Equinix In The Center Of ‘Very Hot’ Demand Market, CEO Says

‘We are right in the center, very firmly in the center, of what is a very hot demand market,’ Equinix CEO Adaire Fox-Martin said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, where she noted channel partners drove nearly 30 percent of the company’s bookings.

Equinix had a record quarter inside of a record year as it celebrated its best-ever frame for bookings against a “very hot” demand environment that has 87 percent of its under-construction projects leased or preleased, said CEO Adaire Fox-Martin during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based data center behemoth saw revenue for its full fiscal year 2024 reach $8.7 billion, up 7 percent year on year, meeting the low end of the company’s guidance. The company’s fourth-quarter revenue was up 7 percent year on year to $2.26 billion. Net income for the quarter was down with a $14 million loss, but net income for fiscal 2024 came in at $815 million for growth of 9.3 percent.

“We’re very firmly in the center of demand and have a very strong backlog to support this revenue and continue to see this very clear and compelling signal from the market. So we very much look forward to taking the gross bookings and the records that you’ve seen over the course of 2024, taking that and turning it into revenue as quickly as we possibly can, in order to ensure that we have that strong exit out in 2026,” Fox-Martin said during Wednesday’s call.

Fox-Martin said Equinix closed more than 16,200 deals across more than 6,000 customers in 2024 and channel partners were critical to driving those numbers.

“Our channel program delivered nearly 30 percent of bookings and more than 50 percent of company new logos for the year, with wins across a wide range of industry segments and use cases in our xScale business,” she told investors.

Even with 268 data centers in 74 metropolitan areas across 35 countries, Equinix lost revenue due to space limits last quarter. Fox-Martin said the company has created what it calls the “Build Bolder” program that aims to speed its available cabinet spaces to market.

“It’s absolutely true that there are cases where we could not meet the contiguous capacity requirement of a customer in a tier-one metro. And if we had that capacity available, we could have met that demand for the customer,” she said. “In most cases, we were fortunate to be able to demand-shape to move them in on a smaller basis. But you know, certainly we are right in the center, very firmly in the center, of what is a very hot demand market.”

Fox-Martin said Equinix has 62 major projects underway in 36 cities and 25 countries, which will give the company 34,000 cabinets representing an additional 165 megawatts of hyperscale capacity by 2026.

Equinix opened its Singapore facility in November, which provides 20 megawatts of capacity, and this month the company opened a facility in Jakarta, Indonesia, increasing the company’s real estate footprint in Asia-Pacific, which grew at 13 percent, the highest growth geography for Equinix in 2024. The Americas grew at 8 percent in 2024, the company said.

Under “Build Bolder,” Equinix hopes to build bigger data centers in fewer, larger phases, allowing it to optimally accommodate the full product suite in its data center campuses across traditional retail, larger-footprint retail and hyperscale construction, Fox-Martin said.

“This balanced approach should accelerate our delivery of saleable capacity, whilst allowing us to respond to our customers’ needs as market dynamics, particularly those related to generative AI, continue to evolve at a rapid pace” she said.