Iron Mountain and AGC Equity Partners Announce Formation of 300 Million+ Euro Joint Venture to Develop and Manage Frankfurt Data Center

Rhea-AI Summary

Iron Mountain announced a €300 million joint venture with AGC Equity Partners to develop a 280,000 square foot hyperscale data center in Frankfurt, Germany. The data center, pre-leased to a Fortune 100 company for 10 years, marks a strategic growth opportunity for Iron Mountain. AGC will hold an 80% equity interest, while Iron Mountain retains 20%. The partnership aims to redeploy proceeds into higher return opportunities. The project’s debt financing is expected to close in Q4 2020, with development fees adding to Iron Mountain's revenue.

Positive

• Joint venture formation with AGC Equity Partners for a €300 million investment.
• 280,000 square foot data center pre-leased to a Fortune 100 customer under a 10-year lease.
• Iron Mountain retains a 20% equity interest, emphasizing its ongoing investment strategy.
• Revenue from management and development fees expected as part of the joint venture.

Negative

• None.

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), the storage and information management services company, today announced the formation of a 300 million+ Euro joint venture (the “Venture”) with an affiliate of AGC Equity Partners ("AGC"), a London-based global alternative asset manager to design and develop a 280,000 square foot, or 27 megawatt, hyperscale data center currently under development in Frankfurt, Germany (the “Frankfurt Data Center”).

As previously disclosed, the Frankfurt Data Center is 100% pre-leased to a U.S.-based Fortune 100 customer subject to a 10-year lease agreement (the “Lease”). Full build-out of the 27 megawatt data center is expected in the second quarter of 2022. Iron Mountain will be responsible for managing the design and development of the data center as well as administering the Lease.

“We are pleased to partner on the Frankfurt Data Center with AGC, a premier real estate and private equity investor with a strong global data center platform, to support this exciting data center growth opportunity and to continue to build-out our global platform,” said Mark Kidd, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Data Centers at Iron Mountain. “This partnership represents an important strategic step towards our goal of identifying alternative sources of capital to fund accelerating growth, as proceeds from the Venture will be redeployed into higher return development opportunities.”

AGC has built a high-quality global data center franchise over the past several years, and recognizes the benefits of working alongside a partner with a proven track record in the development of data centers to continue capitalizing on the unprecedented demand for data centers worldwide.

Financial Impact

• Under the terms of the agreement, AGC will own an 80% equity interest and Iron Mountain will own a 20% equity interest in the Venture. AGC contributed cash to purchase its 80% equity interest in the Venture, while Iron Mountain retained a 20% equity interest in the Venture.
• Debt financing for the Venture is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020, with proceeds expected to fund a portion of the planned development and construction costs.
• Under the terms of the Venture agreement, Iron Mountain will earn various fees, including property management and construction and development fees for services provided to the Venture, all of which will be recorded as revenue in Iron Mountain’s reported financial statements as earned.
• The Venture will be reflected as an unconsolidated equity method joint venture on Iron Mountain’s reported financial statements.

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as lead financial advisor to Iron Mountain. King & Spalding LLP served as Iron Mountain’s legal advisor.

About Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), founded in 1951, is the global leader for storage and information management services. Trusted by more than 225,000 organizations around the world, and with a real estate network of more than 90 million square feet across more than 1,480 facilities in approximately 50 countries, Iron Mountain stores and protects billions of valued assets, including critical business information, highly sensitive data, and cultural and historical artifacts. Providing solutions that include secure records storage, information management, digital transformation, secure destruction, as well as data centers, cloud services and art storage and logistics, Iron Mountain helps customers lower cost and risk, comply with regulations, recover from disaster, and enable a more digital way of working. Visit www.ironmountain.com for more information.

About AGC Equity Partners

AGC is a global alternative asset management firm which invests across the capital structure in real assets and other private equity strategies, with a particular focus on European and North American assets. AGC has around USD 6 billion in assets under management. AGC maintains strong relationships with some of the world's leading sovereign, institutional and ultra high net-worth investors who invest with AGC across multiple asset classes and strategies.

Forward Looking Statements

Safe Harbor Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other securities laws and is subject to the safe-harbor created by such Act. Forward-looking statements include, but are not, limited to statements concerning the commencement of the lease, the timeline for construction and expected leasing targets for 2020. When we use words such as "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates" or similar expressions, we are making forward-looking statements. Although we believe that our forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, our expected results may not be achieved, and actual results may differ materially from our expectations. Although we believe that our forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, our expected results may not be achieved, and actual results may differ materially from our expectations.

These forward-looking statements are subject to various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from expectations include (i) the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our business, operations and financial condition, (ii) our ability to remain qualified for taxation as a real estate investment trust for U.S. federal income tax purposes; (iii) the adoption of alternative technologies and shifts by our customers to storage of data through non-paper based technologies; (iv) changes in customer preferences and demand for our storage and information management services; (v) the cost and our ability to comply with laws, regulations and customer demands relating to data security and privacy issues, as well as fire and safety standards; (vi) our ability or inability to execute our strategic growth plan, expand internationally, complete acquisitions on satisfactory terms, and to integrate acquired companies efficiently; (vii) changes in the amount of our growth and recurring capital expenditures and our ability to raise capital and invest according to plan; (viii) the impact of litigation or disputes that may arise in connection with incidents in which we fail to protect our customers' information or our internal records or IT systems and the impact of such incidents on our reputation and ability to compete; (ix) our ability to execute on Project Summit and the potential impacts of Project Summit on our ability to retain and recruit employees and execute on our strategy (x) changes in the price for our storage and information management services relative to the cost of providing such storage and information management services; (xi) changes in the political and economic environments in the countries in which our international subsidiaries operate and changes in the global political climate; (xii) the impact of executing on our growth strategy through joint ventures; (xii) our ability to comply with our existing debt obligations and restrictions in our debt instruments or to obtain additional financing to meet our working capital needs; (xiv) the impact of service interruptions or equipment damage and the cost of power on our data center operations; (xv) changes in the cost of our debt; (xvi) the impact of alternative, more attractive investments on dividends; (xvii) the cost or potential liabilities associated with real estate necessary for our business; (xviii) the performance of business partners upon whom we depend for technical assistance or management expertise; (xix) other trends in competitive or economic conditions affecting our financial condition or results of operations not presently contemplated; and (xx) other risks described more fully in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including under the caption “Risk Factors” in our periodic reports or incorporated therein. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements except as statements of our present intentions and of our present expectations, which may or may not occur. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to release publicly the result of any revision to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.