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00:00Let me start with the 5G hubbub that we've seen over the past couple of weeks. I didn't even realize this was a problem and all of a sudden a couple of Sundays ago my mom says I wonder if they'll start canceling the flights because of the 5G rollout. Is this really that big of a problem. Well look I don't believe it's really a problem. You know for the FAA to feign they haven't known about this for a couple of years would be slightly ignorant. Remember C band spectrum which is what 5G G operates on. Mat is operating in 40 countries around the world today. American planes land in those countries every day with zero disruption and no problems. So this is really bit of a red herring from my perspective. I've been building wireless networks for 30 years. There's always been discussion around interference with the telemetry of aircraft and we've always navigated through it. The industry to its great credit has done a very good job coming to the table creating concessions. But this really shouldn't be a story to be honest. This sits in the FAA is court. They've got to get it right. Industry has been working well with the FAA working wealthy airlines. They've come to the table. They've provided concessions. You know we've got to get on with innovating and we've got to get on with building these networks. Mark I'm really curious. On one hand you have these grand plans from the Biden administration about building up digital infrastructure across the United States. But I'm wondering if you could also outline some of the hurdles as this gets done. Well look the biggest hurdle is it's 42 billion dollars being handed to the states. Jihye Lee. So that immediately sort of begs a red flag which is where's the money going. How are we going to allocate it. You know my focus is primarily we need to make sure that we're really doing a couple of things. First and foremost we've got to be providing you know all types of communication solutions not just to rural communities urban areas but we've got to use our entire arsenal which is wireless technology wireline technology. All of this money just can't go to the states into those pieces where we're basically putting more fiber in the ground. Certainly in situations where we're overbuilding existing fiber. We really need to avoid that. The second big thing that Outstation Gnarly is from my perspective it's it's really a great opportunity to retrain our workforce. I've been a big advocate for putting Americans back to work and putting them to work in the high wage good digital jobs. We need people to dig ditches. We need people to stack towers. We need people to work in data centers. This great resignation is really an opportunity to create that the great re ignition. We need to reignite our economy. We need to train people. We need to put people back to work. And I think the best opportunity for us and what we can do our part. Your digital bridges continue to invest in innovation centers continue to work with great organizations that are training people and most importantly work with our military veterans and put them into jobs. There's some of the best workers we have in digital infrastructure. We are also outlining a huge gap here because on one hand you have this great resignation and the other hand you have all this capital that is not meeting those jobs yet. So what is it going to take to find those workers to really push forward this digital economy training. It's really simple. And it starts in the universities. We've been putting a lot of capital of our own capital to work in historical black and universities and and working with them to create building data centers and places like Morehouse College and creating internships and doing mentorships with with great high schools like the KIPP organization in New York City and other organizations where we're mentoring people and and creating a path towards education. If we don't get people educated and we don't train them we have no chance to retool our workforce. It's got to start early. We've got to start earlier in the process. Mark it seems like your goals are pretty closely aligned with the goals of the administration in that sense. And of course we had a big infrastructure bill passed. The one thing it seems Washington D.C. was able to do last year. How is that money being spent. Is it is it working out the way it was supposed to. Are you betting on any more. No we're not. I mean we're we're betting on ourselves. I think that's the best thing that we can do here for our investors and for our customers. I think it's as I said forty two billion dollars being allocated down to the states. This is where the money is going to flow. It'll start in the fourth quarter this year. But really that money will not get into the hands of our customers and ourselves until early next year. So we've got a year to figure this out. We've got a year to get it right. In the meantime the show goes on. We've got to build next generation networks. We've got to continue to invest in cloud applications and cloud infrastructure which we're doing here a digital. And we've got to put people to work. These are easy themes that people can get behind that. Yeah. And I guess it made it easier for you to transition from colony capital was focused on real estate and now you're shifting into this. I can see the connections easy to make. Right. But what was it like moving your firm in that direction from real estate to infrastructure. Well the things that we're investing today are really it's the next generation of real estate man digital infrastructure is real estate. So in one hand it was quite similar but on the other hand it was hard. We've rotated 75 billion of assets met inside of three years. You know today we're managing 42 billion of digital infrastructure across five different continents. Today we're investing in all parts of the world. We've got a six point five billion dollar Greenfield CapEx budget for this year to continue to invest in in the key thematics investing and in cloud computing investing in 5G networks and investing in the future. So our eyes are squarely focused on the future. We had an incredibly successful fund raise. Now we have the responsibility to put that capital to work for our shareholders and for our peers. Mark and I guess I'm curious if you think investors who are still focusing on more old line areas old line industries more traditional areas investment real estate like you had do you worry that they'll become also ran if they don't start to transition to a new economy. Well look there's there's plenty of room for asset allocators to invest in tradition real estate. We've made the decision that we want to invest in digital real estate. It was a pretty simple pivot for us. This management team that took over two years ago has been doing this for three decades and it's what we know best. I think the key from my perspective is for our investors and for people that own digital bridges. You know it's about investing in the great secular tailwinds of the next generation and for us investing in data centers and cell towers and fiber optic networks. These are the things where we believe have the best secular growth trends. If you think about where capital expenditures are being put to work in 2022 and beyond. Look at the cloud. One point one billion dollars in cloud CapEx will be spent over the next eight years. Another nine hundred billion dollars will be spent over the next seven years in 5G network. So all of that requires mission critical real estate. It requires the next generation of real estate. And that's where we're going. I think real estate investors have a lot of friends that run real estate funds and run public REITs. They're gonna be successful. They're going to continue to invest. They'll create good returns for investors. But this is where we're headed in. This is we've we've taken the future of this company. Well and a lot of them I guess are down there with you. Market's quite cold. In fact I just saw a weather warning that we need to be wary of ice on the streets and sidewalks tomorrow. You're in Boca. We had a great story about investors in South Florida buying football clubs all over the world. And of course we all swatch kind of Wall Street migration over the last couple of years. What's it like doing business in South Florida. Has it changed a lot throughout the pandemic. It really hasn't. I think the governor has done a great job keeping this state open and he's made it a very friendly business environment for people to move here. This is the third company I've run from South Florida. So we've had a lot of success building and operating businesses here. I got here shortly after 9/11 and I've been here for about 20 years. It's a it's a great place to do business. And for us it's it's a really a launchpad for running a global business. We've got offices in Singapore London New York and all parts around the world. So we're a global organization. But but we like South Florida. Our workforce is motivated. People want to move here. They want to be here largely because we've got a great business and we've got a great investable thematic. But also the weather's pretty good and the taxes aren't so bad either. So we've been here for a while and we'll continue to stay here.

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DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi on Investing in Digital Infrastructure

DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi discusses investing in digital infrastructure with Matt Miller and Sonali Basak. (Source: Bloomberg)

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