GDS Holdings Ltd

HKEX:9698

Earnings Call Transcript 2018-Q4

[Operator]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the GDS Holdings Limited Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference call is being recorded. I'll 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, Kevin. Hello, everyone, welcome to the 4Q '18 and Full Year '18 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'll 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.

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 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 the call over to GDS founder, Chairman and CEO, William Huang. Please go ahead, William.

[William Huang, executive]

Thank you, Laura. Hello, everyone. This is William. Thank you for joining us on today's call.

2018 was an amazing year for GDS. We achieved outstanding results in terms of new business, resource development and financial performance. We see a sustained high level of demand for data center capacity in China, and we are clearly best positioned to capture this opportunity.

Let's start starting with our sales achievement. In 2018, we signed up customer for over 81,000 square meters of net additional area committed, or over 180 megawatts of IT power capacity, almost double what we did the year before. This may be the highest ever reported by a data center company. To support this level of sales, we scaled up our resource development, adding around 100,000 square meters of total capacity. We increased our data center count from 20 at the beginning to the year-end -- of the year to 35 at the year-end. We invested nearly CNY 700 million in CapEx compared with a CNY 300 million in 2017. The flow through to our financial results was impressive. Our growth accelerated, hitting over 70% for revenue and over 100% for adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. In the last quarter, our adjusted EBITDA margin hit 40%, almost 10 percent points higher than in 4Q '17.

Meanwhile, we maintained our disciplined approach to capital management with every project fully funded. Over the year, we secured over CNY 1 billion of funding raised. Today, I'm excited to announce that we have secured a CNY 150 million strategic investment from Ping An, which I will talk about later.

Turning to Slide 5. We ended 2018 with another quarter of strong sales growth. In fact, 4Q '18 was a record for us. 22,000 square meters of net add, all organic, all in Tier 1 markets. How did we achieve this staggering sales performance? The growth of our business is highly geared to key verticals such as cloud, AI and the FinTech. These verticals have been growing at high rates and will continue to do so.

During the first wave of growth, we succeeded in establishing very strategic relationships with the top tier of cloud and Internet customers in China. Cloud went from 0 to 70% of our area committed in 3 years. We continued to deepen these customer relationships, and they continued to generate significant new business.

In 2017, our top 3 customers contributed 35,000 square meters to our new bookings. In 2018, the same 3 contributed 47,000 square meters. Building on this space, we targeted new strategic customers, companies which are reaching an inflection point in their business. This yielded results faster than what we -- than we expect. New strategic customers, such as JD, Kingsoft, NetEase and Ping An Technology contributed 28,000 square meters or 35% to our new bookings in 2018.

Looking forward, I feel confident that we will be able to sustain our current sales momentum. Our strategic customer relationships give us bottom-up visibility into new demand. We are now tapping into a large and a more diversified group of hyperscale customers, which includes every significant domestic and global cloud service provider in China. The digital economy is not slowing. Chinese government policies are promoting growth. New technologies are coming which can be demand multiplier.

China is focused to spend around CNY 200 billion on 5G CapEx up to 2025. This can enable a new wave of ultralow latency status, which makes our data centers even more in demand.

Let's turn to Slide 7, Resource Progress. Turning to resource on Slide 7. We focus on Tier 1 markets where demand is concentrated and align our resource development around the growth plans of our customers. This enables us to maintain exceptionally high commitment rate. In 2018, we started a 5 -- 15 new data centers with a total capacity of 100,000 square meters and brought 10 new data centers into service, adding 59,000 square meters. We probably have one of the largest construction program in the world. We ended the year with a 48% precommitted -- precommitment rate for area under construction and a 95% for area in service.

In 4Q '18 alone, we started 5 new data centers. I would like to highlight the 2 in Kunshan. This is a site 45 kilometers from the center of Shanghai, where we own the land. The project is our largest to date greenfield project and 100% precommitment -- precommitted.

