By Christine Chen
SYDNEY, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Australian data centre operator Firmus expects to lose $77 million in the current half, according to two people familiar with a draft prospectus, as the firm prepares for a $5 billion initial public offering to fund growth.
Firmus, which is backed by investors including Blackstone and counts Nvidia, Meta and OpenAI as customers, is due to begin trading on the Australian Securities Exchange on October 22.
The IPO would be the second largest ever in Australia,
ranked behind Telstra's $10 billion listing in 1997, according to Dealogic data. Firmus could be valued at up to $60 billion after the IPO, according to local media reports.
The share sale will test investor appetite for companies building infrastructure to meet demand for the computing power behind the artificial intelligence boom, analysts say.
Firmus expects to report a loss after tax of $77 million for the first half of the financial year ending June 30, 2027, on a pro forma basis, the two people said, citing a draft prospectus circulated to prospective investors this week. The people declined to be identified because the information is confidential.
The document did not contain any further forecasts beyond the first half of the 2027 financial year, the people said. Firmus declined to comment.
The draft prospectus also described Firmus, founded in 2019, as historically loss-making, one of the people said.
Firmus' losses to date were attributed to the costs of developing and growing the business to be able to enter into substantial agreements with customers, the person said, with the proceeds of the IPO to be used to fund further capital spending.
The firm estimates its data centres, once developed, will make a combined $5 billion in annual earnings within five years, a third person said. The company currently has two operational data centres in Australia and Singapore. Five more are under development, mostly in early stages, across the Asia-Pacific region.
The company will begin an institutional bookbuild on October 6, according to a term sheet reviewed by Reuters on Monday. The prospectus is due to be made public on October 8, the term sheet said.
($1 = 1.4114 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Christine Chen; Editing by Scott Murdoch and Jamie Freed)
