- What Vodafone’s data centre in Bracknell to be marketed for sale
- Why Over 17 years guaranteed income on offer
- Why next Knight Frank leading sale
A data centre and office facility let to Vodafone in the South East is being marketed for a £41m sale by Fiera Real Estate, React News can reveal.
The site is part of Vodafone’s network infrastructure and considered critical to its ongoing business. The building in Bracknell totals 95,000 sq ft and sits on a 4.7 acre site. Knight Frank has been instructed to manage the sale.
Key part of Vodafone’s network for 35 years
Let to Vodafone Enterprise UK – and backed by a parent guarantee from Cable & Wireless Worldwide – the asset offers 17.6 years of term certain income. The facility, where the tenant has been in occupation since its construction in 1986, forms a crucial part of Vodafone’s network infrastructure.
The opportunity to acquire network infrastructure and specifically telecommunication Points of Presence (PoPs) are extremely rare, particularly in core data centre markets such as London and its environs
STEPHEN BEARD, KNIGHT FRANK
The data centre aspect of the facility is located on the ground floor of the building and covers approximately 43,000 sq ft. Vodafone has recently consolidated data centre operations from other buildings to the property.
The current passing rent is close to £2.2m per annum and there are five yearly RPI linked rent reviews with a cap and collar between 2% and 5% compounded annually. The guide price reflects a net initial yield of 5.5%.
Stephen Beard, head of global data centres, Knight Frank, said: “The opportunity to acquire network infrastructure and specifically telecommunication Points of Presence (PoPs) are extremely rare, particularly in core data centre markets such as London and its environs.
“These network ‘train stations’ are difficult to lift and shift given the impact this has across the entire network and as such they provide extremely strong tenant commitment.
“Whilst the unexpired term of 17.6 years is some way off, this does provide for the opportunity should the landlord so wish, to undertake a c.25MW colocation hyperscale development once the Bracknell data centre market fully matures.”
Operators looking outside hotspots
West London’s data centre market is the largest colocation market by built IT power in Europe, and the largest in the world after Ashburn VA. Total take-up in Q2 was a record 76MW, more than double the 34MW take up seen in Q1 and nearly as much as the whole of 2019, according to research from Knight Frank.
Although Bracknell has not historically been a cloud data centre market, operators are beginning to look at options to the west of traditional hubs like Slough, Hayes, London Docklands and Hemel Hempstead for affordable rental rates and high voltage power.
The former Hewlett Packard UK HQ site in Bracknell was recently purchased by Edge Core. The US wholesale data centre operator has secured planning consent for an 80,000 sq ft data centre with a further 15,000 sq ft of ancillary office space at the site.
Beard added: “The US Cloud is certainly drifting west with Edge Core having recently secured planning consent for a hyperscale development on the former HP office campus – a stone’s throw from this asset.”