Securing real estate and power capacity in Tier 1 market is very challenging; as the scale increase, so does the challenge. At the end of last year, we had 79,000 square meters held for future development in Tier 1 markets. This is enough for about 1 year new business at current run rate. Despite the challenges, we have successfully added new capacity in downtown area. For example, during 2018, we were able to increase our capacity in Beijing by over 3x. In order to strengthen our development pipeline and maintain our resource advantage, we have started to acquire land in strategic locations on the edge of the big cities. This is a long and a complicated progress -- process as it involves identifying sites which work for our customers, have the right telecom network connectivities, sufficient developable area and power capacity and where the local government is supportive. Availability of land and power is still a major barrier.

In January 2019, we completed acquisition of a strategic site in Guangzhou which can support 34,000 square meters of data center capacity. We are also at an advanced stage with strategic sites in Changshou near Shanghai, Langfang near Beijing, Chengdu and Chongqing, which will be a new Tier 1 market for us. Within the next few quarters, we expect to have locked up at least 3-year supply and further strengthened our resource advantage.

Finally, we are seeing quite a few attractive M&A opportunities. These are asset deals which could add capacity in key locations and shorten our time to market. We are currently evaluating several targets. We are highly selective and will only move forward if the deals are strategic and value accretive.

Turning to Slide 11. GDS today is in the strongest position ever. We have the largest market share in the fastest growing market in the world, fantastic customer relationships and the proven ability to execute in a superior way. Our team has demonstrated for many years that it can be -- can set big goals and exceed them. Our growth has accelerated, underpinned by strong secular trends. With that as a strategic backdrop, we will continue to build on our competitive advantages and further increase gap between our sales and other players.

My priorities for 2019 are clear: enhance resource supply in Tier 1 markets both organically and by acquisitions, build on our strategic customer relationships and reduce our unit development cost and maintain investment returns.

Let's move Slide 12. Before I hand over to Dan, I'd like to say a few words about Ping An strategic investment, which we have just announced. Ping An has been an investor in GDS for the past 6 years, and we are honored to count them as one of our top customers. Ping An is the third largest known SOE company in China by market cap and finance and a technology powerhouse. Ping An is the market leader in key digital verticals, such as FinTech, health care, auto services, real asset and smart cities. Their platforms include the largest online finance market place, insurance provider and health care ecosystem. GDS and Ping An are committed to working together to realize synergies in technology, real estate and financing. We are proud of the trusted relationship we have built with Ping An and are excited to work more closely together in future.

With that, I will hand over to Dan for the financial and operating review.

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Thank you, William.

Starting on Slide 16, where we strip out the contribution from equipment sales and the effect of FX changes. 2018 finished strongly, and I'm pleased to say that we beat our revised guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA. For 4Q '18, our service revenue grew by 10.2%. Underlying adjusted NOI grew by 13%, and underlying adjusted EBITDA grew by 15.9% in consecutive quarters. Our underlying adjusted EBITDA margin hit 40% in the last quarter. For the whole year, our reported adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 37.5% compared to 31.7% in FY '17.

Turning to Slide 17. The main driver of revenue growth was the increase in area utilized, with over 7,600 square meters added in the fourth quarter and nearly 47,000 square meters added over the whole year. Monthly service revenue, or MSR per square, meter declined slightly in 4Q '18, and we expect that it will continue to decline by around 5% over the course of FY '19. The MSR trend is tracking the reduction in our unit CapEx cost, and it is our strategy to share this benefit with our customers, while maintaining our return.

As shown on Slide 18, our profit margins are on an upward trend. At the data center level, our adjusted NOI margin was nearly 50% in 4Q '18. As illustrated on Slide 19, 58% of our portfolio is now stabilized, up from 45% this time last year. This shift has been a major contributor to the NOI margin increase.

As shown on Slide 20, our SG&A was just over 10% of service revenue of 4Q '18. We expanded our headcount by 20% last year to gear up for our accelerated growth. We expect to realize significant further operating leverage over our central costs and target SG&A to be around 8% by the end of FY '19.

Turning to our CapEx on Slide 21. 4Q CapEx increased to RMB 1.7 billion, including nearly CNY 700 million related to the Hong Kong land acquisition.

For the full year, our CapEx totaled around CNY 4.7 billion or USD 690 million, which was higher than we guided due to the accelerated delivery of a project in Beijing and the initiation of 5 new projects in the last quarter.

