012% and AFFO per share growth is expected to range between 710% compared to the previous year. And finally, 2025 CapEx is now expected to range between 3,800,000,000.0 and $4,300,000,000 including approximately $450,000,000 of on balance sheet ex scale spend, funds we expect to be reimbursed later this year as we transfer these assets into our U.

S. Joint venture. The increase in non recurring CapEx spend is largely due to a meaningful investment in prepurchase of long lead equipment, the timing of contributing our Excale investments to the new Excale joint venture and our newly approved projects. Recurring CapEx spend is expected to be about $280,000,000 So I'm going to stop here and turn the call back to Adair.

Thanks very much, Keith. In closing, we delivered a strong 2025, achieving robust bookings and financial outcomes. We remain excited and optimistic about the future of Equinix and our differentiated and durable market position. We were built for this moment. No other player in the digital infrastructure landscape possesses the unique combination of strengths that are an inherent part of Equinix.

Our diverse and neutral interconnected ecosystems, our extensive global footprint across key metros, our more than 10,000 enterprise customers across geographies, industries and segments, our track record of reliability and service excellence. As the world's digital infrastructure company, we are shortening the path to bandwidth connectivity to enable the innovations that enrich our work, life and planet. I'll stop here and open it up to questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the Q and A session. And we would like to ask analysts to limit their questions to one question. Our first caller is Nick Del Deo with MoffettNathanson LLC. You may go ahead, sir.

Hey, thanks for taking my question. It was great to see the interconnection adds step back up this quarter, but they've had a bit of a sawtooth pattern over the past couple of years. So I was wondering if you could dig a bit more into what helped this quarter and maybe talk a bit about what we should expect over the coming quarters for that metric? Thanks.

Yes. Thanks for the question, Nick. I'm very happy to take that. As you mentioned, a very strong position for interconnection this quarter with revenues up 8% year on year and of course, contributing overall to the revenue of Equinix, 6,200 additions, mostly focused around cloud and AI expansion opportunities with our customers. So largely looking at how the ecosystem of cloud and AI opportunities in our customer base look to secure their network presence in order to support the kind of workloads that they are hoping will be part of their landscape going forward.

So this was, I think, a very strong quarter for us interconnection. We saw use cases around our data center interconnect, around FCR, our Fabric Cloud Router and Network Edge being pulled through as well. And we look forward to continuing to work in order to ensure that we continue to grow and evolve the value of this part of the Equinix franchise.

Thank you. Would you like to go to the next question? John Atkin with RBC Capital Markets. You may go ahead, sir.

Thanks. I was interested in the comment on the strong bookings momentum to start third quarter. Is this seasonality, is it sales incentives, is it product appeal to certain customer bases or segments or maybe drill down a little bit as to what's driving that and what that might pretend for even the rest of the year? Thanks.

Yes. Happy to do that. Thanks very much. Maybe I can just perhaps characterize this a little with what we saw in the demand profile for the quarter just closed in Q2. And we certainly saw a very broad based set of activities across regions, customers and segments.

We experienced very strong pricing in the second quarter. And we saw some great opportunity amongst retail small and medium sized transactions in the quarter. And interestingly enough, an intra regional pickup. So again, supporting customers as they navigate from one region to another. So when we look forward into our bookings landscape for Q3 and the fact that we are at 40% as of yesterday of our bookings quota concluded.

I think this speaks to a couple of things. First of all, to the momentum that we saw on the close of Q2 and how that carried forward into our Q3 bookings framework. Secondly, that we are very, very focused on growth. This is a very powerful aspect of our strategy and, of course, is an important aspect of driving ultimately AFFO per share. So as we look at this bookings momentum, you can see that we are giving you the view of inside our business so that you can see how that line is actually evolving.

