GDS Holdings Ltd

HKEX:9698

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Operator]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for GDS Holdings Limited's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference call is being recorded.

I will now turn the call over to your host, Ms. Laura Chen, Head of Investor Relations for the company. Please go ahead, Laura.

[Laura Chen, executive]

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to 3Q '21 Earnings Conference Call of GDS Holdings Limited. The company's results were issued via Newswire services earlier today and are posted online. A summary presentation, which we will refer to during this conference call, can be viewed and downloaded from our IR website at investors.gds-services.com.

Leading today's call is Mr. William Huang, GDS Founder, Chairman and CEO, who will provide an overview of our business strategy and performance; Mr. Dan Newman, GDS' CFO, will then review the financial and operating results. Ms. Jamie Khoo, our COO, is also available to answer questions.

Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's prospectus as filed with the U.S. SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law.

Please also note that GDS earnings press release and this conference call include discussions of unaudited GAAP financial information as well as unaudited non-GAAP financial measures. GDS press release contains a reconciliation of the unaudited non-GAAP measures to the unaudited most directly comparable GAAP measures.

I will now turn over the call to GDS Founder, Chairman and CEO, William. Please go ahead, William.

[William Huang, executive]

Thank you, Laura. Hello, everyone. This is William. Thank you for joining me on today's call. I'm pleased to report another quarter of solid results, with revenue and adjusted EBITDA up around 35%. During the third quarter, we made a significant progress in key areas, which underpin our future success. We sustained our sales momentum. We further diversified our customer base with another great hyperscale win. We enhanced our capacity pipeline with strategically important resource acquisitions. We took steps to secure our transition to renewables. And we put in place further from -- further foundations for our existing platform expansion in Southeast Asia.

In 3Q '21, we booked 23,000 square meter of new organic commitments in Tier 1 markets. We remain well on track to hit our sales target of over 90,000 square meter organic booking for the full year.

As shown on Slide 5, we won 5 hyperscale orders. Two orders were under an existing multiyear sales framework agreement with a top customer; 2 were from one of China's largest Internet platform, which is a new hyperscale logo for us, demonstrating the strength of demand from Internet; and a further order was from a major Chinese bank, which highlights the growing potential of financial institutions. Our sustained sales is strong evidence that customers are not holding back on their medium-term and long-term business plans.

For us to offer a complete solution to our customers, we must have continuous capacity supply in each Tier 1 market. Securing these supply means working with government policy. The government recognized the importance of data centers to the digital economy. The government also attached great importance to sustainability. And it depends for the industry, the government has made clear that they want to see new data centers which are large scale, highly efficient, smart, secure and technologically advanced. They want data centers in Tier 1 markets used predominantly for low-latency applications. They want a well-integrated edge, hub and remote data center layout. And last but not least, they want data centers which are more green and lead the way in terms of renewable energy usage.

GDS is well aligned with all of these government objectives. Going forward, we expect new project approvals and the energy quota will become even more difficult to uptake in Tier 1 markets. In some downtown locations, supply is already constrained. We therefore took the decision to accelerate our acquisition of qualified projects in key locations.

Turning to Slide 9. In Beijing, we closed the acquisition of Beijing's 17, 19 -- 18 and 19, which brings us 10,700 square meter of developed and developable capacity. In addition, we recently signed an agreement for the acquisition of another 13,000 square meter of capacity, comprising 4 data centers on land owned by the project company, which are nearly complete and are not yet committed. We will market this data center to financial and enterprise customers, whose national headquarters are mostly located in Beijing.

In Shenzhen, we are acquiring a data center with 3,600 square meter of capacity, which is nearly complete and already committed to our customers. In Guangdong, we are applying a portfolio of development projects at multiple locations. The portfolio has a total developable net floor area of over 100,000 square meters or IT power capacity over 250 megawatts. The projects are either at an early stage or held for future development. Guangdong Province has stated that a new application will be extremely limited for the next few years. This acquisition enables us to materially step up our market presence.

With the acquisition of Wuhan 1 and 2, we are entering a new market. Wuhan is the economic hub of Central China, where many hyperscale cloud and Internet companies set up their regional headquarters. The 2 data centers have a net floor area of 8,400 square meter and the first phase is under construction. With the addition of this acquisition to our secured pipeline, we are well placed in terms of supply in each Tier 1 market.

