GDS - Q4 2025
March 17, 2026
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for GDS Holdings Limited Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. 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 (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 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 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 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 its 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'll now turn the call over to GDS Founder, Chairman, and CEO, William Huang. Please go ahead, William.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Thank you. Hello, everyone. This is William. Thank you for joining us on today's call. 2025 was a great year for GDS in terms of performance. We recorded 11% growth in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We beat the top end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance, and with the contribution from asset monetization, we were free cash flow positive. AI in China has really taken off. Increasing availability of domestic high-performance chips is a key enabler. All our major customers are investing in hyperscale computing infrastructure to support AI adoption. As a result, we are seeing robust recovery in data center demand across both new markets and established markets. It is exciting times to be a data center company again. To address this opportunity, we are building up our resources and the funding.
On the resource side, we are working on a 3 GW pipeline comprising big clusters in new growth markets. This will complement the 700 MWs of powered land, which we are holding for future development in low latency established market. On the funding side, we have increased our cash reserves to over $2.8 billion, including proceeds from the recent sell down of our stake in DayOne and the CPS new issue. Furthermore, our success last year in opening up channels for asset monetization gives us a competitive advantage in accessing equity onshore. During 4Q 2025, our gross additional area utilization was around 23,000 square meters. For the full year, gross move-in was over 86,000 square meters, our highest ever level. Our move-in target for 2026 is similar to last year.
However, as our bookings step up over the current year, it will lead to higher move-in one year forward. During 4Q25, our gross additional area committed was over 21,000 square meters. For the full year, our new bookings was over 96,000 square meters or over 300 MW, 3 times the level of the past three years. In 2026, we are aiming over 500 MW of gross new bookings. Another big step up from the last year. We expect 60%-70% of the new business to come from AI. So far this year, we have already secured 200 MW of new orders plus over 500 MW of MOUs, which are a strong indicator of future commitment. This 700 MW of total demand comes mainly from the three of our largest customers.
It's a great start towards our full year sales target. Now the domestic chip supply is more certain. We are moving faster to secure multi-gigawatts of additional power to land in new markets, which can support big data deployments. We're focusing on the three locations, Horinger in Inner Mongolia, Zhongwei in Ningxia Province, and Shaoguan in Guangdong Province. We have already won over 400 MWs of new orders and MOUs for these locations. These new growth markets, all of which are official national hubs, integrates well with our existing platform, enabling us to serve the different needs of our diversified customer base. We are very excited about the opportunities in front of us and look forward to growth in sync with China's AI development. I will now pass on to Dan for the financial and operating review.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Thank you, William. Starting on slide 17. In FY 2025, revenue and Adjusted EBITDA increased by 10.8% year-on-year. During the year, we completed two asset monetization transactions, an ABS in 1Q 2025 and a C-REIT IPO in 3Q 2025. Following which we deconsolidated the underlying data center project companies. If we add back the deconsolidated revenue and EBITDA, the pro forma growth rates were 13.2% for revenue and 14.2% for Adjusted EBITDA. Turning to slide 20. Now MSR per square meter has been declining due to a combination of lower market selling price and change in location mix to include more edge of town sites and going forward, new growth markets. Comparing 4Q 2025 with 4Q 2024, the decrease was 2.4%.
At the same time, we have also seen a comparable decrease in unit development costs. As a result, the overall yield on our portfolio as measured by adjusted gross profit divided by gross PP&E, excluding construction in progress, has remained steady at around 11%. Looking forward, we expect further MSR reduction of 3%-4% by the end of 2026 due to the same combination of factors. However, the yield on our new investments in both established and new markets continues to be in the 10%-11% range. Turning to slide 23. In 2025, our organic CapEx was RMB 4.7 billion, in line with our guidance. Net of the cash proceeds from asset monetization of RMB 2.3 billion, our CapEx was around RMB 2.4 billion.
