Equinix today announced its Q1 2022 earnings and provided updates on its financial guidance for 2022, data center portfolio, interconnection services, development pipeline, absence of leasing activity at its xScale (hyperscale) facilities, as well as details on its recent acquisitions, capital raisings, and joint ventures.
As of Q1 2022, Equinix operates a global footprint of 244 data centers, representing 339k cabinets of power capacity. Additionally, these data centers comprise 28.2 million sqft, across 69 metros around the world, and support 10k+ customers.
Financial Performance in Q1 2022 – Equinix
In Q1 2022, Equinix generated revenues of $1.73bn, a 2% increase over Q4 2021 and a 10% rise over Q1 2021. Additionally, Equinix produced adjusted EBITDA of $800m in Q1 2022, a 2% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 5% rise year-over-year. Therefore, the company’s EBITDA margin was 46.1% in Q1 2022, a ~5 bps decline quarter-over-quarter.
Revenue by Region
- Americas: $800m of revenue, implying a 2% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 10% increase year-over-year
- EMEA: $550m of revenue, generating a 1% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 9% increase year-over-year
- Asia-Pacific: $384m of revenue, producing a 4% increase quarter-over-quarter and a 13% increase year-over-year
Beyond data centers, Equinix Fabric, a software-defined interconnection service, “saw its highest ever virtual connection adds”. While Equinix Metal, a bare metal as-a-service (BMaaS) offering, “had the most net customer adds to its service since its launch, with several key enterprise wins and a healthy backlog”.
Note: all growth rates are calculated on a normalized and constant currency basis.
Financial Guidance for 2022 – Equinix
Equinix increased the mid-point of its full-year 2022 financial guidance for revenues by $89m (up 1.2%) and adjusted EBITDA by $37m (up 1.1%), as compared to the company’s prior financial guidance in Q4 2021.
Full-Year 2022 Financial Guidance – as of April 2022
| $ in millions | Low | High | Mid-Point | % Raised |
| Revenues | $7,291 | $7,341 | $7,316 | 1.2% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $3,344 | $3,374 | $3,359 | 1.1% |
For full-year 2022, Equinix provides financial guidance for revenues of $7.29bn to $7.34bn. Additionally, the company forecasts adjusted EBITDA of $3.34bn to $3.37bn, implying a 46% EBITDA margin. Finally, the mid-point of Equinix’s 2022 financial guidance infers a year-over-year increase of 10.2% and 6.8% in revenues and EBITDA, respectively.
Operational Performance in Q1 2022 – Equinix
Bookings
In Q1 2022, Equinix’s bookings totaled 4.2k deals across more than 3.1k customers. Also, the company’s channel program accounted for 40% of its total bookings and 60% of its new customers. Particularly, Equinix’s reseller and alliance partners produced over 75% of channel bookings.
Utilization
At quarter-end, Equinix was billing on 273k out of its 339k cabinets of power capacity, representing a utilization rate of 80.6%, an increase of 1.1% quarter-over-quarter. Geographically, Equinix’s utilization is 77% in the Americas, 84% in EMEA, and 82% in Asia-Pacific. Further, during Q1 2022, utilization improved across all regions as follows: Americas (+1.3%), EMEA (+0.2%), and Asia-Pacific (+2.5%).
Pricing
On a consolidated basis, Equinix’s monthly recurring revenue (MRR) per billed cabinet was up 0.8%, at $1,974 in Q1 2022, versus $1,958 in Q4 2021. By region, Equinix’s MRR per billed cabinet quarter-over-quarter variances were as follows: Americas at $2,338 (-0.2%), EMEA at $1,603 (+1.1%), and Asia-Pacific at $2,009 (+2.0%).
Equinix attributes pricing pressure in the Americas to one-time settlement activity, a large installation which is not yet ramped, and negative price action associated with a “very large renewal” from Nasdaq, which houses its primary data center in Carteret, New Jersey at Equinix NY11.
Interconnection
Equinix added 8.9k net interconnections during Q1 2022, bringing the company’s total interconnections to over 428k at quarter-end. Of this total, 387k are physical cross connects and 40.8k are virtual connections.
Overall, the company’s growth in interconnections resulted in interconnection revenues increasing to $309m, equivalent to growth of 2.1% quarter-over-quarter and 10.6% year-over-year.
Development Pipeline
Equinix has 43 major builds underway in 29 markets across 20 countries, including 9 xScale builds in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific. In aggregate, these projects represent 25k+ cabinets of retail colocation space and 80+ megawatts of xScale (hyperscale) capacity. Following significant development, Equinix anticipates ending 2022 with 354k cabinets of power capacity, a 4% increase from current levels.
Retail IBX Focus (excluding xScale)
During 2022, Equinix anticipates spending of $2.06bn to $2.25bn in development capital expenditures, excluding xScale-related projects.
Additionally, as part of its Q1 2022 earnings release, Equinix approved expansions of 6.3k cabinets of power capacity at 5 data centers, in the Americas and Asia-Pacific:
- Americas: Atlanta (AT1), Washington, D.C. (DC16)
- Asia-Pacific: Sydney (SY6), Tokyo (TY11), Mumbai (MB3)
Finally, during the quarter, Equinix opened 3 new data centers in 2 metros, namely Muscat (Oman) and Singapore.
xScale Joint Ventures – Hyperscale Builds
At full build-out, the total investment across Equinix’s xScale data center joint venture with both GIC (Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas) and PGIM Real Estate (Australia) will be over $8bn, across 36 facilities, with 720+ megawatts of power capacity.
Overall, xScale-related capital expenditures during 2022 will be between $37m and $87m. Of this total, Equinix will be reimbursed 80% by GIC and PGIM for the xScale developments.
xScale Leasing
As shown below, 133 megawatts of xScale capacity has been leased to-date, meaning that no incremental leasing activity occurred quarter-over-quarter. Presently, across all of its xScale facilities, Equinix has 44 out of 177 megawatts of power capacity available to lease.
As disclosed through the first xScale EMEA Joint Venture between Equinix and GIC, hyperscalers including Microsoft, Salesforce, and Amazon are key tenants of xScale’s London and Paris data centers.
Acquisitions, Capital Raisings, and Joint Ventures
During Q1 2022 and subsequent to quarter-end earnings, Equinix announced or closed the following acquisitions, capital raisings, and joint ventures:
New Transactions
- Entel Carve-Out: in March 2022, Equinix agreed to acquire 4 data centers in Chile and Peru from Entel, a telecommunications provider in Chile, for an enterprise value of $705m
- India Land: in March 2022, Equinix acquired a 5.5-acre land parcel located within the SIPCOT IT Park, in Chennai, India for $9m. Equinix intends to pursue a data center development on this land parcel
- Mexico Land: Equinix purchased land for the purposes of data center development in Mexico City (likely in Querétaro State)
- Green Bonds: in April 2022, Equinix priced its fourth green bond offering, bringing the company’s total to ~$4.9bn of green bonds issued since September 2020
Closing Transactions
- MainOne: closed, in April 2022, the acquisition of a data center, fiber, and subsea cable operator, for an enterprise value of $320m. Specifically, MainOne has a data center presence in Nigeria, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire
- xScale Australia: closed, in March 2022, a $575m joint venture with PGIM Real Estate to develop and operate two facilities in Sydney, Australia with 55+ megawatts of power capacity
- xScale South Korea: closed, in April 2022, a $525m joint venture with GIC to develop and operate two facilities in Seoul, South Korea with 45+ megawatts of power capacity