Turning to Slide 11. In a couple of weeks' time, we will publish our inaugural ESG report and set out our sustainability targets for 2030. As is typical for data center companies, 99% of our carbon emissions come from electricity consumption. We estimate that for cloud and Internet companies, around 60% to 70% of their carbon emissions come from data center operations, including in-house and also data centers. It is therefore critically important to us, our customers, the government and other stakeholders that we set tough targets and have a feasible strategy to reach carbon neutrality.

Where are we today? In FY '20, over 20% of our total electricity consumption was green. In the current year, we expect the percentages to be over 30%. And by 2025, we should exceed 50%. We are increasing our green energy usage in 3 main ways. The first is by direct investment in renewable energy generation. We started in a small way by installing solar walls on some of our data center buildings. But our ultimate objective is to have large-scale integrated development. We are working with partners and the government to make this happen, but it will take time to realize.

The second is by direct power purchase or DPP, which we are already doing pretty much to the maximum extent possible in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Chongqing as well as for some remote sites. DPP is currently constrained by the availability of renewable in Tier 1 markets, but supply will increase significantly over the next few years. The third is by the purchase of renewable energy certificates, or RECs, which in the near term is the most practical option.

We recently signed a multiyear agreement with CGN New Energy, a state-owned independent power producer with wind, solar and hydro portfolio to purchase over 30,000 gigawatt of renewable energy certificates. To put this into context, 30,000 gigawatt is over 7x our current annualized electricity consumption. We believe that this is one of the largest renewable deals done by any private industry user in China.

In a further sign of progress, some of our data centers in Beijing were recently allocated tradable carbon credits as a result of our success in lowering PUE. These GDS data centers are among the very first to be allowed to participate in Beijing's official emissions trading market.

Now turning to Slide 12. Yesterday, we announced our second project commitment in Southeast Asia. We are in the process of acquiring a greenfield land for 28-megawatt data center development in Nongsa Digital Park, Batam, Indonesia, a Special Economic Zone, which is 25 kilometers from Singapore. This is a new location for data center development, which you can see from the quote in our press announcement, has strong support from both Indonesia and Singapore governments. We expect to obtain renewable energy for this site, which will further enhance its marketability and competitive edge.

With this addition, we now have strategically location hyperscale projects, both in the north and the south of Singapore with great potential for creating unique ecosystems and interconnectivity in and around Singapore hub. At the Nusajaya Tech Park in Johor, our land is next door to Telekom Malaysia's regional data centers. We are pleased to have signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Telekom Malaysia, both for network connectivity and for use of available capacity in their facility, which will enable us to kick-start our presence before our own data centers come online.

Our regional strategy is driven by the requirements of our home market customers. To reinforce this point, we have recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement with a major Chinese cloud service provider to support its international expansion. Under the agreement, we will be prioritized as their data center provider in the region. The strategic cooperation extends the mutual trust between us and the customer from China to Southeast Asia, providing a strong foundation for the success of our regional strategy.

Now I will hand over to Dan for the financial and operation review. Thank you.

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Thank you, William. Before going through the numbers, I'd like to provide an update on our partnership with GIC. A few years ago, we started to develop projects for our strategic customers in more remote locations using a B-O-T structure. We've done 15 to date, the status of which is shown on Slide 14. As you may recall, we established a partnership with GIC to finance these projects. Our original intention was through [indiscernible] with GIC, under which we will retain a 51% stake. With this higher level of ownership and additional fee income, we are able to deploy more capital while earning a reasonable return on investment.

On the back of this new agreement, we have now signed the first sales and purchase contract with GIC for the transfer of a 49% stake in one of our existing B-O-T projects, Huailai 1. We will work with GIC to transfer 49% stakes in several more B-O-T projects over the next few quarters.

Starting on Slide 16, where we strip out the contribution from equipment sales and the effect of FX changes. In 3Q '21, our service revenue grew by 10.6%. Underlying adjusted gross profit grew by 7.6%, and underlying adjusted EBITDA grew by 7.7% quarter-on-quarter. Our underlying adjusted EBITDA margin was 46.9%.

