Earnings Labs

DigitalBridge Group, Inc. (DBRG)

Q3 2021 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 4, 2021

$15.59

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to today's DigitalBridge Group, Incorporated Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Severin White, Managing Director and Head of Public Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Severin White

Analyst

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to DigitalBridge's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Speaking on the call today from the company is Marc Ganzi, our President and CEO; and Jacky Wu, our CFO. I will quickly cover the Safe Harbor and then we can get started. Some of the statements that we make today regarding our business operations and financial performance, including the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on those areas may be considered forward-looking and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. All information discussed on this call is as of today, November 4, 2021 and DigitalBridge does not intend and undertakes no duty to update it for future events or circumstances. For more information, please refer to the Risk Factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K filed with the SEC and in our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. Great. So we are going to cover our standard agenda today; Marc will start with our 3Q highlights, Jacky will provide an overview of our quarterly financial results and then Marc will do a quick deep dive on one of our innovative businesses and executing the digital play section and will end with some key takeaways followed by Q&A. We’ve had a great quarter and we have been busy. So let’s get started. With that, I will turn the call over to Marc Ganzi, our President and CEO. Marc?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Thanks, Severin. I'd like to start by thanking everyone for their interest and attention today, especially new investors that are just learning about DigitalBridge for the first time. So where are we? On our finish the mission mantra for 2021. As many of you know, we announced the sale of our Wellness Business earlier this quarter, taking us effectively to 100% rotated on digital infrastructure on a pro forma basis. I want to put that into some perspective because the team will have really achieved something special this year when that deal closes in Q1 of 2022. As you can see on the Slide, that's the successful rotation of over 73 billion in assets under management. We've harvested 33 billion of legacy assets and building over 40 billion of AUM in digital infrastructure a sector, an asset class, where the DigitalBridge team has a long history of investing successfully over the last 25 years. Not only investing but building, managing and owning and operating digital infrastructure assets. We're now 100% aligned with the powerful secular tailwinds driving investment and connectivity on a global basis. The transition as we call it is not just about asset rotation. I'm here to tell you it's been a complete transformation of the company. Our corporate capitalization has gone from being over levered with over 7 billion in debt to just over 1 billion in the last year alone. And just as important to this, our corporate governance has also been completely overhauled. With new senior leadership in place, and a more digital, more focused and more diverse board, helping us navigate the DigitalBridge roadmap and ecosystem. I want to take this opportunity to thank the entire team for really amazing execution, especially when you consider it's happened in less than three years. We're a…

Jacky Wu

Analyst

Thank you, Marc, and good morning, everyone. Beginning this quarter, we have expanded our supplemental financial package to include two years of trailing quarterly details on the company to provide increased disclosures and transparency on our operations. We filed the new report this morning, which is available within the shareholder section of our website. Starting with our third quarter results on Page 13, the company has seen rapid growth in its core digital segments driven by strong capital formation momentum in digital investment management, and by new acquisitions and organic growth and digital operating. For the third quarter reported total consolidated revenues were $252 million, which is more than double the same period last year. Total company adjusted EBITDA was $18 million on a pro rata basis. Core FFO was $2 million and GAAP net income attributable to common stockholders was $41 million, or $0.08 per share. Each of these total company earnings metrics have shown continued improvement from prior periods driven by accelerated growth within the segment --digital segments and lower legacy corporate expenses as we have sold off legacy non-digital assets. Know that nearly all of our remaining legacy non-digital assets are now classified as discontinued operations and no longer contributing to adjusted EBITDA and core FFO. Existing liquidity and anticipated legacy monetization represents over $1.5 billion of untapped near term earnings power that will contribute to adjusted EBITDA and core FFO as the capital is redeployed in the near future. Beginning in the third quarter, the company introduced adjusted funds from operations, core AFFO as a key metric, which the detox necessary recurring capital expenditures to maintain the performance of its operating properties in line with other digital peers. Third quarter AFFO was $1 million net of 1 million of recurring CapEx were just temporarily elevated from…