As shown on slide 24, our operating cash flow for the full year was around RMB 3.4 billion. The significant improvement year-on-year was helped by a reduction in AR days from 109 in 4Q 2024 to 82 days in 4Q 2025 as a result of our tight control of collections. After taking into account asset monetization proceeds, we achieved positive cash flow pre-financing of RMB 1 billion. In 2026, we are guiding for organic CapEx of around RMB 9 billion, which corresponds with our 500 MW+ sales target. This year's CapEx will contribute to next year's growth. We have started work on a follow-on asset injection into our C-REIT. We have selected an asset which is larger than the seed asset for the IPO.
We aim to complete the assets injection in the second half of 2026 if possible. However, we have not included any assumed proceeds in our CapEx guidance. Turning to slide 25. During the first quarter of 2026, we raised $385 million through the partial sell down of our stake in DayOne. After the sell down, our remaining stake is worth $2.2 billion or $11 per GDS ADS benchmarked to DayOne's Series C and USD price. We also issued $300 million of convertible preferred shares to Huatai Capital Investment. As a result, we are now sitting on nearly RMB 20 billion or $2.8 billion of cash. This is an ideal situation to be in as we prepare for a new growth phase.
Turning to slide 26 and 27, our net debt to last quarter annualized Adjusted EBITDA decreased from 6.8x at the end of 2024 to 5.8x at the end of 2025. The decrease is mainly due to a combination of positive cash flow pre-financing, the deconsolidation of debt of the project companies sold to the ABS and C-REIT, and the proceeds of the equity capital raise, which we did in 2Q 2025. If we add back the purchase of time deposits, which is included in our reported investing cash flow and the proceeds of the capital recycling, a new issue in 1Q 2026, our net debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio decreases to 4.8x.
At the beginning of 2023, we set a target of achieving positive cash flow pre-financing and net debt to EBITDA of below 5x within three years. Looking back, it was an aggressive target, but I'm pleased to say that we made it. Turning to slide 29, for FY 2025, we achieved the midpoint of our revenue guidance and beat the top end of our Adjusted EBITDA guidance. For 2026, we expect total revenues to be between RMB 12.4 billion-RMB 12.9 billion, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 8.5%-12.8%. For Adjusted EBITDA, we expect between RMB 5.75 billion-RMB 6 billion, implying a year-on-year increase of between approximately 6.4%-11%. As a result of the asset monetizations during 2025, the year-on-year growth rates are not directly comparable.
If we add back the forecast revenue and Adjusted EBITDA for the data center project companies sold to the ABS and C-REIT, the implied growth rate of our pro forma revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance is approximately 1.6 percentage points higher. This is shown on slide 30. We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator, please.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We'll now go to our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Yang Liu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yang Liu (Executive Director)
Thanks for the opportunity to ask a question. First, congratulations on the very strong booking year today. I have two questions. The first is about the conversion from MOU to contract. What is the timetable behind this kind of conversion? What is the potential risk for this kind of conversion? Or what do we need to do? Or what do our customer need to do behind this kind of conversion? That's my first question. The second question is about the competition in the new key focus area, like Inner Mongolia, Zhongwei, and Shaoguan. We know that GDS has been far leading in tier one market, but how about in those new focus areas?
Are we seeing more competition or less competition in those places? What is the GDS advantage there? Thank you.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Okay. The first question is, I think this is a high certainty to convert to our order. This is number one. In terms of the timing, I think it's within two quarter. I think it's a high chance we can convert to the real contract. We are very confident on that. This is number one. Number two, I think in terms of the new market, right? New market. I think the current market before we step in, I think there's some data center operator already there. But it's never too late because now the government has set up a very high barrier right now. Number one, they will measure.
I mean, they will measure the criteria for choosing the partner to be able to acquire the land. They have a couple of criteria. Number one, they will seriously look at the company's track record. Second, they will make sure you have the customer commitment behind you.
Number third, they also will look at your financial capability as well. If this is the current government, how they look at a partner, a potential partner. I think if that's the case, which it is, it's already set up at a high barrier, and we think we are be able to still sit on the leading position.
