GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

William Huang: Yeah. And Yang, I want to add one more point. I think the focus for the new booking 75,000 square meter, right, in our new guidance, this is all organic. This is all organic. Historically, when we reached some 90,000 square meter, including a lot of acquisitions, right? So, this is still very high level compared with all the global top players, still bigger than most of the data center players in the world. Okay. I think in terms of the competition from the telco, I think the telco — yes, our strategy is the Tier 1 market. We built out all our assets in the Tier 1 market or edge of the top of Tier 1 market. This is, I think, in the last — this is — nothing changed. In terms of supply, telco is still less investment in this region, right?

So, I think we are not worried about it. And on the other hand, we don’t compete directly. They are also our customers. I think we have very good relationship with — work with the three telcos in the last 10 years. So, recently, a lot — a few — I mean, a few telcos came to us and tried to discuss some cooperation between us, because they also deployed their cloud service — wanted to deploy their service in Tier 1 market. And if we — if someone wanted to deploy cloud service in Tier 1 market, I think definitely GDS will be the first choice for them to partner with. Otherwise, no possibility to provide their cloud service in this city, right?

Yang Liu: Thanks a lot for the answer.

Operator: Thank you. We’ll now take the next question. Please standby. This is from the line of Gokul Hariharan from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Gokul Hariharan: Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. First, could you talk a little bit about what are you hearing in the last couple of months? William, I think you mentioned there is some excitement from the customers, but typically, on the cloud side, which is still a significant part of your backlog, if you think about the next couple of years. Are they starting to see utilization pick up in their existing infrastructure that they need to now start accelerating the move-in, or you think that the cloud acceleration is still going to take a little bit more time? And secondly, also on the EBITDA front, we have seen some erosion in EBITDA because of power costs and some, I think, mix related challenges. Do we see the guidance that we gave for FY ’23 as kind of like the sustainable level of EBITDA margin, or we think it would be further pressure as more international business comes online in 2024 and beyond?

William Huang: Hello, Gokul. This is William. In terms of the cloud service provider, I think number one, they are all making a new business plan right now based on the current environment, because this is — the assumption — previously, a lot of overhead is in China, like lockdown policy. Now it’s gone. It’s no more. And another is new government structure and all the platform, they made a couple of times statements to support the platform in the social media as a private company, support their growth, continue the growth in China, right? So, I think our customers also very encouraged by the current environment. So, they made the — they should have made a — they are making the new business plan right now. In general, I think based on my conversation with our largest customer, one of — top three customer, they are all very encouraged.