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Thanks, Jacky. Great job by you and the entire finance team. I really, really appreciate the efforts. So I talked about it in our portfolio activity update earlier in the presentation about how effective we've been in transforming and scaling our portfolio companies. One such example is AtlasEdge. This is a case study I've been looking forward to highlighting since we announced the investment back in May for just that reason. It starts with a little bit of perspective, and most of all, a lot of conviction around the European edge opportunity. This is a market where mobile data traffic is projected to grow by 4x over the next five years, and at the same time connected devices reach over 4.3 billion by 2025. This is strong growth and it's scaling, increasing the market by 1.7x in a short five-year period. But here's the other side of that coin. It's a highly fragmented market, where cloud hyperscale and enterprise customers have a hard time accessing low latency solutions with broad coverage and this is where AtlasEdge will thrive. AtlasEdge is our joint venture with Liberty Global, we announced earlier this year. It's that single one stop shop providing customers with a single integrated edge infrastructure platform with a Pan European footprint. Let's move forward to the next slide. So as I said, earlier, this year, we partnered with Liberty Global to launch the platform, a new European edge infrastructure business designed to capitalize on the opportunity that I just described. In less than six months, we've helped rapidly transform and scale AtlasEdge into a leading European data center provider, built to serve the growing demand from cloud providers, streamers and enterprises for high performance, scalable, and secure edge infrastructure. The business plan is rooted in key tenants that drive all…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question has come from the line of Colby Synesael with Cowen.

Colby Synesael

Analyst

One quick one, just more off housekeeping but just wanted to confirm. Are you intending to give AFFO guidance for 2022 next year? And then I think you guys just previously said that you think that this business is capable of sustaining plus 10% type AFFO growth curious if that's something you're still endorsing? And then, also as it relates to the digital operating business, obviously you have DataBank and Vantage SDC assets, would you consider adding incremental stabilized assets that come from non-Vantage effectively from other potential opportunities that might be out there? And if so, would those be effectively integrated? Is that how you would initially think about something like that? Or do you think that there's enough out there to potentially have those stay on their own? Thank you.

Jacky Wu

Analyst

Colby, this is Jacky. On the two housekeeping items and now flip it over to Marc on the strategic question. But yes and yes are the answers on your questions. So yes, we will give AFFO guidance in the -- with the fourth quarter earnings release in February, March timeframe. And then with AFFO growth, we continue to expect that our businesses are primed to have those types of growth increases.

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Yes, that's right, Jacky. And, hey, Colby, good morning. On the stabilize side, yes, we are evaluating other stabilized data centers as we speak, not just inside the Vantage family and the DataBank family, but we do see other opportunities. And we are unconstrained in our ability to look at those opportunities, price them effectively. And then when we bring them onto the balance sheet, we have two fantastic management companies DataBank on the edge side, and then on the hyperscale side, we've got obviously Vantage. So two platforms that can handle third-party management and scale. And we're seeing a lot of opportunity in this quarter. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jade Rahmani with KBW.

Jade Rahmani

Analyst · KBW.

I'm wondering if you could share your thoughts on how supply chain issues, labor constraints and other factors such as inflation might impact the digital business?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst · KBW.

Yes, good morning, Jade. We'll start with supply chain. Depending on the vertical it's had an impact. I would say, remember Jade, we invested in sort of four critical swim lanes. I would say in the fiber space, we have not been constrained. We had purchased quite a bit of capacity pre-pandemic. And so our supply chain related to our fiber businesses has not been materially impacted. On the tower space, we've had some components related to new tower construction get delayed, particularly in places like Latin America, but in the U.S. and in Asia, we haven't seen any choke points related to our new builds, in fact, our budgets for new builds in the U.S. and Asia, we will we will hit those goals. And probably it's hard to say how the fourth quarter will fall in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, each of those countries has different issues. But we do see a little more supply chain choking in that part of the world, Small Cells, which were a dominant player in the U.K. and the US. No material delays, I think permitting has been more of the delays. What we've heard in the third quarter, particularly in cities like London, places like Boston, New York City, San Francisco, we're building permit offices are just inundated. Canada with all kinds of construction, home construction, commercial construction. So we've had to work through some of those permitting issues, which are to your point are really labor intensive. But as it relates to the delivery of the poles and the nodes, we haven't been, we haven't seen any material constraints. In the data center side, we have seen anecdotal evidence of supply chain issues, Vantage, Europe had some supply chain issues over the summer, a lot of that stuff…

Jade Rahmani

Analyst · KBW.

Thank you. On the capital structure side, can you share your thoughts on continued evolution? Is there a target leverage ratio, you're thinking about, is that relative to EBITDA, or debt to capital? And do you anticipate further redemption of the preferreds or refinancing in order to optimize cost of capital?