Turning to Slide 17. Service revenue growth is driven mainly by delivery of the committed backlog and closing of acquisitions. Net additional area utilized during 3Q '21 was 18,678 square meters. The organic move-in, excluding acquisitions and B-O-T projects, were 16,037 square meters. This is a step up from the levels seen in the first and second quarters. However, it was still a few thousand square meters less than our original expectations. We attribute this to a combination of server shortages, power uncertainties and other macro factors, which we believe are transitory.

In 4Q '21, we expect organic net adds to be at a similar level as in 3Q. Following the new agreement with GIC, we will now include area utilized of all B-O-T projects in the MSR calculation for 3Q and prior quarters. On a consistent basis, MSR per square meter increased by 1.3% quarter-on-quarter in 3Q '21 to RMB 2,361 per square meter per month. This increase is within the normal range of quarterly fluctuations. The inclusion of all B-O-T projects brings the MSR number down slightly, but the quarterly trend line is essentially the same.

Turning to Slide 18. Our underlying adjusted gross profit margin was 52.5% for 3Q '21, a decrease of 1.5 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. And our underlying adjusted EBITDA margin was 46.9% for 3Q '21, a decrease of 1.2 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. The margin decrease was mainly due to higher utility costs. In 3Q '21, our utility cost was 28.8% of revenue compared with 26.9% in the prior quarter, an increase of 1.9 percentage points. Higher utility costs was partly a result of seasonally higher power consumption during the summer months and partly a result of temporary additional cost for the use of backup power during a period when grid power supply was limited. In 3Q '21, we spent RMB 19 million on backup power. The unit cost to backup power is around 3x that of grid power. So far, in 4Q '21, grid power supply is almost back to normal.

During October, the government introduced reforms to further liberalize the power market. These reforms require thermal power generators to sell all of their output through the wholesale markets and allows the electricity price to float between a regulated base tariff and a higher ceiling. When fully implemented over the next year or so, these reforms will enable us to purchase substantially all of our thermal power through direct negotiations with generators. While this may eventually lead to a lower unit power cost, in the short term, we expect normal power tariffs to go up because of elevated fuel costs. We will start to see this during the current quarter. Accordingly, we estimate that our utility cost as a percentage of revenue will be similar in 4Q '21 to the levels seen in 3Q. Around half of our customer contracts in terms of billable revenue have pricing structures which allow us to pass on increased power costs.

Turning to Slide 20. Our CapEx for 3Q '21 was CNY 3.8 billion, consisting of CNY 3.2 billion for organic CapEx and CNY 575 million for acquisition consideration, mainly related to Beijing 17, 18, 19. As at the end of 3Q '21, we had a liability of around CNY 1 billion on our balance sheet in respect of deferred and contingent consideration for past acquisitions. After 9 months of the year, our total CapEx stood at CNY 11 billion, including CNY 3.6 billion for acquisitions and a further CNY 0.8 billion for land bank purchases in China, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Based on our expectations for when the acquisitions which we announced today will close and the amount of total consideration, which is payable upfront, we expect CapEx in 4Q '21 to be around CNY 5 billion.

Looking at our financing position on Slide 21. At the end of 3Q '21, we had CNY 10.1 billion or USD 1.6 billion of cash on our balance sheet. And our net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA ratio increased to 5.1x. In the first 9 months of 2021, we completed CNY 3.6 billion of debt refinancing, and we have a further CNY 1.3 billion to complete by year-end as part of our annual refinancing plan.

You can see on Slide 22 that we continue to refinance at a significantly lower all-in cost. We are beginning to see the benefit in our effective interest rate, which dropped to 5.5% during 3Q '21 compared with 6.4% a year ago in 3Q '20.

Turning to Slide 24. As a result of the lower-than-expected move-in rate in the second half of 2021 and recent increases in power costs, we now expect our total revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2021 to be in the lower half of the originally provided guidance ranges. Accordingly, we are narrowing guidance to correspond to the lower half of the original ranges. The revised guidance is therefore CNY 7.7 billion to CNY 7.85 billion for total revenue and CNY 3.66 billion to CNY 3.73 billion for adjusted EBITDA.

When we gave CapEx guidance at the beginning of the year, we explained that the number only included the acquisition, which we knew about at that time, namely BJ15 and that there could be more M&A not included in guidance. During the year, we made the strategic decision to accelerate our resource acquisition, which effectively brings forward some future year CapEx. As a result, we now expect CapEx for the full year of 2021 to be around CNY 16 billion compared with the originally provided guidance of around CNY 12 billion.

