
Equinix raises annual results forecast on steady data center demand
The company has benefited from the increased demand for data center infrastructure amid a surge in artificial intelligence usage.
Major cloud firms, including Google, have pledged significant investments this year to expand on AI, underscoring robust demand for AI-related products and solutions.
Equinix provides organizations with secure, resilient and power-efficient environments to house their IT equipment within its data centers, while offering shared infrastructure and connectivity solutions.
The company now expects annual revenue to be between $9.23 billion and $9.33 billion, compared with prior projection of $9.18 billion to $9.28 billion.
It now expects annual per-share funds from operations, a key measure of cash flow, to be in the range of $37.67 to $38.48 per share, compared with previous forecast of $37.36 to $38.17.
In the second quarter ended June 30, the company's revenue rose 4.6 per cent to $2.26 billion, in line with estimates, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Times
30 minutes ago
- Business Times
NUS, Google to create AI research and innovation centre, train more talent
[SINGAPORE] The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Google will collaborate to set up a joint research and innovation centre for artificial intelligence (AI) and develop AI practitioners. The centre will consolidate resources and technology to pursue experimental or applied AI projects across diverse domains, both parties said in a joint statement on Friday (Aug 1). The centre will, for example, manage a rapid prototyping sandbox, which is to be set up to create a controlled and flexible cloud-based environment, supported by Google Cloud's power-efficient Tensor Processing Units. This is essential for experimentation, testing and validation of the solutions developed under each of the domains, before they are deployed or scaled in real-world settings. Other domains in the centre include AI's intersections with education, public health and law, in light of the development of a Singapore law-specific large-language model on Google Cloud by NUS' Faculty of Law, the NUS AI Institute and NUS Computing. AI talent pipeline, new professorship The collaboration also includes an AI-focused talent development programme, which will benefit NUS students and researchers, and establishing a Google-supported professorship at NUS. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up This programme will complement the joint centre, which is designed to provide training opportunities and certification pathways in Google Cloud AI platforms, and tools for NUS students and researchers to accelerate their applied AI research projects. The professorship aims to further promote faculty leadership in AI-related fields, foster deeper collaboration between academia and industry, and contribute to cultivating the next generation of talent in AI and digital innovation. NUS and Google have existing partnerships under an on-campus Google Developer Group to equip students with advanced software skills. Google Cloud is a pioneer industry partner of the NUS AI Institute, and a Google PhD Fellowship programme recognises exceptional work in computer science. Serene Sia, country director for Singapore and Malaysia at Google Cloud, said: 'Our new collaboration truly builds on those successes. It is a significant step forward in Google's commitment to bringing new capabilities for scientific discovery to Singapore. The initiative is poised to steer safe and responsible AI development and accelerate scientific progress that transforms public health, learning experiences and other vital fields.' NUS deputy president for research and technology Liu Bin echoed Sia's sentiment, and noted that the centre would create pathways for research translation and deployment.


CNA
an hour ago
- CNA
Amazon slumps after cloud computing growth underwhelms investors
shares tumbled 8 per cent on Friday, as the tech giant's results fanned investor fears its cloud unit was falling behind Microsoft and Alphabet in the artificial intelligence race. Amazon Web Services, long the cloud-computing market leader, edged past Wall Street estimates for June-quarter revenue on Thursday with a 17.5 per cent increase, but it widely lagged the 39 per cent growth seen at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud's 32 per cent gain. That disappointing growth came even as Amazon shelled out $31.4 billion in capital expenditure, more than rivals, and suggested it would spend a more-than-estimated $118 billion for the year. Google and Microsoft also pledged higher spending, but were rewarded from investors on signs AI was already becoming a major growth driver across their businesses, justifying the bill. The companies have been spending billions of dollars on data centers and cutting-edge chips that they say are necessary to overcome supply constraints hampering their efforts to capitalize on soaring demand for AI services. "The spotlight was firmly on AWS and it didn't quite shine as brightly as expected," said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. "While Microsoft and Alphabet have already shown strong momentum in cloud growth, AWS wasn't the knockout many wanted to see." Growing expenses have also started to take a bite out of AWS's margins, the business that has long been Amazon's profit engine, accounting for about 60 per cent of its operating income. AWS margins contracted to 32.9 per cent during the quarter, their lowest level since the final quarter of 2023, and Amazon also issued a current-quarter total operating income forecast that was lower than market estimates. CEO Andy Jassy told analysts on a post-earnings call that it was still "very early days" in the AI race and that Amazon's massive cloud business, much larger than rivals, was primed to perform well once the AI capacity constraints start to ease. The stock, up 6.7 per cent so far this year, was trading at $215.9 before the bell. The drop was set to erase around $190 billion from Amazon's market value, if premarket losses hold. The company still trades at a relatively high premium, with a 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio of 33.87, compared with Microsoft's 34.19 and Alphabet's 18.64, according to data compiled by LSEG. RETAIL RESILIENCE At least 30 analysts raised their price targets on the stock, while three lowered, giving it a median view of $260. Some of that analyst confidence comes from the strong performance of Amazon's retail business, which has remained resilient in the face of Trump administration tariffs that have hobbled many retailers and their supply chains. Amazon has yet to see a drop in demand or a notable rise in prices in the first half of the year, Jassy said, as its online store sales jumped a better-than-expected 11 per cent in the second quarter. Manufacturers and suppliers have shouldered most of the tariff impact so far, analysts said, but noted that much of the inventory Amazon sold in the quarter arrived in the preceding three-month period. "If Amazon's retail business was a standalone entity, it would be trading dramatically higher following the near-perfect results," said Michael Morton, analyst at MoffettNathanson.


CNA
an hour ago
- CNA
McDonald's plans to 'double down' on AI investment by 2027, executive says
HYDERABAD :McDonald's plans to "double down" on its artificial intelligence investments by 2027 and is betting on India to be a key hub for data governance, engineering and platform architecture, a senior executive said on Friday. The fast-food giant, which entered India in 1996, operates hundreds of restaurants across the country and recently set up a global office in the southern city of Hyderabad, with an aim to make it the largest outside the United States. "We're still in the early stages, so it's hard to pin down the exact investment," McDonald's head of Global Business Services operations, Deshant Kaila, said in an interview on the sidelines of an event in Hyderabad. McDonald's is using AI to verify orders at 400 restaurants to pre-empt errors before handing them over to customers, and expects to roll this out to 40,000 locations globally by 2027, Durga Prakash, head of technology (global offices), said. The fast-food giant is also using AI tools to forecast sales, decide on pricing and assess product performance and is building a personalised app, which would work across countries, according to Kaila. He said the India push will centre on building its AI team, but added that spending will lean more toward technology and tools, not headcount. The company is in talks to set up a global office in Poland, just like the ones in India and Mexico, according to Durga Prakash. Earlier this year, the southern Indian state of Telangana said that McDonald's would launch a global capability center, employing 2,000 people in Hyderabad. India's global capability centers, once low-cost outsourcing hubs for global corporations, have evolved to support their parent organisations in domains ranging from operations and finance to research and development.