Jacky Wu

Analyst · KBW.

Sure, Jade. So definitely, we can trade out our preferred equity over time, into much lower cost of capital, specifically around our whole business securitization structure that we closed on in July of this year. And that will meaningfully bring down our cost of capital. So that's our expectation. And our view is that by 2023, upon realization of the numbers and targets that we expect to hit for both our digital investment management and our digital operating segments, we would get to more of a run rate leverage ratio of 7x or lower.

Jade Rahmani

Analyst · KBW.

Any update on how you're thinking about corporate G&A?

Jacky Wu

Analyst · KBW.

No changes. We actually have effectively nearly hit our targets of what we've guided the street previously of $100 million to $120 million even allotted for digital investment management growth, which you saw and heard from Marc that it was prolific this quarter and continues to be. So we're very pleased with it and no changes in our guidance and our views.

Jade Rahmani

Analyst · KBW.

And I think last quarter, you commented that you would expect positive AFFO per share in 2022. Is that still the case?

Jacky Wu

Analyst · KBW.

That is the case this quarter alone, we hit positive AFFO of $1 million. So pleased to say that. And certainly as discussed with Colby at the beginning of the Q&A section, we will provide further guidance with the fourth quarter earnings call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Dan Day with B. Riley.

Dan Day

Analyst

So, personally, for me just timing on putting the dividend back in place, just both timing and then sort of what you're looking at, to have in place before you go ahead and do that?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Well, I think look consistent with what Jacky said about our AFFO guidance for 2022. We'll give that guidance in our fourth quarter earnings, which will be early in Q1 of next year. I'll restate what I've consistently said all year, which is we are turning the dividend back on next year. And the level at which we will do that gates on a couple of different things that happened in the fourth quarter. But we plan to turn on a de minimis dividend. We've always been very clear with everyone that we see enormous opportunity to redeploy that capital and things that we believe are accretive and speak to long-term shareholder growth. And ultimately delivering the kind of earnings, EBITDA and revenue growth that we're delivering right now requires, as much capital as we can keep on the balance sheet. So there's a balance here, as you'd expect. We believe that we have the potential to be one of the fastest growing digital REITs in the world, in terms of revenue growth, EBITDA growth and AFFO growth. And to do that we want to maintain maximum flexibility. But we are committed to turning the dividend back on.

Dan Day

Analyst

Awesome, appreciate the color Marc. Just another question on the REIT status. You even answered this question a number of times on the call. So ask it a little different way, you've done an incredible job fundraising and growing IM side of the business. A question I get often, unsure of how to answer. So I think it might be helpful for the investors on the call, is there a risk that the MI side of the business, grows so successfully, that it jeopardizes the REIT status? And just how should investors be -- I guess, what are the asset or investors should be monitoring over the next one to three years to meet those qualifications? Thanks.

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Yes, thanks. And, Jacky and I have been laughing about it all week, a little bit. I know, it's not a laughing matter. But it is a problem of riches, right. The IM platform has grown much faster than I think we all would have expected. And I think that's a function of really a couple of things that are happening. One, our ability to deploy capital and good ideas has certainly exceeded even our expectations. Two, the rotation has happened faster than we all expected, which means we've done a good job executing. Third, the fundraising environment right now for what we do, is really, very wide open. And folks are incredibly receptive to not only our flagship ideas, but the other ideas that we intimated on the board call, I mean on the earnings call. I'd say a fourth thing that's kind of interesting is, when you have that kind of growth, and you have that kind of opportunity, you certainly don't want to slow that down either. And I think we, we believe we have comparative advantage in our IM platform, and we're going to continue to keep growing that business unit and continue to ultimately deploy capital across some of these new strategies. Now, at the same time, the digital operating business is also performing incredibly well, maybe perhaps not to the velocity that the IM business is growing. But nonetheless, we have a lot of really good opportunities that we're working on in this quarter that we think will bear fruit in the first and second quarter. And clearly, if we are in a place where the IM business grows so fast, and earnings are growing so fast, the potential for DEREIT-ing could certainly happen. We don't want to sit here and tell you today…

Dan Day

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Marc and totally agree that it's definitely a champagne problem to have. So appreciate your comments there. I'll turn it over.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Eric Luebchow with Wells Fargo.