Out of the CNY 16 billion, approximately 50% will be organic, which is consistent with our original estimate for organic CapEx. At the end of the current year, we expect to have around CNY 5 billion invested in capacity held for future development.

We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have the first question. This is coming from the line of Jonathan Atkin from RBC Capital Markets.

[Jonathan Atkin, analyst]

So I was interested in the comments about the revised guidance, and you talked about kind of the slower pace of move-in. I wondered how does that affect your growth expectations for 2022? And then the higher utility costs that you mentioned due to fuel, how does that affect your margin expectations for next year?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

We're not providing guidance today for 2022. And I can only make some comments about the fourth quarter and you can form, I think, your own view. The move-in in the third quarter, as I said, was a few thousand square meters lower than our original expectations. And the fourth quarter is likely to be another few thousand square meters. So in that respect, we'll start the next year at a few thousand square meters below where we originally expected to end this year. I don't have a lot of bottom-up visibility far into the future, but I do believe that at some point, we will see a rebound in moving activity.

Our customer contracts give customers the flexibility of how fast they move in as part of the value of outsourcing, and it's what enables customers to make commitments in advance. So we always see variance around our estimates because it's not up to us, it's up to the customers. So we should not be surprised by this. Once again, we talk about the effect of higher utility costs. In the third quarter, you saw that utility cost as a percentage of revenue was increased by more than 1 percentage point. Partly, it was seasonal, partly it was due to the higher cost to backup power.

In the fourth quarter, the seasonality works the other way. And we no longer have a serious issues so far in relation to power cuts, but we have potentially higher power tariffs as a result of liberalization of thermal power pricing and higher thermal power fuel costs. Therefore, we've assumed that in the fourth quarter, utility costs will be elevated once again, a similar percentage of revenue as it was in the third quarter. Once again, I think you have to form your own view about how long that will last, and I'm sure it's transitory. We all know that. But I can't predict the electricity price.

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I think, I'll deal with them. I'll add some comment, my view. I think that, number one, we got the feeling is the market demand is still very strong, and a lot of customers want moving more quickly. But as Dan mentioned, the server shipment is a problem in this year. It's impacted moving rate and also there are some carbon energy shortage that a lot of customer slow down their move-in. So we hope that this element will be solved ASAP. If that's the case, I think it will come to the normal even catch up the move-in, right? So it's -- again, it's too early to say -- estimate next year's revenue guidance, but one thing is that the order still maintained very strong.

[Jonathan Atkin, analyst]

I wanted to ask about the balance sheet. You touched on it in the prepared remarks, but can you maybe just kind of recap your thoughts on the future financing needs given the higher CapEx that you're guiding to? You mentioned joint venture activities, but also kind of higher leverage. So putting that all together, how far into the future do you consider yourself funded? And what would be some of the financing options?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

We're always fully funded in terms of capital for what we have committed to, what we've announced. We had USD 1.6 billion of cash on our balance sheet at the end of the third quarter of this year, which is adequate for all the things that we are currently doing. If we need more capital, we do have the option of increasing leverage at the holdco level. We have a revolving credit facility there for USD 300 million, which we could potentially upsize.

However, as I mentioned before, we also think that it's a good strategy to bring in outside equity at the project level, like we are doing with GIC for the B-O-T projects. As you are all very well aware, there's a lot of private capital looking for data center exposure. And sometimes, private capital comes at a lower costs in the public markets. We do want to have a hybrid approach, and we're looking actively at some possibilities for fund-type structures, which would give us access to very deep pools of capital and potentially some value-add fund partners. Sorry, I should -- sorry, I just want to add and potentially some value-add from partners. Yes.

[Jonathan Atkin, analyst]

And then lastly from my side. Slide 39 gives the contract renewals. And as a percentage of square meters and service, it's between -- looks like between 10% and 11% between now and year-end '22. So what is your thought or expectations around the pricing around those renewals?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes. Jon, most of the renewals are for downtown data centers. The first thing I would note is that customers are holding on to practically all of their capacity when it comes up for renewal. The churn rate has been a fraction of a percent. We've renewed some contracts flat. We've renewed some down to some degree. As I've explained before, it's not a mark-to-market exercise like it is perhaps in the U.S. It's -- for us, it's a strategic decision in the context of the overall customer relationship, where we agree the renewal in the context of all the business that we're doing with that customer. So I don't think you can really look at it as a completely market-orientated pricing.

