Kao Data completes £206m debt raise with Deutsche Bank
Author: Jessica Pereira
Kao Data has announced its completion of a £206m debt raise, with an accompanying accordion facility extendable to £356m, via Deutsche Bank.
The announcement marks a significant step forward for Kao Data. It provides debt financing to fast-track its new contracted developments with customers across the cloud, AI and financial services, alongside the build-out of its KLON-06 data centre in Slough.
Deutsche Bank has provided financing to drive the expansion of the business, in line with growing customer demand for GPU-powered computing. The funding will support Kao Data’s expansion into next-tier markets across the UK and continental Europe.
The debt facility, for which Deutsche Bank has been named mandated lead arranger and sole underwriter, will allow Kao Data to consolidate its debt with a single, large financial services organisation, refinancing those existing lenders who have played an integral role in the advancement of its secure, highly scalable, and sustainable data centre platform during the last decade.
As such, a proportion of the new funding will repay Downing, a UK-based responsible investment management firm founded in 1986, which invests across a range of sectors, including renewable energy, infrastructure, healthcare, operational real estate and property development. Downing has partnered with Kao Data since its earliest development debt requirements and has subsequently helped fund its growth from a single-site development to a UK-wide platform.
“The success of our new debt raise is a testament to the growth of our business, our reputation for industry-leading operations and technical delivery, and both the scale and demand for world-class infrastructure, engineered for AI,” says Matthew Harris, CFO of Kao Data. “I’d like to thank our lenders for their trust in our philosophy and ambition, which has been fully vindicated during the last decade, and all who have played an instrumental part in the evolution of the Kao Data platform. Looking forward, we are delighted to be working with one of the world’s leading digital infrastructure lenders in Deutsche Bank.”
“Since our first meeting with the company’s founders in 2015, we’ve been early believers in Kao Data’s expertise, mindset and vision for growth. We were delighted to provide Kao Data with growth capital funding in 2017 and saw an attractive opportunity to support them in the development of their sustainable data centre platform,” says Tom Phillips, Head of Institutional Business Development at Downing. “During the term of our investment, Kao Data has proved itself as an excellent example of what we look for in the businesses we like to back: a high-quality management team with a compelling business case. We are proud to have helped the company establish a firm foothold as a leader in one of the world’s most competitive, international data centre markets whilst also delivering a successful return for our funds.”
Kao Data’s new financial capability with Deutsche Bank reinforces an exceptional 12 months for the organisation, which has secured several key customers from within the AI, hyperscale cloud, research, and financial services sectors. In May 2023, Kao Data announced a new £350m investment into a Greater Manchester data centre, followed by the completion of its KLON-02 facility in Harlow in November.
To read more about Kao Data, click here.