Eric Luebchow

Analyst

Marc maybe you could provide a little more color on the credit strategy you talked about you expect to expand next year, perhaps, parts of the credit capital structure, you'd look at anything on kind of targeted returns? And then over time, how ballpark and where do you think that could realistically scale?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Eric. Well, look, digital infrastructure today, Eric, as you know, is about a $13 trillion TAM. And if you take a modest 50% loan to value ratio, that's a setup that indicates that there's about 6.5 trillion of digital credit, digital infrastructure credit sitting out there, that's a big, big market. Now, not all of that, obviously, is our places we would play. Banks have historically occupied that space really well, in the first lien category, where stuffs being priced between base rates, plus -- 200, base rates plus 300, 400. And that's really not where our product, which is more of an opportunistic credit product sits. Where we really see opportunity, Eric, is in a couple of different places today, one, second lien. We've originated, as Jacky indicated, a bunch of loans already on the balance sheet, where we've done great second lien structures where we see yields in that sort of 7% to 8% range. Second, we've been able to, we've seen windows, where there's been secondary opportunities where we can come in and buy a credit that we think is mispriced, where sort of taking into impact the entry price, and the coupon and the total yield to worst, we think there's a really good opportunity to ultimately drive returns in that sort of 9% to 12% range. And we're finding good opportunities in the secondary markets. And we've already done a couple of secondary trades as well. And then I would say, look, a third place where we see opportunity is just providing what we call flexible capital, where we can do convertible preferred and other types of instruments, that when folks can't go out and raise equity, we're a great source and a reliable source of capital. That certainly understands the business. And…

Dan Day

Analyst

Great, thanks for that color, Marc. Just one more, wanted to get your temperature on the on the balance sheet side. Obviously, you were able to take advantage of -- a fairly favorable, pre-contracted cap rate for advantage STC around 5%. But it seems like cap rates for high quality assets today are probably lower than where you were able to contract with Vantage. So, in the near term, as you see it, are you more likely to put some of that equity to work back into either Vantage or DataBank for new development, as opposed to bring into assets on the balance sheet? Or how are you thinking about that, as you look out the next '12 months?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Thanks. Yes, look, Eric. We see more opportunities for the balance sheet, not less, actually, particularly as we've grown liquidity. And folks know, the balance sheet is open for business. We're seeing more stabilized and high-quality assets that were underwriting, I think this delta between looking at cap rates between 4% and 6%, as you can imagine, has a wild impact in terms of what we pay, how we lever it, and ultimately, what the yield is and the impact to the balance sheet. I think one of the analysts had asked us earlier, would we take on assets outside of DataBank and Vantage onto the balance sheet? And the answer is unequivocally yes. And we're seeing those opportunities and they're becoming more prevalent. So now look, that for contract advantage, SEC was great. It's been a fantastic relationship. Sureel team keep building stabilized assets, incredibly fast. We'll continue to evaluate those opportunities. And if the Vantage Board wants to continue to realize value in those assets, we do think we're the most logical, buyer for those assets, given the structure that we put in place in the management agreement and ultimately aligning ourselves with the management team there. So I'm not trying to portend too much to you. But suffice to say, we do see good opportunities. We do you think we can get stuff priced pretty close to that that contracted rate of five cap. And as you'll see in the next quarter, we'll have more to offer you with better details.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next questions come to the line of Ric Prentiss with Raymond James.

Ric Prentiss

Analyst

I didn't see the CEO checklist moving from transform to accelerate on a feed back on prior questions there, like six of the deck talks about obviously, we are on balance sheet deploy the capital also has a third in the developed market wholesale dark fibers and that means develop. But helping investors understand how you view the opportunities in fiber. That’s a broad word. Walk us through a little bit about enterprise fiber versus dark fiber point-to-point, Home Sell, Small Cell, fiber to the home. There's a whole plethora of fiber out there, but what's attracted to you, looks like wholesale dark byproduct. What will you say there and then I will get back to the buy build question, maybe on fiber also?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