[William Huang, executive]

And Jon, I'll add some color. Jon, I can add some color. Because in China, the different market demand supply situation is different. So in my view, it's -- the renewal is just like new sales. Maybe in some market, we will keep the flat price. Some markets, maybe we'll increase price. Maybe some market will give our strategic customers a benefit. And so this is a mix of strategy. It depends on the different market supply and demand situation.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have the next question. This is coming from the line of Yang Liu from Morgan Stanley.

[Yang Liu, analyst]

Two questions here. The first one is in terms of the demand. I guess this is the time that GDS start to talk with customers in terms of their demand next year. Could you please share with us in terms of the outlook from the key customers, especially Internet and public cloud customers about the demand for new data center build-outs? Because we recently observed some of your customers' CapEx are relatively low, so I'm not sure if the demand outlook for next year.

The second question is we noticed that GDS closed a lot of acquisitions in the past quarter. Could you please update us in terms of the competition in those deals? Is it more intense than before is it or less intense? And how about the valuation trend, upward trend or downward trend versus deal closed several quarters ago?

[William Huang, executive]

Okay. Yang, let me answer your first question. I think in -- recently, I went to China and [ committed to a lot ] of our key customers. In general, I think they maintained their previous plan. But the market structure a little bit shift, some -- maybe some traditional hyperscale customer slow down a little bit. But in the same time, we have saw -- we saw a lot of the new hyperscale customer grow more faster than our expectation. So it's -- in general, I think the demand still maintain very strong. So -- but the market a little bit shift to Internet and video company and e-commerce company. So this is a fact based on my communication with our key -- all key customers. So in general, the market is still very -- demands are still very strong. And in additional, in this year's practice, we saw a lot of financial institutions, they increased their CapEx tremendously. It's very surprising to us. So this year, we also get a lot of the -- we've got a lot of the financial institution order, even bigger, more bigger than before we expect. So I think this trend also still will continue. So Dan, maybe you can answer some acquisition.

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes. There's competition for every acquisition. We have a dedicated team. We try to identify the opportunities early. We monitor them. There's usually a right time to move forward, and we try to leverage our expertise and track record in doing acquisitions to give counterparties a high degree of confidence in dealing with GDS, which can be a factor, not just a matter of price.

If you look at the acquisitions which we've done so far this year and the ones that we've announced today, they are predominantly in and around Beijing and in Shenzhen and Guangdong. Those are the places where there is already clearly a constraint on supply or if not currently a constraint on supply, constraint on new project approvals and energy quota allocation. I think everyone in the industry recognizes that having developable capacity in those places is going to be very advantageous, because there is no organic option in the near future or practically no organic option in the near future.

So that means these kind of opportunities are highly sought after. And there are a few other players in China, mostly private companies, who have the capital and appetite to pursue them. So those are the -- usually the players that we find ourselves in competition with. As regards to the multiples, I want to take this opportunity to clarify what we mean when we talk about acquisition multiples, because most of the recent acquisitions have been of development projects at various stages or pre-operational. We evaluate them exactly the same way as we evaluate organic projects. But for the purpose of communicating with investors, we take the acquisition cost in terms of enterprise value plus the cost to complete and divide it by the estimated stabilized EBITDA. That's the basis when we talk about multiples. And I would say there's no discernible change in multiples as I defined it.

[Operator]

We have the next question. This is coming from the line of Colby Synesael from Cowen and Company.

[Michael Elias, analyst]

This is Michael on for Colby. Two questions, if I may. First, you noted a few times that it's getting more difficult to get power approvals in certain Tier 1 markets. Now if you could unpack what's driving this and, in turn, what that means for the balance of acquisitions versus organic CapEx in those markets moving forward? And then second, you recently announced that you're entering or you're doing more in Southeast Asia. Could you just give us some more color on what the next steps are as you look to expand further into the region?

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I think the [ execution strategy ] is definitely, we will obtain the carbon quota by ourselves. This is the main strategy. But in the same time, in the last couple of years, we also based on the market demand, short-term demand, we should -- we always effectively to acquire a lot of resource, because we want to catch up to our customers' demand. So this is -- we always use a different strategy to fulfill the market demand. But in general, we are -- we still -- we -- we're driven by our organic. But in the future, we also will maintain this strategy.

