Equinix completes US $780 million acquisition of 13 Bell data centers in Canada

Equinix, Inc., the world’s digital infrastructure company, has announced the completion of its acquisition of 13 data centers in Canada and their operations from BCE Inc. (“Bell”).

The US$780 million (CA$1,041 million) all-cash transaction includes more than 600 customers, of which more than 500 are new to Equinix, and approximately 1.2 million gross square feet of data center space.

The deal solidifies Equinix’s position as a leading digital infrastructure provider in Canada, enabling Canadian businesses, as well as multinationals with a presence in Canada, to leverage a trusted platform to bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure to power their success.

Equinix also announced that Andrew Eppich, a six-year veteran of Equinix originally from Toronto, has been appointed Managing Director, Canada. In this role, Eppich will be responsible for defining Equinix’s strategic vision to: develop the enterprise market; deliver a strong network of prospects, customers and channel partners; provide thought leadership to accelerate new business and revenue growth; and expand Equinix’s role as a trusted advisor to companies as they expand their digital infrastructure.

Equinix’s expansion across Canada unlocks opportunities for Canadian businesses expanding internationally and for multinational corporations pursuing growth and innovation in the Canadian market. Canadian companies can benefit from the ability to accelerate their evolution from traditional to digital businesses by rapidly scaling their infrastructure, easily adopting hybrid multicloud architectures and interconnecting with strategic business partners within the Platform Equinix® ecosystem of nearly 10,000 customers.

Equinix now operates 15 high-quality International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers coast to coast in Canada. In addition to the two Toronto facilities (TR1 and TR2) that Equinix has operated since 2010 and 2015 respectively, the company now operates four additional data centers in Toronto (TR4, TR5, TR6, TR7), three in Calgary (CL1, CL2, CL3), and one in each of the following metros:  Kamloops (KA1), Montreal (MT1), Ottawa (OT1)³, Saint John (SJ1), Vancouver (VA1) and  Winnipeg (WI1).

Equinix plans to introduce Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric® (ECX Fabric®) in the new data centers. ECX Fabric is an on-demand, SDN-enabled interconnection service that allows any business to connect between its own distributed infrastructure and any other company’s distributed infrastructure, including the world’s largest network service and cloud providers, on Platform Equinix.

Equinix and Bell have begun a strategic partnership that delivers industry-leading joint offers in Canada and globally. This partnership will enable enterprises in Canada to leverage integrated networking and hybrid multicloud services, both directly and indirectly through the shared partner communities of Equinix and Bell, combining Bell’s telecommunication services and technology expertise with Equinix’s global platform of interconnected data centers and business ecosystems. This partnership also allows Equinix to engage with Bell reseller partners to build stronger relationships with the Canadian channel ecosystem.

Andrew Eppich has more than 20 years of experience in B2B technology and helping businesses digitally transform. Prior to joining Equinix, he served for 13 years at HPE, Inc. in Canada in sales and channel leadership positions. While at Equinix, Eppich has led teams in Canada and the Northeastern U.S., and he has most recently completed a two-year assignment in Europe leading teams in the United Kingdom and Germany.

The 13 acquired data centers are expected to generate approximately US$112 million (CA$150 million) annualized revenue (Q4'20E LQA), which represents a purchase multiple of approximately 15x EV / adjusted EBITDA. The acquisition will be immediately accretive to Equinix's adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) per share, excluding integration costs.

Equinix’s global platform currently includes more than 220 data centers across 63 metros.

As a part of the transaction, more than 160 employees, primarily in the operations functions of the 13 acquired data centers, joined Equinix effective today.

Jon Lin, President, Americas, Equinix, explained, “This acquisition complements and extends Equinix’s strategy of expanding our global platform and enhancing cloud and network density to offer enterprises a path to digital success. It also provides a unique opportunity for Equinix to expand its presence in the Americas and positions Equinix as a leading digital infrastructure provider in Canada. Further, it strengthens relationships with Canadian enterprises, many of which prefer local credentials and have multi-metro requirements, while enhancing relationships with global businesses looking to operate in the Canadian market.”

Siobhan Cox, Vice President of Marketing, Bell, said, “As the first Equinix Platinum Partner in Canada, Bell is leveraging Equinix’s world-class data centre operations and our leadership in network connectivity and cloud service innovation to enable the digital edge transformation of our customers’ operations in Canada and around the globe. Bell is excited to build on our joint momentum, which is already providing major benefits for a large Canadian investment services customer in our shared community through a migration of IT infrastructure to Equinix to facilitate a new Open Stack environment.”

Rick McCalla, Vice President, Infrastructure, Index Exchange, informed, "At Index Exchange, we process billions of transactions a day on our ad exchange, managing incredibly large amounts of data along the way. Unsurprisingly, our physical servers play the most critical of roles in creating a seamless, low-latency user experience for our partners. Having worked with Equinix across the globe to deliver on this experience, we could not be more proud to continue our relationship back where we started: Canada.”

Nancy McCuaig, Senior Vice President, Chief Technology and Data Officer, IGM Financial Inc., said, “IGM’s partnership with Equinix has played an important role in our transformation journey and has provided us with a competitive edge. Our ability to stay connected to global markets through leveraging Platform Equinix has been critical to our success as a company. We’re excited about Equinix’s acquisition of additional data centres, as it will allow us to enhance connectivity both within Canada and across the globe, and result in a better overall client and user experience.”