Equinix announced yesterday the closing of a major expansion north of the border. In a deal I managed to miss entirely when it was announced back in June, Equinix has acquired 13 data centers from BCE Inc., the parent company of Bell Canada.
The purchase price was $780M in cash, and gives Equinix a major presence in the Canadian colo market. The 13 facilities add more than 500 new customers and 160 employees to Equinix’s rolls, as well as 1.2M gross square feet of space. The facilities generate some $112M in annualized revenue, and the deal will be immediately accretive to Equinix’s adjusted funds from operations per share.
The facilities include four facilities in Toronto, three in Calgary, and one each in Kamloops, Montreal, Ottawa, Saint John, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Equinix had previous just had two facilities in Toronto. With a more significant footprint in hand, the company has named Andrew Eppich as Managing Director, Canada.
The deal of course makes BCE a major customer and partner for Equinix, and the two will deliver joint offers both in Canada and globally. Equinix plans to introduce its ECX cloud exchange fabric into the acquired footprint. No doubt we will be hearing about a few expansion plans for the Canadian footprint over the next year or two.
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Categories: Datacenter · Mergers and Acquisitions
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