Earnings Preview for 21Vianet

This is a guest post by Paolo Gorgò, who blogs over at both Nortia Research and Seeking Alpha.  If you might be interested in a guest post may contact the webmaster.

21Vianet Group (NASDAQ:VNET, news, filings), the largest carrier-neutral Internet data center services provider in China, will be reporting Q1 2011 earnings today, after market close.

21Vianet completed its IPO at the end of April, selling its shares at $15, or $2 above the high end of the proposed range. The stock jumped to over $22 in its first day of trading, to settle down at about $ 12,50 as of yesterday (but the stock remains very volatile).

Multiples are very high, as it is the norm for Chinese Internet stocks. 21Vianet operates both its own data centers (with 2,645 cabinets at year’s end in three facilities), and hosts customers at partners facilities, which are mostly owned by telecoms (3,105 cabinets in 44 partnered data centers, accounting for 54.0% of the total number of all cabinets under management, and mainly leased from China Telecom and China Unicom).

In the last quarter of 2010, 21Vinet also completed the acquisition of two companies, Beijing Chengyishidai Network Technology Co., Ltd. and Zhiboxintong (Beijing) Network Technology Co., Ltd., active in managed network services, which now represent about 44% of revenues (Q4 2010 data).

The acquisition of CYSD and ZBXT was made at very low multiples, and will be completed by year’s end.

Here is a quick look at the most recent revenue performance, underlining the big jump obtained in Q4 2010 thanks to the above mentioned acquisitions:

There is still very little coverage on the company, with Barclays Capital initiating at Equal Weight yesterday.

If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!

Categories: Datacenter · Financials