Yang Liu (Executive Director)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Atkin from RBCCM. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Jonathan Atkin (Managing Director)
Thanks. So you referenced a lot of your orders and current interests being AI oriented. Can you talk about a little bit about the non-AI kind of traditional cloud, even enterprise types of workloads and the demand trends that you're seeing there? Any further color around the types of AI workloads, and would you associate it primarily with large foundation models or inference or what? Thank you.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I think the majority, I mean, the demands are driven by a very clear driven by the AI, right? GPU type data center demand. Of course, I think the traditional cloud still grows and they're more associated with the AI demand. I think that's the kind of profile. It's not like before, 100% driven by the traditional cloud. Now, the cloud still grows, but more associated with the AI. That's a slight change in the driver, right? What's the second question?
Laura Chen (Head of Investor Relations)
Type of AI application.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Inference or machine learning, the workload.
Laura Chen (Head of Investor Relations)
The workload of AI.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I think of course the training still continue, that's for sure. Because China is still behind the U.S., right? For a couple of years, and now it's catching up. Looks like the training is still a key driver to drive the data center demand. In the meanwhile, I think the large language model owner they start to I mean a lot of demand is also driven by the inferencing right now. That's why our tier one, let's say, traditional market still getting growth in the last year. We also estimate this year still have a very strong demand from both AI type and inference type and the cloud.
Jonathan Atkin (Managing Director)
I wonder if you could maybe just touch on the competitive environment, and it probably varies a little bit by region and market and so forth. In terms of other projects that your peers are pursuing, how would you characterize competition that is meeting the demand? Is that at all different from the last time you gave us an update? Thank you.
Laura Chen (Head of Investor Relations)
General-
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Competitive environment in new markets, I mean.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, I think if you are aware, if GDS seriously step in a new market, we definitely will dominate the market. That's how we look. That's our behavior, right? Otherwise, we would not step in, right? We definitely get ready to step in and give. Over time, I think we'll take the absolutely leadership in this region. I think the competition in AI in China, data center competition in China just a start for AI. I think it is good timing to step in because especially if you have enough financial capability, that's more easy to win the battle, right?
Jonathan Atkin (Managing Director)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Sara Wang from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Xinyi Wang (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you for the opportunity to ask question. Congratulations again on the really solid new bookings. I have two questions. The first one is on supply. I still remember that earlier last year management took a very rational and cautious stance on taking new orders because back then there was some uncertainties around chip supply. However, given the strong order and MOU momentum year to date, should we interpret that as a sign that chip supply has improved meaningfully? Or in other words, from a supply side perspective, are there any factors constraining project delivery? That's my first question. My second question is that I noticed that GDS power plant reservation has increased from 900 MWs last quarter to 3.7 GWs this quarter.
May I ask, where are the main locations of the new resources, and how does the project returns in this new area differ from our existing projects? Thank you.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. I think we have a different view, right? We always look more deeply into the industry. That's why we are also. That means that we are very disciplined in CapEx investment. Last year, we are slightly conservative because of the chip supply still was not that certain. This year the certainty is more improved, right? I think in terms of the U.S. export policy changes and the domestic chips also catching up. If you recall a couple of quarters ago when we talk about this, we stayed very. We would always say wait and see, right? That's the right strategy to be more disciplined in making the CapEx investment.
Now we are much more comfortable because the whole environment change adapted to a more positive, more certainty. We think it's the right timing to step in in a big way, right? Land bank. I think in terms of land bank, I just mentioned that, yeah, well, in my script, right? I think there's a Horinger in Inner Mongolia and Zhongwei in Ningxia province and Shaoguan, it is in the Guangdong province. I think that's all the national hub data center hub, right? I think the location will be great for future and well recognized by all our existing customers.
Xinyi Wang (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you. How shall we think about the project return? Thank you.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Project return.
Laura Chen (Head of Investor Relations)
Project return.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Sara, as I said during the script, we're still able to generate a simple cash-on-cash yield of 10%-11%, whether we're taking on new business in established markets or new markets. With our business model of developing, ramping up and holding for the qualification period and then monetizing, that yield is sufficient for us to realize a return on equity above 20%.
Xinyi Wang (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Very clear. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Gokul Hariharan from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Gokul Hariharan (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. My first question is on the 200 MW order that you've already secured. Could we talk a little bit about the nature of the urgency of this project? Obviously, given AI demand seems to be accelerating, when do you expect to deliver this to customers? Is it also more like an accelerated schedule like we saw with the 150 MW order that we saw last year? That's my first question. Secondly, just trying to understand a little bit on the realized MSR trends. Previously, we were expecting MSR to start to flatten out a little bit in 2027. Now obviously our location mix is probably changing a little bit in response to some of the new demand trends.