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes. Maybe I'll answer the second question about what are the steps that we're going through in terms of implementing our strategy in Southeast Asia. Our initial focus has been on the demand in and around Singapore. As you're aware, there's currently a moratorium on new data center project approvals in Singapore. And we found from our home market customers that they have very substantial appetite for increased data center capacity in Singapore, but which cannot currently be satisfied. Therefore, we are focused on coming up with a nearshore solution, which can address spillover demand from Singapore and act as a hub for serving the region.

Where we've got to so far is that we made an acquisition of land in a tech park in Johor, Malaysia which is just 7 kilometers from the Singapore border. And then yesterday, we announced that we're acquiring land on Batam Island on the other side of Singapore from Johor, which is 25 kilometers from Singapore. Both of those sites are sufficiently large in terms of what we've acquired and what we've got options over to do hyperscale developments, hyperscale on a scale which cannot considerably be done in Singapore, given the natural geographic constraints of Singapore.

But it's not only hyperscale. We are working to package these sites together with renewable power supply and multi-diverse network connectivity into Singapore and between the sites to create a very well interconnected hub. We think that the combination of hyperscale, renewable energy, multi-diverse network connectivity at a price point, which is substantially below the price point of the Singapore data center market will be very marketable.

Of course, as we're working on this, we're having back-to-back conversations all the time with our customers. William mentioned today that we have signed a strategic cooperation agreement with one of our largest Chinese customers, which gives us priority in working with them for international expansion. It's a replica of the way that we've been working with them in China for the last 5 or 6 years.

Where do we go next? We are looking for another site around Singapore. We do anticipate that there could be a relaxation of the moratorium in Singapore, although it may not be very large, I'm speculating, but it would be very strategic to be able to establish a presence in Singapore. And then beyond that, we would like to connect these sites into KL where our Chinese customers already have cloud availability zones and into Jakarta, where our customers also already have cloud availability zones.

So that would be the platform that we are aiming to get to as a kind of first base. And then, of course, that would be highly connected into Hong Kong and China. And that's as far as our vision extends for the time being. And we've made very rapid progress. And the -- every month, I would say, we get more excited about the scale of the opportunity that this represents. So in 3, 6, 9 months' time, I expect there will be plenty more significant developments to report.

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I would like to say it's a super exciting opportunity for us, because we push a lot of -- historically, we push a lot of the -- refer -- a lot of our installed base customer [ sources demand ] to our shareholder, which is STT. And in the last 5 years, we saw the opportunity step-by-step increase. And we saw -- what we saw is the potential deal is much bigger than before. So that's why we made the decision to jump into the market directly. It's the right timing, we think. It's like a sort of, let's say, 6 years or 7 years ago, what is happening in China. And the scale is much bigger than 6 years and 7 years ago.

So I think it's a huge opportunity for us, because we have the very, very huge -- very strong, let's say, advantage in this area because, number one, we bring all our installed base customers. Their demand in Southeast Asia in the next 3 years is very clear, very certain. This is number one. Number two, GDS build not just 1 project. We try to develop a platform to give -- to solve our [ customers' painful ] in this region, which makes a huge difference in the local player. In the meanwhile, we leverage our scale. We can build very low-cost data center in this region, which we believe this is a huge advantage because we have the scale, GDS has a scale advantage. So GDS definitely will super success in this region, which I believe in the next 3 or 5 years. This is a new incremental growth. This is not calculated in our previous business plan, 5-year business plan. It's an addition.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan from Raymond James.

[Frank Louthan, analyst]

Two quick questions. On the slower installations, any concerns there that you're losing any contracts or any competitors taking share? Is that any part of that? And then I want to go back to the renewal question and ask that sort of a different way. Looking at that 10% of renewals, is there any significant customer or industry concentration between now and year-end that could add to the risk of the rent roll-down that you might be facing?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Sorry, Frank. I'm in a different place from William. I will answer. I think just to keep it brief, I think the move-in, which we say is lower than what we originally expected, which means the view that we took nearly 12 months ago about what our customers would be doing in November 2021, it's a few thousand square meters below. We don't like to talk about individual customers, but I suspect that the reasons for it being slightly slower are different from customer to customer.