For us, Q3 will be less about impacting in a huge way recurring revenue in Q4. It's more about setting us up for the exit out of 2025 and into the recurring revenue momentum of 2026. So a combination of focus, execution, continued momentum, obviously some presale from previous quarters coming into action at the start of the quarter, but also just the relentless execution against what is a very strong pipeline in Q3 and also as I mentioned in my remarks in our Q4 period. Very strong conversion rates that we saw in Q2 also coming through in the early days of Q3.

Hey, John, maybe just one other thing. It was for us, we opened up another five assets and three of them are very important markets for us. And I think that gives as Adair was saying, that gives us the ability to build up on the momentum when you've got the Dallas, the Chicago and markets like that coming online. And so there's a lot of opportunity there. And then the second thing I would just say, Adair alluded to it, the benefit that we've seen is not only having a strong pipeline and the momentum, but it's also the backlog was decreased quarter over quarter, and therefore, that sets us up nicely for the second two quarters of the year.

I just wonder if there's anything also to call out on direct sale contributions versus indirect and partner channels. Any kind of update since Analyst Day on that mix?

Not particularly. I will say that based on Q2 and 2024, we saw a very steady resale motion in our channel business. Although in Q2 referrals were slightly lower, But we can still continue to execute very closely with our channel partners and still continue to evolve how we execute parts of our business relevant to our ecosystem. For example, in Indonesia, we've just launched a new partner program to allow us to sell in that way.

Thank you. Our next caller is Eric Lupko with Wells Fargo. You may go ahead, sir.

Thanks. Appreciate the question. Dara, you touched on this in your prepared remarks. I believe you said that you expect to accelerate the timing to stabilization in your Build Bolder plan versus what you've done historically. And I think historically, it would take about two to four or five years, if I recall.

So maybe you could give us an update on your thoughts on how quickly you can stabilize some of the properties that you're planning to develop over the next four plus Yes. And is the plan to potentially pre sell or pre lease larger portions going forward to perhaps de risk some of the future capital spend? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for the question. So we mentioned that the typical build profile for us is an eighteen to twenty four month period, the time that we need to build the core and the shell and prepare that asset to its RFS status. Behind the opportunity to accelerate the path to stabilization relative to our historical trends are a couple of things. First of all, building in fewer or even singular phases as far as possible, that is part of our Build Bolder approach, looking to reduce or bring the phases down to a single phase of build.

And typically considering how we define stabilization, that will by itself naturally move a stabilization process forward. Secondly, I think that we are seeing from our enterprise customers a larger footprint requirement for enterprise customers as they look to embrace the opportunities for their businesses afforded by AI and its capabilities. And so that also will, I think progress the rate at which capacity is consumed in our assets. And then thirdly, the opportunity to look at pre sales activity in advance of RFS dates when those dates become known and clear, enabling us to derisk the process and investment process towards these assets that we are building at the minute.

You. Our next caller is Ari Klein with BMO Capital Markets. You may go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Maybe on the CapEx guidance, was it increased a decent bit here? Curious if you could maybe accelerate some of the investments that you're looking at to get capacity delivered more quickly. Do you have flexibility to do that? Is that something you can consider?

Ari, look, it's probably not a surprise to you. Some of the things that impact the ability to deliver is things out of our control supply chain and access to energy. All that said, we're doing our level best where possible to accelerate, which makes absolute sense. And then we're planning appropriately as we look forward. One of the references we made to a substantial increase in our CapEx was the amount of pre buys that we're making inside the system so that we can deliver the capacity as quickly as possible.

But I would just tell you overall, Ralph and his team are wholly focused on delivering against what we refer to as the ready for service dates. And to the extent that we can accelerate it, we can't we will. To the extent that we can collapse phases into one another, we will, as we referred to at the Analyst Day.

Yes. The focus on RFS and RFS delivery is something that is part of the regular cadence of our business now. Have forecasting, we hope, with the same accuracy that we're forecasting some of the financial aspects of our business. So there's a lot of attention on all of the levers that we have available to us to accelerate the investment into capacity.

