Stonepeak buys stake in American Tower’s data centre venture

Stonepeak is acquiring a 29% stake in American Tower’s US data centre business in a $2.5bn (€2.5bn) deal, as part of a new long-term strategic partnership.

The alternative investment firm, on behalf of its core infrastructure strategy, is investing in common equity and mandatorily convertible preferred equity, in the deal which gives American Tower’s US data centre division a $10.5bn enterprise value.

Stonepeak will serve as a financial partner, with certain governance rights, while American Tower retains day-to-day operational control. The data centre portfolio consists of 27 data centres in 10 US markets, more than 450 networks, 23 native cloud on-ramps and over 35,000 interconnections.

Tom Bartlett, American Tower’s President and Chief Executive Officer, stated: “We are pleased to partner with Stonepeak in our U.S. data center business, where we expect to create value through growth in our highly interconnected, cloud on-ramp rich portfolio of data center assets. In Stonepeak, we’ve found a like-minded partner, with deep communications infrastructure experience and a long-term investment philosophy that aligns with the principles of American Tower and our longer-term strategy in the data centers segment. 

“While this transaction supports the equity financing component for our previously completed CoreSite acquisition, it also creates a platform through which growth opportunities can be strategically evaluated and financed, with American Tower and Stonepeak committed to executing on opportunities as the 5G ecosystem continues to develop.”

Meeting the shifts in data centres

The transaction will position American Tower and Stonepeak to mutually benefit from the demand for low-latency, hybrid IT solutions and agile interconnection across the platform’s data centre campuses. 

The deal comes in the wake of the completion of American Tower’s acquisition of US data centre operator CoreSite late last year. The total cost of that deal, including repayment or assumption of CoreSite’s debt, came in at US$10.1bn.

Andrew Thomas, Managing Director and Co-Head of Communications at Stonepeak, added, “American Tower has established one of the premier network dense, interconnection-focused data centre platforms in the U.S. through CoreSite and previous acquisitions, which we view as a great fit for our core infrastructure strategy. The platform is strategically positioned to be at the forefront of the continued shift from a traditional centralised infrastructure model to a cloud-based, connected and distributed digital infrastructure model and we are excited to partner with the American Tower team to help accelerate investment behind this trend in the years to come.”