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Global Switch, the leading owner and operator of large scale, multi-tenanted, carrier-neutral data centres in Europe and Asia-Pacific, has today been assigned an investment grade credit rating by Standard & Poor's (S&P).
The BBB rating with stable outlook from S&P is testimony to the strength and resilience of the business, with S&P noting the stable and predictable earnings profile and high quality of the Company's assets in the prime data centre markets in Europe and Asia Pacific. This S&P rating is also consistent with the BBB rating with a stable outlook currently assigned to the Company by Fitch.
Today has also seen the publication of an updated Credit Opinion from Moody's, who continue to rate the Company Baa3 with stable outlook. The ratings agency has in this publication revised its guidance, providing flexibility for Global Switch to extend its borrowings without affecting its existing credit rating, reflecting the growing strength of the business and its solid operating performance over the last three years. Moody's noted Global Switch's strong recurring income stream generated from long term leases, high occupancy levels, low levels of customer churn, conservative gearing, excellent track record of customer service reliability, the high barriers to entry in the sector and the strong positive global market dynamics for data centres.
Global Switch's investment grade credit ratings remain a key competitive advantage, allowing access to the deepest and most consistently available pool of liquidity. Today's announcement from S&P and Moody's updated credit opinion are a welcome recognition of the Company's strong balance sheet, record of growth, exceptional assets and high quality income and will further bolster its financial flexibility.
In this regard the Company is contemplating an exceptional dividend of up to £600m to its parent company, subject to further borrowings and conditions in the debt capital markets.
For more information about Global Switch, please visit www.globalswitch.com
Global Switch
Ali Ballantine
+44 (0)20 8054 9053
RLM Finsbury
James Murgatroyd
Jenny Davey
+44 (0)20 7251 3801
For press enquiries please email
press@globalswitch.com
Notes to editors:
About Global Switch
Founded in 1998, Global Switch Holdings Ltd (Global Switch) owns and operates large scale Tier III* data centres that are carrier neutral and multi-tenanted. The Company's focus is on highly resilient, central, low latency, network dense locations in prime city centre locations and internet hubs close to its customers on the edge of financial and business districts.
Global Switch operates 290,000 square metres (3,100,000 square feet) of data centres across seven locations in Europe and Asia Pacific.
The data centre industry is benefitting from attractive market dynamics, characterised by growth in internet usage, combined with the expansion of cloud computing, outsourcing and regulation which have led to significant growth in demand from financial institutions, corporations and governments.
Global Switch is part way through a significant global expansion plan which started with an extension of its Singapore data centre in 2010 and the building of a second data centre on its Paris campus in 2012. Having secured pre-commitments from a number of large multi-national companies, Global Switch is nearing completion of the construction of an expansion to its Amsterdam data centre and is also constructing the first stage of Sydney East, its second data centre in Sydney.
The next investments in the expansion programme will be new data centres in Hong Kong and Singapore, where Global Switch is planning a second facility.
At financial year-end 31 March 2013, Global Switch reported total revenues of £340 million and total assets of £4.38 billion. Since 2007 the company has been wholly owned by Aldersgate Investments Limited, which first acquired an interest in the company in 2004.
Disclaimer:
The statements contained herein may include statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. In addition to statements which are forward-looking by reason of context, these forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or an invitation to subscribe for or a solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe for any securities.
Note:
* A Tier III data centre is an industry standard classification for a data centre composed of redundant power and cooling distribution paths, providing a minimum of 99.982% availability.