You mentioned competition, I'd actually say that it's actually maybe the opposite of what you were thinking, it's not a result of customers prioritizing moving in elsewhere. Generally, we are very fortunate and benefit from customers giving us a priority in terms of move-in. They may have several data centers with capacity available to them. But we -- because of our relationship often benefit from customers giving us the favor of moving in to our facility ahead of moving into another service provider's facility. Again, for renewals, we don't really mention the churn rate, because as I'd like to say, it's statistically insignificant.

But I think it was 0.2% last quarter. So I think that tells you that there's no movement in the customer base. The data centers which are coming up for renewal, I'd say a downtown. Downtown means that they were amongst the first 5, 6, 7 that we built in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, and the customers are holding on to that capacity. So it's purely and simply a matter of a price negotiation that William talked about, some of the factors that we take into account when we conduct that negotiation.

[Operator]

We have the next question from Edison Lee from Jefferies.

[Yu Lee, analyst]

I would just stick to one for the time being. I think on the B-O-T projects that you are doing with GIC, so the previous idea was to sell 90% stake to GIC and then you collect a management fee and keep 10%. And right now, you want to go up to 51%. So in terms of cash flow, does it mean that you are going to still collect money from GIC, but you will collect less because of the -- you are going to own a higher equity stake in these projects and how a change from 10% to 51% change your IRR prospect for these projects?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes. Edison, you're correct. We have not changed the economic arrangement. As a provider of management and operating services to these projects, GDS receives a fee, which is so happens it's structured as a revenue share. We take a certain percentage of the revenue and we cover our own costs. We incur operating costs directly and the revenue share that we take covers those costs and give us some margin. So we're charging the project companies the revenue share. Originally, we thought that we would be owning 10% of the project companies. Now we're owning 51%. So in that sense, yes, we're charging 51% of the management shifting charge to GDS and 49% to GIC.

Previously, the way we were looking at this is we were trying to maximize management fees and minimize the capital that we invested. We thought that we could do these projects just as a kind of capital-light approach. But then we look at the quantum of the management fees, and it's not insignificant, it's not enormous. And then we look at the opportunity to deploy capital, earn a return on that capital and enhance it with management fees. And we simply decided that it made more sense for us now and better, I think, for our shareholders for us to take the latter approach. It so happens that as we start to work for more different customers with these B-O-T structures, we did get asked by some customers to maintain a majority stake, although I think all the customers very much like the partnership approach and the involvement with GIC, but it did come up a few times. So that was another factor for doing it.

[Operator]

We have our next question coming from the line of Hongjie Li from CICC.

[Hongjie Li, analyst]

My question is regarding the initiatives on green energy, because you mentioned in the presentation that to do more direct investment in renewable energy like generation solar panels. So how should we outlook the incremental CapEx and impact on the margin?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes, we did mention that. I think that strategically, our top objective is to be able to invest in some renewable power generation on an integrated basis with data center development. It's -- that would be highly innovative in and around Tier 1 markets, and it takes time to put together projects like that and time to develop them. So that's an objective, which I think will take several years to make -- to realize it, to make it happen. In the meantime, it means that most of what we're doing in the area of renewable energy is OpEx.

If you look at the utility cost, typically in Tier 1 markets, it averages around CNY 0.65, CNY 0.65 per kilowatt hour for thermal power, and renewable energy certificates cost about CNY 0.01 to CNY 0.02, CNY 0.01 to CNY 0.02 on top of CNY 0.65. Direct purchase of renewable power, which can only really happen in places where we are able to take delivery of renewable power as an end user. As the renewable power, right now, I would say the premium is typically around CNY 0.05 and CNY 0.05 on top of CNY 0.65. So that gives you some idea of what the cost is in terms of OpEx. We haven't yet made any significant CapEx allocation to investment in renewable energy generation.

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I will add on some of that color on that. Because our customers all get the pressure from the green data center or carbon neutral, right? So they're facing a more strong pressure. So based on this, we already talked to our customers. We believe the cost we will transfer to our customers.

[Operator]

As there are no further questions at this moment, I'd like to turn the call back to the company for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

[Laura Chen, executive]

Thank you all once again for joining us today. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact GDS Investor Relations through the contact information on our website or the Piacente Group Investor Relations. Thank you all. Bye.

[Operator]

This concludes this conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.