Thank you. Our next caller is Michael Elias with TD Cowen.

Great. Thanks for taking the questions here. Two for me. First is on the pre buying of equipment, I presume it's things like backup diesel gensets. My thought there is that if you're going to be warehousing this equipment that actually kind of smooth the CapEx curve potentially to the end of driving better growth, AFFO growth next year.

Just wondering if I'm thinking about that right. And then the second question is that earlier you talked about the demand signals that you're seeing from customers. Any color you could give around those demand signals just to give us greater conviction around this Build Bolder initiative? Thank you.

Sure. Maybe I'll take the second part of the question first and then Keith if you wanted to address the first part. So let's speak a little bit to our customer demand signals. I think there are some trends that we're seeing right across the infrastructure landscape, trends towards distributed workloads, trends towards cloud connectivity and the importance of that. We're absolutely seeing density increase in the footprints within our data centers and we're seeing deployment sizes trend up in the enterprise and retail space.

And BuildBoulder is really our response to those deployment sizes trending up because whilst most of these aspects play to our advantage, the distributed workloads, the requirement for cloud connectivity, the ability to, afford and offer denser workloads within our environment, the deployment of sizes trending up is captured by our Build Bolder strategy building to the scale that our customers now require and need. Specifically to some of the demand signals that we are seeing from our customer, I think they form around a number of use cases, especially as it relates not just to the broad based digital transformation demand, which of course is still very real for us, but as it relates to the demand for AI and AI orientated workloads. And those use cases focus around a number of topics, around the concept of data privacy and sovereignty and that is a very important topic, broadly globally, but more specifically I think in EMEA than in other regions around the need and the support to distribute AI, so that the interconnect edge of Equinix becomes the connector between the cloud and the far edge for these workloads. Secure interconnection so that enterprise systems can connect to clouds, models, partners, service providers and do so securely, and the opportunity for neutrality and flexibility.

So customers recognizing that having freedom of choice is an important aspect of a value proposition as they navigate through the deployment of these different workloads. So these are some of the use cases that we're seeing in terms of conversations with our customers around the demand profile that we're addressing with them in a very collaborative and supportive manner. Pete?

Yes. Then Michael, the first part of your question on pre buy, look, I think if you look at things in isolation and on the margin, your point would be valid that if you accelerate things into one year, it doesn't have an impact on the subsequent year. But I think given the scale and size of our investments over the five year period that we referred to at the Analyst Day, look, there's going be ins and outs all the time. And so it wouldn't be appropriate this time to suggest that it's going to cause any meaningful change to our AFFO. That all said, I think what is most important, and I know you know us really well, is it is up to us to derive the most meaningful impact that we can have to our AFFO results is driving performance. And Adair has talked about the momentum on the revenue line.

And when you get revenue, it drives cash flow and profit. The second thing is the debt that we raise. And we talked a little bit about it at the Analyst Day and we had it in the prepared remarks. Just principally speaking, we're going to try and find ways to raise debt as efficiently as we can because it is such a big component of our business and on the go forward, at least on an incremental basis. So to the extent we can access lower cost capital in different markets, we're going to continue to do that To the extent that we can go raise more capital in Europe, we're going to go do that.

We're looking very closely at interest capitalization as we've talked about. We're looking very closely at how to get a good yield on the cash that does sit on the balance sheet so that we have effectively the best view into the sort of the net interest expense on a go forward basis. But the biggest impact, of course, is just operating performance. And again, we're going to be very judicious on managing our funds, both as it relates to funds we have today on the balance sheet and how we raise our future capital. But our goal is really to optimize the AFFO per share, as you would expect.

And these timing events, I guess, if it was something that was out of the norm, we'll definitely let you know. But that this on the margin is not big enough to suggest any meaningful change.

Thank you. Our next caller is Frank Louthan with Raymond James.

Great. Thank you. On the capitalization of interest, can you walk us through why you weren't doing that before? And then how much of an impact could that bring going forward? Thanks.