For the data centers currently under construction, the unit CapEx is RMB 59,000 per square meter, excluding the real estate portion. For comparison, the unit CapEx for everything we have completed so far is RMB 68,000 per square meter.

With regard to financing on Slide 22, during FY '18, we obtained RMB 3.8 billion, or USD 550 million, of debt facilities, including refinancing. We've established an excellent track record for project financing and in current conditions are getting the best terms ever. On the equity side, we just announced the convertible preferred shares issue to Ping An, the key terms of which are summarized on Slide 23. It's a $150 million investment with 5% annual dividend payable in cash or kind at our option and a conversion price of $35.60. We can force conversion after year 3 if our share price goes up above 150% of the conversion price, i.e., $53.40. The instrument is treated as equity for accounting purposes. On completion, it will take our pro forma year-end '18 net debt to last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA multiple down from 8 to 7.2x. As William mentioned, we feel really good about our market position, customer franchise, resource pipeline and opportunities in front of us. Financing is the final ingredient. You may have seen our announcement regarding the launch of an ADR offering. Since we are in process, I cannot comment on the offering on this call. However, I hope you can see that today we are putting in place the capital we need to position GDS strongly for the next phase of growth.

Turning to Slide 24. At the end of 4Q '18, our backlog had increased again to over 75,000 square meters. We currently have around 108,000 square meters which is revenue generating. The backlog, therefore, implies that we can grow our revenue-generating space by 70% without signing any new customer contracts.

Finally, on page 25. We base our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance on the installed base, the project delivery schedule and the expected customer move-in rate. We start from a solid base as quarterly churn was only 0.9% last year, and less than 7% of our total area committed is due for renewal this year. We also have a high degree of visibility from our substantial backlog. With that said, we expect full year 2019 total revenue to be in the range of RMB 3.9 billion to RMB 4.1 billion, implying a growth rate for total revenue of over 43%, at the midpoint of the range. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of RMB 1.64 billion to RMB 1.7 billion, implying year-on-year growth of close to 60%, at the midpoint of the range. Our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance implies an adjusted EBITDA margin of 41.7% for FY '19, which would be 4 percentage points higher than FY '18, using the midpoint guidance numbers. We also expect CapEx of RMB 4.5 billion to RMB 5 billion. Included in this guidance is a budget of around RMB 500 million for land acquisitions.

With that, I'll end the formal part of our presentation, and we'd now like to open the call to questions. Kevin?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from Jon Atkin from RBC.

[Jonathan Atkin, analyst]

Yes. I had a question about build cost. And you talked about kind of the reduction in the cost per square meter. And if you would have normalized that for power -- and just think about some of the design parameters around your data centers and resiliency levels and so forth, is there further improvement that you think you can make in CapEx spent per unit of capacity? And then, my second question is just in terms of the scale of the business. And as you go to more square meters sold and commissions over the next year, are you able to accommodate numbers significantly greater than 80,000 in terms of your ability to construct quickly and accommodate demand if it were to further increase?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Jon, I'll start by answering on build costs. Sorry? Jon, I'll start by answering on build costs and then let William address how we are reducing it. But just in terms of numbers, I mentioned that what we have under construction right now has an average unit cost of RMB 59,000 per square meter, excluding a couple of thousand RMB because certain of the projects have some real estate portion. So we normalized for that is RMB 59,000 per square meter. So we're building, let's say, on average around 2 kilowatts per square meter or slightly higher. So you can see on a per kilowatt basis that would imply around RMB 29,000 or RMB 30,000 per kilowatt. But to give you an idea where it can go, we have done projects where the build cost has been RMB 25,000 or RMB 26,000 per square meter, and those are projects in Tier 1 markets. The projects we did in remote locations were another quantum below that level, or in that case, what we're really looking at is a different kind of product with a different design with lower redundancy. I think all this gives you an idea of what can be achieved over time. William, do you want to add to that?

