Equinix To Enter Mexico Data Center Market With Axtel Acquisition: Report

Equinix is reportedly looking to buy data centers in Mexico from telecommunication company Axtel.

The rapid pace of M&A in the data center market looks to be continuing as Equinix is reportedly looking to acquire the data centers of Axtel SAB for around $200 million.

Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, said the data center giant is in advanced talks to buy the Monterrey, Mexico-based telecommunications specialist Axtel’s data centers who owns several facilities throughout Mexico including in Monterey and Queretaro. Equinix will acquire a majority stake in publicly-held company, while Axtel plans to keep a minority stake, according to Bloomberg.

Equinix and Axtel did not respond to requests for comment by press time. Axtel stock is up 3 percent as of Thursday afternoon at $2.95 per share.

[Related: NTT To Build $500 Million Data Center In Indonesia]

Buying Axtel would open the door for Equinix, who made CRN’s 2019 Data Center 50 list, to enter into the Mexico market where it currently lacks any data centers as well as a much larger footprint in Latin America.

Redwood City, Calif.-based Equinix has dozens of data centers scattered across the U.S. as well as facilities in Toronto, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Bogota, Colombia. The data center giant has over 200 data centers in more than 50 markets across the globe. The company touts its Platform Equinix as the world’s largest global platform of interconnected data centers and business ecosystems supporting over 9,800 companies, 2,500 cloud providers and 333,000 interconnections.

The data center market is on fire in terms of the amount of acquisitions being made in 2019. The market is on pace to break the record this year after a whopping 52 data-center oriented acquisitions closed in the first half of 2019, according to Synergy Research Group. Eight more deals closed since the beginning of July while 14 more have been agreed upon with formal closure pending.

Equinix and Digital Reality are leading the M&A charge, which in aggregate accounted for 36 percent of the value of deals closed over the last four years.

In April, Equinix acquired Switch Datacenters AMS1 data center business in Amsterdam for $34 million to expand its worldwide presence. One of the largest data center deals in years was Equinix’s acquisition of Verizon’s 29 data centers in 2017.

In other recent Equinix news, the company last week hired Justin Dustzadeh as its new chief technology officer responsible for driving the company’s technology innovation roadmap. Dustzadeh was previously head of global network & software platform for Uber and has also held the role of chief technology officer and vice president of technology strategy at Huawei.