VNET Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:VNET) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Edison Lee: Okay. My first question is about the debt breakdown by maturity on Page 20 of your PPT, right? So you saw that in 2024, you have RMB 4.25 billion of convertible debt deal. So I want to know how much of that is U.S. dollar and what is your plan to cover that?

Qiyu Wang: It’s the USD 600 million, which we already have completely repayment in February.

Edison Lee: All right. So that has been taken care of.

Operator: Our next question comes from Timothy Zhao of Goldman Sachs.

Timothy Zhao: Also two questions here. One is regarding your guidance for 2024 regarding the top line as well as EBITDA. Can management share what is the underlying assumption for the high end and low end? And any color on the, for example, the amount or the utilization rate and also the revenue growth between your IDC and non-IDC business, wholesale versus retail. I think any color on that would be quite helpful. And secondly, I think back to your CapEx plan for ’24, just wondering, I think in your prepared remarks you mentioned something about the AI-related demand. Just wondering any color on what percentage or what proportion of that wholesale CapEx is related to the CapEx on-grid occur to meet the demand for the higher power density cabinets? And how do you think about the overall environment in China for the IDC market?

Qiyu Wang: Let me answer the first question and Jeff will answer the second. For the year 2023, our retail IDC business and non-IDC business is quite stable. With the wholesale business, it’s a growth rapidly. By the end of 2023, our wholesale companies represent over 30% of our total cabinets and the contribution — contributed around 20% of our total IDC revenue. Our wholesale revenue grew 70% year-to-year in 2023. The assumption of our 2024 guidance range is mainly based on our stable retail IDC business and non-IDC business. And the rent is — mainly the reason is the utilization rate of our wholesale IDC business. So we expect to provide more color on wholesale, retail and non-IDC starting from the fourth quarter of this year. So maybe in next quarter earnings, we will show more number from — about our wholesale and the retail and the non-IDC business. So, Jeff?

Jie Dong: Yes, in terms of AI IDC demand, I would say we have seen actually a rapid growth in China and AI-driven demand from our customer side continue to climb, especially computing power demand for training and LLM, and those models are dominated by the Internet giants, which the vertical models are led by the leading players in specific industries, as I mentioned, some tax top-ups aside from the Internet giants. For our business, for the wholesale, AI-driven demands are mainly searched by Internet giant customers, especially like short video and e-commerce business. As I mentioned on the call, we can see short video customers are ramping up very, very fast that we expect, which is highly contributed by the strong AI-driven demand.

In terms of retail side, we are receiving actually interesting demand from retail customers across various industries like the autonomous driving local services and virtual reality and so on. We will — in 2024, we will explore into further demand from that side. And also, we have the value-added service part, can also provide solid support to the AI demand. And as you mentioned, in terms of the CapEx side to — I mean, to category into the AI driven, as of 2023, around 20% of our stored CapEx high-power density and especially for the company to deliver new delivered during 2023. I would say the large majority is hard power density covenants, which are all for wholesale customers. For cabinets to be delivered during 2024, I would say it will be 100% is high power density companies, which are all for wholesale customers.

So come back to the current CapEx side, I would say, like — a majority of the CapEx will go to the high-power density wholesale customers.

Operator: Our next question comes from Daley Li of Bank of America Securities.

Huiqun Li: I also have two questions. Firstly, regarding our guidance. We guided like adjusted EBITDA growth for this year is to have higher growth on the top line. So what would be the key drivers for the margin you mentioned. First, same question about the new capacity — new capacity expansion. And for the 100, 120 megawatts of this capacity, what’s the delivery timetable for this year will be majority in the second half or like 4Q or some will be in first half of this year.