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I think the product is now very diversified and based on the current fast-move market. So we will be able to design a different architecture to our different customer. So for the multitenant product, it's almost standardized. We finalized the standardization. For the build-to-suit product, we try to introduce -- to lead our customer -- accept suitable architecture for them. This is number one. So reduce the cost is -- we have various ways to reduce the cost. And we also share some cost savings for our customers. On the other hand, we are pretty -- like to leverage our kind of scale. As I mentioned, we are the most -- maybe most largest data center developer in the world. So we are -- we do have the ability to well manage our supply chain. And this will let us have the huge space to improve the cost.

[Daniel Newman, executive]

On the final part of your question, whether we have the capacity to exceed 80,000 square meters, of course, assuming the demand is there and that we can capture the orders. Jon, that's certainly our objective. On the resource side, we talked about significantly increasing the amount of resource that we had secured up to 3 years supply in each Tier 1 market. And within a few quarters, we aim to be there. The holding cost of that resource is very low, it's insignificant. But what it does do is give us the ability to respond to whatever level of demand there is. If it's higher, we can accelerate. The other element of it, of course, is whether we have the financial capacity. That's what we're trying to put in place today, the ability to have a fully funded 2-year business plan and the flexibility to do more if the opportunity is there.

[William Huang, executive]

Jon, I would like to say based on our current resource plan and our funding plan you will see we have the ambition to do more, right? But every time we try to manage the expectation properly.

[Jonathan Atkin, analyst]

And then in addition, as you think about where you want to add new capacity, I'm interested in your views on kind of satellite markets, and Kunshan is an interesting example because that's showing signs of life recently from both you and I think maybe even some others, and that's been facilitated by improved fiber connectivity across provinces. And so are there analogous examples that you see in other parts of China that might lead to development opportunities in some new markets?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Jon, firstly, just from a definition point of view because I -- there can be a lot of confusion about this. Satellite markets are just part of the Tier 1 markets, maybe the periphery of the Tier 1 markets. But we don't that anyone think we're talking about something else, Tier 2 market or something. We're just talking about sites which are on the periphery of Tier 1 markets such as Kunshan and such as the other sites which we are working on in terms of land acquisitions. Now there are only very few locations around the edge of Tier 1 markets that work. And William, do you want to address that?

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I think the -- in terms of the -- we treat the edge surrounded Tier 1 market is Tier 1 market. So it should fulfill the local infrastructure is very, very good. And the second, network connectivity is works. The third is local government support. The fourth is, the power -- existing power or potential power capacity can fulfill our business plan in next 3 or 5 years. This is our criteria. But it's -- that means there's a lot -- looks like a lot of the location you can select, but actually not. Just a very few locations suitable for you -- for us meet our criteria. So we are -- we try to be a first mover in this land acquisition to build our next wave resource advantage. And we start working within that almost 1.5 years.

[Operator]

And the next telephone question is from Frank Louthan from Raymond James.

[Frank Louthan, analyst]

Can you walk us through a little more color on what exactly the JV is going to do for you and the assets being put in there? And then can you talk to us about any -- as far as your demand goes, as you talking about going forward, any need to expand outside of China? Are you still pretty much looking all domestically?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Frank, I don't know if we confused you. We haven't established a JV. If you were referring to the Ping An investment, they are investing in our equity. In fact, they will take their ownership level up to nearly 10%. But at the same time, we are increasing our strategic cooperation in various areas. William, would you like to comment on some of the potential areas of cooperation?

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. So Ping An group is a big group. They have the financial service, and they also have Ping An Technology. So from the GDS side, we treat them like -- we can have a more deepened relation -- cooperation with them in several areas. One is, Ping An -- last year, Ping An already be our -- have been our top customer. This is new. And we believe we will do more deals in this year and the next few years. So they are our strategic customer right now. The second of all, Ping An also own a lot of property in China. This let us have more flexibility to develop our resource plan. So we are working on some projects right now with them. The third one, Ping An is a -- in China, they have the insurance, bank and other financial institutions in China, security. So we are -- we also potentially maybe can work with them in the project level in order to get more lower interest rate and get more strong support in our project.

[Daniel Newman, executive]

So Frank also asked about -- talks about expanding outside of China.

