Infratil's share of data centre company CDC blooms in value

Infrastructure investor Infratil's near 50 percent (49.72 percent) share in Australian data centre business CDC has jumped by more than $2 billion in the second quarter of the year, with plans for further growth.

CDC's independent valuation increased by nearly a quarter in the three months ended June (23.6 percent) to a mid-point of A$18.5b (NZ$22.5b), which was in line with market expectations.

The independent valuation of Infratil's stake in CDC rose to A$9.21b (NZ$11.2b), or by A$1.76b (NZ$2.14b) from A$7.45b (NZ$9.05b) at 31 March 2026.

Infratil said the increase was driven by a number of factors, including strong growth in CDC's recently contracted capacity to more than 1gigawatts (GW).

The company also provided an update on CDC's plans to support growing demand, and the expansion of its development pipeline to the financial year ending 2040 (FY40) to 3.9GW from 2.6GW to support future growth.

Brokerage firm Forsyth Barr senior analyst Ben Crozier said the development pipeline indicated demand was outstripping supply.

"We view this material increase in its pipeline positively albeit was foreshadowed at (Infratil's) FY26 result in May," Crozier said.

"They're sort of doubling this business every two years at the current run rate, so it's quite strong growth, and then they added another 1.3GW of capacity to their pipeline.

"Just that extra incremental addition is looking at A$20b (NZ$24.3b) in terms of capex (capital investment), so it's quite big numbers involved in this investment these days."

Crozier said the increased capacity positioned the company to take advantage of strong market demand for data centres.

"There was sort of some noise out over the weekend in the Australian media that Anthropic was lining up some data centre contracts, and CDC was in the hot seat to win some of them as well," he said.

"So people are expecting new customer wins, and certainly Infratil was talked about."