Australia's Goodman Group raising $2.54 billion to fund data centre growth

Australian property and logistics company Goodman Group said on Wednesday it is raising A$4 billion ($2.54 billion) in a share placement to fund its data centre business growth plans.

The Sydney-headquartered firm will issue 119.42 million shares at A$33.5 each, it said in a regulatory filing.

The deal is the largest capital raising in Australia in more than three years since CSL raised A$6.3 billion in December 2021, according to Dealogic data.


The price is a 6.9% discount to Goodman's closing price of A$35.98 on Tuesday. The deal also includes a A$400 million security purchase plan for existing investors, the filing showed.

Goodman's shares are trading about 1% higher year to date and the company said the money raised would help fund its data centre and logistics operations future expansion plans. It added that some of the capital would also be used to reduce its debt.

"Escalating demand for data centres has created a step change for the growth of our business, this has been fuelled by increased cloud use, migration of data to cloud, AI and machine learning," Chief Executive Greg Goodman told an investor call.

The company on Wednesday reported A$1.22 billion in operating profit for the first half, up 8% on the same time a year earlier.

Goodman currently has 5 gigawatts of data centres in 13 cities and intends to start development of a further 0.5 gigawatts by June next year.

The new assets will be located in Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam and Hong Kong and be worth A$10 billion, it said.