[William Huang, executive]

I can -- currently, our target is still in China. That's our main focus. It doesn't change. And outside China, we are more expect to have some more project in Hong Kong. So everybody know last year we acquired a piece of land in Hong Kong. We already start to -- in that process to design and try to build as soon as possible because we got a lot of their -- our -- Mainland China-based customers demand already. So we tried to secure more projects in Hong Kong. That's our current plan.

[Frank Louthan, analyst]

Got it. Okay. And then what's the outlook for adding new logos over the next 12 months? How's the sales force focused and compensated on that? What it looks like for new logo growth?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes, Frank's asked -- I think you take it in 2 parts, William. First of all, in terms of strategic customers, more targets in that category. And then second part, the growth of our enterprise customer base.

[William Huang, executive]

Enterprise?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes.

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I think we have the -- our sales strategy is very simple. I think number one, current priorities still follow up the cloud because cloud still in the very early stage in China. The good thing is GDS is already ready for ride on their growth because we have all the major cloud player customers in China. And they are -- they deploy their computing and cloud parts in a significant way in GDS that's very unique. And we are -- that's where we have confidence to -- we are confident to ride on this trend. Second of all, I think the -- we -- there's a lot of new Internet in China still going very fast. Everybody know, last year, we acquired a lot of the new Internet vertical giants like Ctrip, like DiDi, like NetEase. They're all largest -- they're biggest player in each vertical. So we believe this new logo will let us have another key driver to drive the demand for us. On the other hand, for the retail side, we keep -- develop some well-known name -- customer, especially in financial service. Last year, we got 2 significant new customers, one is China UnionPay, one is JPMorgan. So I think this way we'll still keep this development in the 3 major verticals.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Gokul from JPMorgan.

[Gokul Hariharan, analyst]

Just first question I had, could you talk a little bit about the details of what you talked about pricing potentially going down 5% in 2019? Are these primarily for the newer contracts you're signing? Is it because of the expansion to more satellite locations? And the 5% down, is it excluding the impact of Hebei?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes. Gokul, the multiservice revenue per square meter in 2019 will largely

[Audio Gap]

Price that's in the contracts, which were already in the backlog. So as those contracts are delivered, that's what will result in a change in the MSR. That trend has been there for at least 3 years. In fact, our MSR went up and down, but it's actually overall has trended down. What I try to point out, which I think I actually try to point out on every earnings call, is our unit CapEx is also trending down. And our target is to maintain our returns, which we have done so very consistently in the 13% to 15% IRR range over multiple years. And with certain customers, that's very transparent. What I think is the positive in this is that because we're able to reduce our unit CapEx cost we can create a value for our customers. We can create a cost benefit to them. And that is something which is very positive to them. And if we can do that whilst maintaining our returns is absolutely win-win.

[Operator]

Our next telephone question is from Colby from Cowen and Company.

[Colby Synesael, analyst]

Two questions, if I may. I think your book-to-bill is something just over 1 year long. And at this point, I think you said you have somewhere around 79,000 square meters in your backlog. Taking those things into consideration, what are some of the bigger dynamics that we should be paying attention to that could swing you either below or potentially above the guidance that you put out there for 2019? And part of what's behind that question is that in 2018 despite those -- that structure being the same, you were able to raise your guidance a few times through the course of the year. And then secondly, you seem like you're going to be doing a lot more M&A of asset -- data center assets in 2019. Would that be in lieu of CapEx? Or would this be in addition? And I guess to the extent that you're successful with those, could that potentially be a source of revenue growth acceleration? Or at least how should we think about that in terms of revenue impact? And also, I guess, how one would fund that?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Colby, good questions. So for -- last year, you're right. We experienced a shorter book-to-bill time lag than we had done historically. This year, for the purpose of guidance, we kept the assumption that we've had from past years, which is more like 15 months or 5 quarters. And when we look at it bottom up, we look at what data centers are coming into service in which quarter, what we know about our customers move-in intentions, what's the delivery schedule in the contracts. So I think our approach is conservative but leave some scope for upside. But it can't be very much deviation if we're talking about 1 year forward. On the second question, M&A can be a substitute for organic. If we acquire capacity in a particular location, it may shorten our time-to-market and then we readjust our organic development program in that market maybe to hold back or slow down organic projects. If that's the case, it doesn't add to our CapEx in terms of the guidance for this year. But if the acquisition is in addition to, meaning that we carry on with our organic program as originally intended and this is a supplement to that, then it is on top of what the guidance that we've given. Hard to say at this stage. We do have several targets which we are quite far along in terms of our evaluation. And frankly, they could fall into both categories. They could be targets which shorten our time to market, and, therefore, we prioritize them over organic, or they could be targets that add to the extent of our development activities. If they shorten our time to market, it can have positive revenue and EBITDA impact this year, maybe not very material, first of all, because we're already in March, and there's only so much time left in the year. And new data centers coming into service, they may actually have negative EBITDA initially at the project level. But I think in terms of forecast for 2020, yes, they could -- it could add quite significantly depending on how many projects we do. Does that answer your question?

