Goodman Group steps up global data centre strategy amid investor surge
The company's return to profitability is a significant milestone on its journey from staid industrial property owner to data centre powerhouse.
Goodman Group's CEO insists that the aspiring data centre darling has sufficient capital from dividends, its balance sheet and external capital to build out $12.9 billion of progressed industrial property and data centre projects, amid unprecedented investor interest in Australia's bid to emerge as a regional AI tech hub.
Speaking after the owner-developer’s full-year result which saw operating earnings swell 13% to $2.3 billion, Greg Goodman told Capital Brief that it had $6 billion in available cash, including part of the $4 billion February equity raise and a steady inflow of funds from capital partners brought in at early points along the development cycle, which allows Goodman to generate cash before properties were completed and sold.
“Our dividend policy of retaining operating earnings means that we retain around $2 billion per year.. It gives Goodman a lot of balance sheet flexibility. Then land going in [to development partnerships] represents equity from Goodman, so we get half the capital out of those land transfers,” he said.
“[Flexibility] ebbs and flows, allowing us to start [building] data centres, and then we get some money back along the way as well. Then once they’ve stabilised and the data centres are finished, they go into a stabilised partnership [with long-term investors such as pension funds].”
