Digital Realty to Buy U.K. Data Centers for $1.1 Billion

Digital Realty Trust Inc., (DLR) the largest provider of data-center real estate, agreed to buy three properties near London for 715.6 million pounds ($1.1 billion).

The Sentrum Portfolio will be purchased with cash, debt and a bridge loan, the San Francisco-based company said in a statement today. Digital Realty also plans to sell 8.35 million shares in a public offering to help fund the acquisition, according to a separate statement today. It didn’t disclose the name of the seller.

The European data center market is less mature than in North America and should “sustain solid growth,” equity researcher Benchmark Co. LLC said in a December report. Four- fifths of the space in the Sentrum Portfolio is currently rented, with an average of eight years remaining on the leases, according to the statement.

“There is a significant value-add opportunity to lease the balance of the portfolio’s available space,” Scott Peterson, chief acquisitions officer for Digital Realty, said in the statement.

The portfolio includes 761,000 square feet (71,000 square meters) across three data centers located in Woking, Watford and Croydon.

Digital Realty, which has data centers in 31 countries, has seen its share price rise 9.9 percent this year. The company acquired a 269,000-square-foot data center in Dallas, Texas, it said on June 21.

To contact the reporters on this story: Neil Callanan in London at ncallanan@bloomberg.net; Prashant Gopal in New York at pgopal2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net