[Colby Synesael, analyst]

No -- it does. And just 1 quick follow-up. You mentioned guidance is assuming 15-month book-to-bill, which is longer than 2018 but in line with historical. Are you actually expecting the book-to-bill to go back to those longer -- that longer term? Or is that just you trying to be prudent in your guidance?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Both, actually, Colby. There's nothing fundamental has changed to make customers shorten that time period. In fact, we're probably getting precommitments earlier in the life cycle of projects. Invariably now, we have a precommitment on day 1 of a project. Sometimes we can't announce it because it's a precommitment in the eyes of our customer and in our eyes, but it may not be a contract. But with precommitment being made earlier, then it actually extends that book-to-bill time period. So we stick around 15 months. I think that's a pretty reasonable assumption. I'm not being overly conservative with that. I think it's the appropriate assumption.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Yang Liu from Morgan Stanley.

[Yang Liu, analyst]

I have 2 questions. The first one in terms of the new Tier 1 market you plan to enter this year, how's the demand and the return profile there and also the -- expecting the customer move-in pace this current -- new Tier 1 markets? And the second question is there any early sign of the other Tier 1 cities in addition to Shanghai the local government will adopt a electricity or power quota in terms of giving approval to new data centers?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

Yes. First question is which new Tier 1 markets are we looking at? And what's is the conditions there? Second question is, yes, are there any cities where the government is very supportive?

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. I think the -- we are still -- the Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou still the Tier 1 market including Chengdu. I mean, historically, it's the IT center. So we are -- last quarter, we said we will -- we have -- we do -- we are quite active in the Chongqing market right now. So we keep -- we think Chongqing given time they will be -- become another Tier 1 market in our view. And Hong Kong is our another new target. I think we are -- since GDS had been in Hong Kong almost 6 years. And last year, we think it's -- the opportunity is mature right now. So last year, we made our decision to acquire 1 piece of land, and we're seeking furthermore development in Hong Kong. So this is -- Chongqing and Hong Kong is the new 2 market what we are pay attention on. So this...

[Yang Liu, analyst]

How's the return profile in these 2 new markets?

[Daniel Newman, executive]

The return profile.

[William Huang, executive]

I think it will be similar like what we targeted. We are -- we probably -- we commit -- all the return profile will be in a 13% to 15% IRR.

[Yang Liu, analyst]

My second question is, is there any early signs of other Tier 1 cities beside Shanghai that the local government will adopt power quota when giving the approval to build data centers?

[William Huang, executive]

Yes. We have quite -- we are very familiar with this. And because we are one of the data center player to support a local government to build up their criteria. So definitely, we will be one of the benefit -- the beneficiary. I think the process is still not -- still in the process. We are keep -- talk to the government, and I think this will let us have another opportunity to build data center in urban towns. So that's the current [ approach ].

[Yang Liu, analyst]

Did you only mean that -- whether other cities would adopt the same quota approach of Shanghai?

[William Huang, executive]

Currently, it's only Shanghai. But what we see is -- Beijing government just last week asked us -- they try to understand what Shanghai government are doing right now. We help them to understand the new criteria, why -- what's the logic or rationale we -- would we have to the government setup.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] As there is no further questions, I like now to turn the call back to the company for any closing remarks.

[Laura Chen, executive]

Thank you 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.

[Operator]

This concludes the conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you very much.