Dan, maybe could you help us understand, how MSR is likely to shape up, let's say, one or two years out from now, the realized MSR based on the contracts that you're signing right now?
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Sure, Gokul. The 200 MW new orders, you can assume for forecasting that it will take us four quarters on average to deliver, and then it will be a four-quarter ramp up. This is faster than historically when we were doing the more traditional cloud business, and it's consistent with our parameters in terms of selecting new business. The MSR decrease, it will continue beyond next year. I think in 2028 is probably 3%-4% again. The offset in terms of higher volume growth is going to lift our overall growth rate. In 2026, I think William said that we're expecting our move-in to be similar to last year, which is in a sort of 80-90,000 square meter range.
if all goes to plan in terms of meeting our sales target this year, you know, we'll be looking at a move-in which could be like double that next year. The combination of those two factors is gonna drive our growth higher.
Gokul Hariharan (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Understood. Just one follow-up on the locations, as we're adding some of these newer locations, which are a little bit more remote sites, but obviously the new data center centers for the country. Is the customer concentration high in some of these new locations? Like previously when we went to build the site, I think it became very much like customer specific. How do we think about the customer concentration in some of these new locations like Shaoguan or Inner Mongolia, etc.?
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah, I think everywhere, every data center company now is getting more concentrated in terms of customer.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Mm-hmm.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yes. I think that maybe in China, maybe top three. That's a trend, right? In the global point of view, I think it's four or five companies, right? Everybody is at the trend. If you position your hyperscale data center operator, a dev ops center operator, right? It's not a traditional colo. If you look at the colo business, this looks like more diversified, right? This is the reality. Yeah.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
I'd just add that, the contract length for this kind of business is certainly at the long end or longer than what we typically have been planning before. We quite often find 10-year contracts, which I think, you know, de-risks the investment in these projects.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. I think in terms of customer number, GDS already has 1,000 customer, right? Of course, the new demands are mainly driven by the top three AI player in China, right?
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Understood. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Louthan from Raymond James & Associates. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Speaker 11
Hey, guys, this is Rob on for Frank. Thank you for taking my question. Just looking at the demand and the bookings, what's the growth in demand that you're seeing from your non-domestic Chinese customers year over year? And what would you say is the outlook for that going forward?
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Rob, the demand is from Chinese customers, almost entirely. I think the market opportunity is around 3 GW per annum, concentrated, as William said, in the very largest customers. You know, we talk about 500 MW sales target to put it into the context of that kind of scale of addressable market.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Timothy Zhao from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Timothy Zhao (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you, management, for taking my question. Two questions here. One is really on the resource expansion that you mentioned about the 3 GWs pipeline into the new growth market. Just wondering, I think between the 3 key hubs that you mentioned in Mongolia, Ningxia, and Guangdong, what is the difference or similarities among those regions in terms of customer preference or the IT workload, the pricing, etc.? The follow-on question related to that is what is the regional breakdown between those 3 key hubs out of the 3 GWs pipeline that you have or out of the 500 MWs MOUs that you disclosed year to date? Second question is on the CapEx.
I think, given that you have very strong sales momentum year to date and to convert that 500 MWs into a contract, probably around two quarters, do you see any possibilities to further revise up the CapEx guidance for this year? Thank you.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I think there are three new markets. I think the workload is similar. Major workload is still training, plus partially is inference, right? In the meanwhile, we just mentioned, I think in the traditional market, we'd say low latency market, right? We also got a lot of orders from our customer, the large language model customer because they already start to deploy the inference workload. I think it's quite balanced. In general, I think maybe it's 65%-70% will go to the new market and still 30-40% goes to traditional market, right? Which we used to call the tier one market.
