SINGAPORE: Singapore’s stock market saw its largest listing in eight years on Monday (Jul 14) with the debut of a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on data centres.
Valued at US$773 million, the trust NTT DC REIT is backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and Japan’s NTT group.
It is expected to give a much-needed boost to the Singapore Exchange (SGX), which has seen lacklustre interest for major listings in recent years.
Data centres are an area of phenomenal growth owing to the global need to store massive amounts of digital data and run energy-intensive artificial intelligence tools.
Trading in NTT DC REIT in US dollars started at 2pm, opening at US$1.02 compared with the US$1 per unit offer price.
It is the biggest listing on the exchange since 2017, when fibre network-centred NetLink NBN Trust raised S$2.3 billion (US$1.8 billion).
NTT DC REIT is backed by Singapore’s GIC, one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds, and Japan’s telecommunications giant NTT Group.
The NTT Group, through its global data centre business NTT GDC, is the world’s third-largest data centre provider, according to the IPO’s prospectus.
Singapore is a leading hub for data centres in Asia, with its strategic location at the crossroads of submarine cable routes providing connectivity to the region and beyond.
From 2024 to 2027, the power used by data centres is expected to rise at a compounded annual growth rate of 27.5 per cent, following double-digit expansion over the past five years, the prospectus said.