So, fiber, Rick really has to make it easy for investors, we always say the fiber business has two different distinct product lines, retail and wholesale. Retail faces consumers and enterprises. And wholesale specifically faces other telecommunications and web scale providers. And so on a wholesale basis. We like that business a lot, because we're entering into long term agreements with investment grade counterparties that need help building that fiber infrastructure in a specific geography or it’s a specific metro or could even be a series of laterals that we're building for a customer. What's interesting, from my perspective is, our customers are in the middle of a very complex build strategy, which is predominantly our mobile carriers in our web scale providers. They need dark fiber and they need it in different ways. And some of them don't want to do that with a Zayo or a Beanfield, or some of the other different fiber providers out there, they'd rather build it themselves. But they'd rather finance it and have somebody pay for the cost of that dark fiber. And then in turn lease it back. I think, my friend Kenny Gunderman, at Uniti has done that with wind stream, we see that there's more opportunities to leverage our balance sheet and help our customers as they either build out residential fiber plant, or they build out metro plant, or they build out long haul plant, or they build out fiber to the power plant that they want to keep. And they want to maintain control of their network. But they might be somewhat capital constrained, in doing so. So we can provide that balance sheet capital. And we can enter into an agreement that's priced efficiently where we get a nice deal, we get a good return. But…

Ric Prentiss

Analyst

Okay. And so, if you could also talk about developed market cell tower assets, how should we think about the pricing availability in those assets? They seem some high prices out there, but how are your proprietary deals come into play? Maybe on that second bullet on the play capital on the balance sheet?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Well, look, I think we continue to get the [indiscernible]. Jacky, and I actually looked in under growth something last night in our spare time, getting ready for earnings. It's almost like sport for us, we got to look at a tower deal last night. And we had two or three folks on the team working on it in tandem with what we're doing today with you. But towers are in our D&A, we understand it, we can underwrite it quickly, somebody came to us and said they needed to sell some towers between now and the end of the year. We took a look at it, it's probably going to get priced into a zone where it's not competitive for our balance sheet. But we are looking at those opportunities. And as you know, Ric pricing changes in towers, it's not static forever. There's ebbs and flows in terms of multiples and, and where M&A is priced and will continue to keep shopping. Jacky's acumen in the tower space is incredibly strong. He and I've been doing this for multiple decades in the tower sector. And we do think, with the right stabilized opportunity came along, that we could put on our balance sheet, we would do it. But right now, to be honest, in the in the hierarchy of things that we're seeing towers isn't certainly falling to the top of our list at the moment. We're seeing better yields and better returns in other verticals like hyperscale data centers by example, where we're getting that current cash yield, and we're getting the security of a long-term lease. And we're getting to the right returns that I think our public shareholders want.

Ric Prentiss

Analyst

Last one for me. Switching to the investment management side, as we think about the potential future or performance, the performance coming into what you guys might get compensated for

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Thank you for asking that you're the first person that's asked that I actually feel really good about our performance fees. We just got done with our quarterly reviews in terms of fund I and fund II, both the funds are performing in positive territory. We absolutely anticipate strong performance fees in fund 1. And we believe that fun two is also tracking in that same trajectory. If you look at the marks of our investments, and you dig into our numbers, you'll see that both of those funds are performing well and should track well into their performance fees which you our public shareholders get the benefit of. It's not something we implicitly underwrite into our guidance. It's kind of, in the business as they say, it's something that is part of the futures. And part of the magic of what we can believe Ric, what I've been able to do for 27 years, which is return capital back to shareholders, well above modeled returns, but most importantly when there is incentive fees with my team, sharing that incentive fees with my management teams. As you know, Ric, you've gotten to know a lot of my, top 20 to 30 officers that have worked with me over the last 30 years. They've all made incredible amount of money because of those performance fees. Now, here's the good news, public shareholders get to be a part of my team. If you're an owner of a DigitalBridge share of stock, you get to participate in our carry. You get to participate in Matt Serwinowski teams’ management fees and our performance. And look, if you're a student of cycles, and you're a student of past performance, that's probably a pretty good place for you to be as a shareholder. And I love that alignment too. I love being aligned with our common shareholders when we win in our private LPs win, our public LPs also win, because we have a significant portion of our carry goes back to public shareholders.

Jacky Wu

Analyst

Ric, you can see the equity method earnings on our income statement. And you'll see how we're tracking to certainly our underwriting but also how we're marking our businesses as well.

Eric Luebchow

Analyst

Make sense. Size matter, speed matter, but performance matters the most.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next questions come from the line Sami Badri with Credit Suisse.

