MVP balks at partial sale of data center biz
PLDT Inc. chair Manuel Pangilinan is reconsidering the sale of a minority stake in the telco giant’s data center business, betting on the potential value this segment will bring in the height of digitalization.
The tycoon, in a press briefing on Thursday in Makati, said they were thinking whether they should sell or not a portion of the business worth about $1 billion.
After all, Vitro Inc. has been gaining momentum in its operations, which could translate to better bottom-line contribution for the parent company.
This subsidiary saw a 22-percent revenue growth in colocation services last year, thanks to enterprises and cloud service providers needing more storage for their critical servers and networks.
The telco giant currently has a total capacity of 38 megawatts (MW), which is seen to grow to as much as 64 MW by 2026. Of this existing capacity, 75 percent has been utilized already.
Selling a portion of the data center company was initially planned to help extinguish PLDT’s obligations. But Pangilinan said they could sell other noncritical assets instead to raise funds.
Still, Pangilinan said they were currently in talks with another potential foreign buyer.
The potential sale to CVC Capital Partners did not push through, as Pangilinan said they “did not extend” the negotiations anymore.
Before this, PLDT was reportedly in talks with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. but this did not prosper as well.
Last year, the PLDT data center arm said it has been making its hubs artificial intelligence (AI)-ready.
Gary Ignacio, chief commercial officer of Vitro, earlier said their 11th data center—Vitro Sta. Rosa—has now data cabinets that can power up to 17 kilowatts (KW), which is the minimum requirement to support an AI workload. A data cabinet stores hardware like servers, routers and modems.
Ignacio said this increased capacity was more than the usual requirement of only 3 to 5 KW per cabinet.
Moving forward, Ignacio said they would ramp up the cabinet capacity to 50 KW.