That's sort of the difference of workload.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Tim, on your question regarding CapEx, as I mentioned earlier, you should assume that it takes us four quarters to build because in many cases, we're talking about new build in a site which is where we have no previous presence. We commence the construction in 1Q 2026. It's for delivery to customer in 1Q 2027. As we win new business going through this year, that will lead to more starts. I think the CapEx guidance of RMB 9 billion is adequate. I would not expect to change that.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ellie Jiang from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Ellie Jiang (Head of Asia Internet & Software)
Great. Thank you so much, management, for taking my question. I just have one question that's more longer term. Just now management talked about, you know, the data center demand in China is just at the beginning of picking up.
Would it be fair if we look in the next, you know, 3-5 years to kind of mirror the U.S. Trajectory, I mean, especially on kind of how the large hyperscalers have been accelerating the CapEx deployment pace? Lastly, you know, how do you really see the longer term sort of market size and, you know, positioning in that trajectory? Thank you.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. If you look at for our estimation, I think that yes, China demand will like growth trajectory more like U.S. because just behind a couple of years, right? That's happening right now. Last year, we just talk about that demand is already there. It's all about just about the chip supply, right? Now, it looks like it is getting much better, more positive right now, more certainty in terms of the chip supply. It will same pace to similar pace as U.S., right?
I think the CapEx. If you look at it last two years, all the big AI company, tech company continue to raise their CapEx guidance just like it would happen in U.S.
Ellie Jiang (Head of Asia Internet & Software)
Got it. Thank you very much. If I may, sorry. If we continue on that route, would it be possible at one point, 'cause just now management talked about the MSR still declining, you know, slightly all the way until 2028, but would it be possible at some point we still see, you know, hyperscale demand really building, especially given how, you know, the agentic integration or all these agentic integration seems to be driving token consumptions by 10x or even 20x. At some point, would it be possible for us to see even stronger pricing power down the road?
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yes. Could be. I think it could be. I think. If you look at the U.S., the price, let's say, adoption profile in the last five years, it's. If you look at it, five years ago, the U.S. price used to be down to $60 per kW, right? Now, it's 3x average, right? So, 2x or 3x average. So that's profile. I think that will be a high chance it will be, right?
Ellie Jiang (Head of Asia Internet & Software)
Understood. Thank you very much.
William Huang (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
I give you the sense of the whole, I mean, the western part of China, the total power capacity now, as of now, just 30 GWs available to supply the future growth. In general, it's still limited, right?
Ellie Jiang (Head of Asia Internet & Software)
Got it. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question.
Our next question comes from the line of Daley Li from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Daley Li (VP and Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, management. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the strong orders for year-to-date and for the MOU. My first question about the 500 MW MOU. Could management introduce, is this mainly for 2026? Sorry, 2027. It's how many years? What could be the time horizon or time period? Is it like a two-, one- or two-year or like three-year contract, potential contract? My second question is about the CapEx and the financing, the updates. Given the net building RMB CapEx, how do we see the financing and the need, and given we have strong cash on hand right now? Thank you.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Yeah. Sorry. The
Laura Chen (Head of Investor Relations)
500 MW MOU.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Sorry?
Laura Chen (Head of Investor Relations)
500 MW MOU. The delivery time.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
The delivery time is, as I mentioned before, four quarters. The business that we're winning in the current first quarter of this year is going to contribute to move in next year. It's logical that if we meet our sales target of 500 MW, then next year's move-in could be around double the current year's move-in. But you know, it would flow through like that. The contract length, I think much longer than what you mentioned. It would be 7-10 years.
Daley Li (VP and Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah.
Daniel Newman (CFO)
Mostly at the ten-year end of that. For financing, last year we were self-funding in China. That was achieved when our CapEx was RMB 5 billion, and we were able to complete two asset monetizations last year, an ABS and a C-REIT. Now our CapEx has gone up to RMB 9 billion and, you know, we have a plan for an asset monetization that we can't be sure, but we aim to complete that in second half of the year. I don't know whether we will be self-funding in China. Let's say CapEx is RMB 9 billion, operating cash flow is RMB 3 billion, and maybe there's some proceeds from asset monetization. If there's anything left, it will be very easy for us to finance that in the traditional way with project debt.
Daley Li (VP and Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to Laura for closing remarks.
Laura Chen (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you all once again for joining us today, and see you next time. Bye bye.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.