Well, Frank, no, we weren't doing it before. We do capitalize interest. You remember, there's a couple of things that are going on that are different today different in the past as you look compared to what you look as you look forward. Number one, we have a really low cost of capital historically, as you and everybody know. Two, the amount of investment that we're making is much greater tomorrow than it is today, if you will.

And so that's an impact. Number three, you got to look at how much land are you carrying on your books and over what period are you capitalizing interest attributed to land that's certainly under development and then eventually to be built on. And so there's a number of factors that we look at. And so when you look at us, perhaps relative to others, we are a little bit lower, it's generally because we have less assets under development on our books. That'd be one response.

But the second response is, as we look forward, we absolutely are looking at all of the appropriate areas to determine exactly what should and should not be capitalized, whether it's interest or any other type of expense that we incur as a business. And so I would just say that overall, we're on top of it, but we have it's not that we weren't doing it before. I just think it will be a bigger component going forward largely because we're going to be carrying more debt and that debt is more expensive. And then the time line to build is extended as we all know given supply chain and other circumstances.

Is there a range of impact you think that could have to the results? Or is it too early to tell?

It's too early to tell because, as I said, number one, you have to understand what you're going to raise and when, what is capitalized onto the balance sheet, which I think is really important. And I would just say that in all cases, we're going to try and drive down, if you will, the gross cost of our debt. So as I said, we're going to borrow money as we've been doing in other markets that are lower than The United States. So that's going to be a net positive relative to the guidance rate that the long term guidance rate I gave you at the Analyst Day. So that's number one.

Number two, we're going to look at capitalization. And to the extent that we have more hanging up on the balance sheet, you're going to see more interest get capitalized as you would expect and as appropriate. And then the third piece is going to continue for us to invest our money judiciously so that we get a good return on the income that's sitting on the balance sheet waiting to be deployed. And so these three components sort of make up effectively the net interest expense that we share with you on a quarterly basis. But I would just say overall, we as you would expect, we're going to be working in all of those areas plus all the things to run a better business that is strong as it can be. Let me leave it at that.

Thank you. Michael Rollins with Citi. You may go ahead.

Thanks and good afternoon. Just a couple of follow ups.

So the first, I'm curious on the MRR churn. What are the opportunities to improve MRR churn over time? And have there been some developments on the analytics that you've been evolving within the company that help bring some new insights there? Then secondly, just curious for an update on your outlook for ex scale leasing in the back half of the year and going into 2026? And maybe give us a sense of how much inventory within that context is available to sell and deliver? Thanks.

Okay. Hi. I'll take the churn question first. So I think in Q3, the $2,600,000,000 was above our range, largely due to a bankruptcy that we had mentioned to you, I think, in our previous earnings call. And without that, we would have absolutely been within our range of 2% to 2.5%.

For the full year, in the second half, the data available to us shows us that we will be back within that range. There are a number of elements to churn as it relates to how we define and manage this aspect of our business. A churn does not actually equal automatically a customer departure from Equinix. In fact, less than 10% of our churns actually resulted in an ultimate termination of the relationship Equinix. And it's interesting as we delve into the data that we can see that some customers add back in the same metro, in the same product within a twelve month period and that a large proportion of the churned customers continue to grow revenue with us on a year on year basis.

In fact, in some cases, over half of those customers do it at a greater than 10 click rate. Actually, managing and navigating churn is really an element behind our lean in on our CapEx and our growth. Because as you can see from Q2, we delivered $345,000,000 in annualized gross bookings. And that means that we need to ensure that we have the capacity on our platform to deliver against those bookings. And the opportunity exists for us to relieve some pressure by bringing new capacity online.

