Profits at the Irish arm of data centre builder and operator, Equinix fell by 12 per cent last year to €6.95 million.
Accounts just filed by Equinix (Ireland) Ltd show the slide in profitability came despite a 15 per cent rise in revenues to €75.3 million.
Equinix (Ireland) Ltd operates data centres in Dublin at Northwest Business Park, Citywest, Blanchardstown and Kilcarbery Park. Globally, its parent company, Equinix Inc, owns and operates a network of 270 data centres in 75 locations.
The company’s clients include Oracle, Nvidia, Google Cloud, Dell Technologies and Amazon Web Services.
RM Block
Equinix has expanded its operations here with the €59 million purchase of BT Group Plc data centre business in Ireland, which includes two data centres in Citywest and Ballycoolin, Dublin. That deal, announced in December, was cleared by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) in August.
Looking at the business environment in 2024, the directors of the Irish business said that “demand for Equinix Ireland’s premium data centre capacity remained solid”.
“The market continues to show strong growth, driven by increasing internet traffic, rises in requirements for power and cooling, the expansion of computing requirements of the financial services industry and the emergence of cloud computing and software as a service, despite the high capital costs associated with building and maintaining in sourced data centres.”
The comments come despite restrictions on EirGrid connections for new data centre projects.
Equinix said it was “benefiting from a growth in demand for data centre and interconnection offerings and intends to continue to increase its capacity”.
On the 2024 financial performance, the directors said gross profit margin fell to 23 per cent mainly due to the increase in cost of sales in the current year, which was primarily driven by the higher commissionaire expenses.
Operating profits fell by 30 per cent to €5.78 million. The company benefited from dividend income of €2.9 million offset by €366,000 in non-cash impairment of fixed assets and €122,000 in non-operating expenses.
The profits take account of non-cash depreciation costs of €8.5 million.
Numbers employed by the Irish unit increased from 92 to 101, 76 of whim work in the engineering and technical side of the business with 22 in sales and administration and three directors.
Staff costs increased by 18 per cent to €14.18 million. Pay to directors totalled €345,000.
Shareholder funds, including accumulated profits of €77.4 million, totalled €114.19 million. Cash funds totalled €4.3 million.
