Piemonte Holding to invest over US$100mn in datacenters in H2

Rio de Janeiro-based Piemonte Holding expects to invest 600mn reais (US$116mn) in expanding datacenters and acquiring new sites in Brazil in the second half of the year, in line with what it invested in the first semester, CEO Alessandro Lombardi (pictured) tells BNamericas.

The goal is to maintain the same volume of capital allocation for the coming years, betting on increasing demand for connectivity, provided that macroeconomic assumptions such as the exchange rate and interest rates remain relatively stable, in addition to the political situation, he added.

The firm's resources are a mix of its own capital, built up over nearly a decade, and capital raised with senior lenders, such as Bradesco.

Founded in 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, as a "boutique investment firm" initially focused on mergers and acquisitions, as well as other strategic consulting services, Piemonte has diversified its portfolio over the years.

In 2018, Piemonte began designing an infrastructure strategy aimed at seizing opportunities in the field of digital transformation, Lombardi said.

The following year, the company acquired a stake, currently at 22%, in the GBT DataCenter in Brasília, which offers collocation datacenter services to Brazilian public banks Caixa Econômica Federal and Banco do Brasil.

But the company's great leap in the segment came a year later. Through the vehicle Titan Venture, Piemonte was the winner last November of the auction of Oi's datacenters, snapping up five sites for 327mn reais.

Facing the uncertainties of the pandemic, other potential buyers of Oi's datacenters “temporarily” hit the brakes, which allowed Piemonte to make a more attractive pre-offer for the assets, according to the CEO. 

With this, it obtained the status of “stalking horse” (preferential status) in the auction and ended up victorious.

The acquisition of Oi's datacenters has now been cleared by antitrust watchdog Cade. 

Currently, Piemonte is making updates and expansions to the assets, although Lombardi says they have been “kept in excellent condition by Oi.”

In late July, Piemonte went shopping again and signed an agreement to buy Globo's datacenter, near the Olympic complex in the west of the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, for an undisclosed sum. This deal is still pending approval from Cade.

Lombardi says other acquisitions are likely to be made in the coming months, under a primary strategy of geographic diversification within Brazil and in order to create a datacenter federation, says the executive.

The country's northeast region, around Fortaleza, which has became the main submarine cable hub in South America, is one of these potential new markets.

Lombardi has also not ruled out building or acquiring assets in Uruguay and Argentina in the near future, leveraging on one of the five datacenters it acquired from Oi, which is located in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul state.

Piemonte's project is "very long term", says Lombardi. The goal, however, is not to become a large-scale datacenter group in terms of assets and power capacity, but rather to focus on "selected, quality assets."

From a digital infra perspective, the focus remains digital on the datacenter segment, but for the last four years Piemonte has been studying business models and financial aspects related to complementary segments, such as telecommunications towers.

“These segments are complementary [from the point of view of connectivity], but different in terms of the operation of business,” Lombardi said.