So driving growth is actually going to be a key lever for us in getting to a steady state on the bottom half of the churn range, which is actually also an objective that we're focused on. And that, of course, will release significant revenues to us. So I think it's fair to say that we've done tremendous work on the insights into this part of our business that there is certainly a period of time when one needs to preempt a salvageable churn, and that is often outside the context of a single financial year, given all of the nuances that a customer needs to navigate and manage as they look to upgrade or manage their own infrastructure and environment within our colo facility. But I feel that we're in a really strong position now with the data and the analytics that we have at our disposal to be able to look at this problem holistically and with a longer term view. But ultimately, capacity is something that would be additional capacity will be a big solve here because we'll be able to serve all customers who want to be part of the Equinix story.

So that's as it relates to churn. Let's comment and have a look then at the ExScale question. I think, first of all, it's important to recognize that we have a very strong track record here as it relates to ExScale. In our remarks, we made a comment that 85% of our XScale facilities are leased and under development are already pre leased. As far as our XScale pipeline is concerned, the pipeline supports our step up in NRR in the second half.

We are back end loaded against that pipeline, but that was always a characteristic of the year. That was always something that we knew and understood. We're very confident in the execution capabilities of the team because we recognize that overall this number will have a significant impact not just on performance but also on margin contribution. Many of the conversations that we're having with customers are in our pipeline, are for capacity that is in late twenty twenty six and beyond that I might ask Keith just to give you a little bit of the numbers of that in a moment. I did just want to characterize one aspect of our ExScale business, which I think is important to appreciate, not only for Equinix, but for the industry at large, these transactions are inherently lumpy.

And they do have a dependency on RFS delivery dates. And as Keith has already mentioned in an earlier answer, we work exceptionally hard to maintain our delivery dates on track. We have undertaken the pre purchase of key components in our supply chain to minimize risk, but there will always be some variables that are outside our control. That being said, XScale is a very critical part of our product continuum. It allows us to move from wholesale through to large footprint.

It enables us to enable in an AI world not just for hyperscaler capacity, but also for capacity to support some of the increasing footprint that we're seeing in retail. And finally, just as a last remark from me on this topic, perhaps before we get into the specificity of the numbers here, we are very, very actively engaged executive to executive with our hyperscaler partners. And we continue to orchestrate and iterate against the needs that they're expressing in the market. And Keith, don't know if you wanted to pass some comment on some of the capacity elements that are coming online.

Yes. Michael, perhaps just a couple of other points I would like to make and maybe three points. First and foremost, as Adair alluded to, and you see that in the slide that we shared with you on the earnings deck, I think it's Page 26 in AgScale, we've effectively pre leased four sixteen of the four eighty megawatts of capacity that's either delivered or is under construction. In addition to that, in the prepared remarks, we've talked about Hampton and we've talked about other sites. It is our expectation, particularly with the demand environment looking out over an extended period of time, that we will be able to lock up other opportunities in capacity that has not yet been delivered or is not yet under construction.

But I think that's important just to note. Second thing I just want to highlight is that the recurring revenue model, largely when you see the guidance for Q3 relative to Q2, there's a nice step up in currency. We all knew that was coming. What is even more telling is there's a nice step up in recurring revenue. In fact, recurring revenue makes up more than 100% of the non FX guidance increased to the midpoint, which tells you that nonrecurring revenues are going down quarter over quarter, and then we'll step back up in the fourth quarter.

So I think that was that's important to note. And then the last thing I would just say, this quarter and being Q2, NRR revenue represented about 5% of our revenues. In Q3, it's going be about 4.5% of our revenues. And in Q4, it's going to be about 6% of our revenues. So it gives you a sense that, as Adair alluded to, is lumpy and it will continue to be lumpy for an extended period of time.

But I think the most fundamental thing that we wanted to share with you is that the recurring revenue model is continuing to accelerate. And that's what gives us the that's the attractiveness to the model, but it also gives us the entree into 2026, which again, Adir alluded to previously, which is really important for 2026 guide and onwards.

Thank you. Our next caller is Michael Sunk with Bank of America.

Equinix (EQIX) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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