Equinix eyes new datacenters, acquisitions

US interconnection and datacenters group Equinix plans to accelerate the expansion and construction of datacenters in Latin America while looking to expand its footprint through acquisitions.

“We are underway in our expansion in Mexico and we continue to advance expansions in other markets as well. It’s a big year for us here in Latin America,” Jon Lin, president for the Americas region, told BNamericas.

The company is spending around US$190mn on datacenters in Brazil and Mexico. 

Of the total, US$54mn are going to the second expansion phase of the MX2 site in Mexico City, with completion scheduled for the third quarter.

Equinix entered the Mexican market following the US$175mn acquisition of three datacenters from Mexico’s Axtel in January 2020. They serve the Mexico City and Monterrey metro areas. 

The two datacenters – MX1 and MX2 – that serve the Mexico City metro are located in Querétaro. Both are carrier-neutral facilities with multiple diverse fiber entry points that include five network service providers operating within each datacenter.

“The acquisition of Axtel datacenters provided us a good base to start with in Mexico. We see a lot of market opportunity in Mexico, both in land acquisition as well as extension of datacenter in that market, both for retail business and for hyperscale customers.”

Hyperscale facilities host the infrastructure of major public cloud providers ( AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle) that require lots of space and energy in strategic locations. 

Another US$136mn was committed to the expansion or construction of datacenters in Brazil: US$59mn for the completed third expansion phase of SP4; US$25mn to the third phase of SP3 (also completed) and US$52mn for the first expansion phase of SP5, scheduled to be completed by the third quarter. 

SP5 will be the company's first hyperscale datacenter in Latin America. Equinix also has two datacenters in Rio de Janeiro.

The company is also planning a second datacenter in Colombia to go with its existing facility in Bogota.

LATAM ACTIVITY

The DataCenter Map lists 150 active datacenters in Latin America under the collocation model in which corporates rent the space to host their own servers. Brazil has 63 of them, followed by Chile and Argentina, with 14 each; while Mexico has 12.

Chile has seen a surge in datacenter and submarine systems projects recently, but the market is not a priority for Equinix at the moment.

“For us, the question is: ‘Do we want to invest in a new market like Chile or double down in Mexico and in São Paulo?’ We continue to watch Chile and Buenos Aires and a couple of additional markets, but we are focused on the markets where we already operate,” says Lin.

Lin says Equinix does not break down its Americas revenues by market, “but LatAm is one of the highest-growth areas for our business.”

Globally, Equinix reported US$1.6bn in revenues in Q1, up 10% year-over-year. Americas accounted for 45% of the total. Around 75% of its recurring revenues worldwide come from collocation.

According to a report by research firm Aritzon, the Latin American datacenter market is expected to reach US$780bn in investments by 2026, for a 7.6% compound annual growth rate in the period, with 214MW in capacity and a surface area of 1mn square feet.

Equinix’s latest Global Interconnection Index (GXI) sees interconnection growing at a compound annual growth rate of 50% in Latin America from 2019 to 2023. 

The company claims to have been selected as an interconnection partner for more than 40 submarine cable projects. One of the latest deals was signed with Brazil's GlobeNet for the anchoring of the Brazil-Argentina Malbec cable in the SP2 and SP4 datacenters in São Paulo.

Equinix estimates that the LatAm undersea systems will require more than US$1bn in new investments over the next three years.

The company is providing connectivity to the BRUSA, Curie, Globenet’s Festoon, Monet, Ellalink, SACS and Seabras-1 cables. It is also in talks to power ARBR, Aurora, Deep Blue, GOLD, Junior, SAIL and SAIX.