Sami Badri

Analyst

Hi, thank you for fitting me in. So I want to address something very speculative in the market. And I just wanted to do and make some DigitalBridge indulgent references, and maybe I could get a little bit more of a constructive response from you guys on this. So you have clearly demonstrated that you can deploy multiple forms of capital funding for transactions, you have financing and equity and JV partners all lined up. And there is a fairly large publicly traded asset. That sounds like it's up for sale. Now, the big question is, the market right now has single asset facility cap rates compressing, and then you have demonstrated you are very effective underwriting [EPS] [ph] as against stabilized facilities, which means that if a big transaction with several moving pieces and a lot of financial engineering would be executed, it fall under the DigitalBridge umbrella. The big question I have for you guys is why not go for a big deal like that, where you could really show the market, your financial engineering prowess and just major capabilities that you've been able to build over the last couple of years.

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Sami, thank you, you should travel with us. I need a varsity cheerleading squad. But seriously, we've done a lot of really big transactions. I mean, Zayo was a fantastic case study in our ability to move quickly, discreetly, and most importantly, to get it financed and get it closed on time. And that deal was done in 32 days, we did the Vertical Bridge transaction, multiples of billions of dollars there, that transaction was done quickly and discreetly, largest, private tower transaction in U.S. history, in terms of its valuation. So we're no stranger to big deals. Now, when you reference, doing big deals where there's a potential opportunity to take a public story and bring it back to the private market side. Certainly, that's something we're adept at doing. And it's certainly something we've contemplated doing across a variety of different logos, not just limited to perhaps one different logo, I think just seven in the last two weeks, we've been referenced in two public stories where our name has been around it. And so the headline here, Sami is, we look at everything, and we remain unconstrained in our ability to look at everything from easy to complicated. And some transactions, you're right, are really complicated. And we know there's one such transaction that we've been rumored to be around that's complicated. And look, I don't shy away from complicated. And if it makes sense, to our shareholders, and it makes sense, ultimately to what we're trying to achieve in our IM platform, then we'll go for it. And I don't think there's an opportunity out there that we would shy away from today. And I think our history is demonstrated when there are big complex opportunities like this, it's candidly where we shine. So we'll keep looking at big things. There are some really interesting ideas out there. Some things are priced correctly, some things are not priced correctly and sometimes we can't get to an agreement with people on price, but we'll keep taking the swings and certainly we're capable of getting stuff done.

Sami Badri

Analyst

Got it. Thank you. Maybe just a follow up question and almost like completely decoupled from the prior question. But would you say that this public equity company that is speculated to be taken out? Would that be considered a complex transaction? Or would this be considered something a bit more straightforward where a major private equity firm comes out and takes up the public more like a Blackstone QTS type situation?

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Look, I don't comment on ongoing discussions in situations where we're around a public logo, it's just inappropriate. And what I can tell you is, once again, irrespective of the complication, the underwriting has to make sense Sami. So when you're involved in situations like this, one thing that I've learned in 27 years of investing is, we'll do our own internal underwriting, will underwrite the assets, will underwrite the quality of the contracts, the quality of the physical plan. And then, we'll underwrite the business case, will underwrite the secular demand, and we'll arrive at a price, and we generally stay on that price, we don't move. And ultimately, the target either moves to us or we move away from the target. It's just a simple way of investing. It's worked for me for a long time. I don't intend on breaking those rules. And once again, if you're a DigitalBridge shareholder, you should take a lot of solace in that. That the way I've been underwriting assets since the 90s and the early 2000s, it hasn't changed. And I will continue to be a disciplined allocator of our capital. And people can have a different view of value. And people can have a different view of complexity. And by the way, there's not just one opportunity for us to take a complex situation private. There's multiple situations out there today, globally, that we see that require perhaps our capital and our wisdom and our partnership. That's the most important thing. We like partnering, Sami with management teams. We like working with people and helping them solve problems. And when we find that there's a counterparty on this side of the table that's reasonable and wants our help. Those are situations where we excel. You also can't forget the human aspects of these transactions, very important.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Marc Ganzi

Analyst

Thank you. Thank you all for your attention. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your support. This has really been a tremendous quarter. And I really want to thank my partners Jacky and Severin, who've worked tirelessly to get us to this place. We've had a lot of chance to reflect this week, on our partnership with you, our shareholders. And I want to end by saying, when I took the job with Jacky, when we entered this last year, the first thing we said we would do is be transparent with you. And we would re-earn your trust. And we know that some of the trust had been fractured with the previous story and the previous leadership team. And I'd like to say that I believe we've earned that trust now, everything that we've told you we would do, we've done. And that's really important in this day and age being really impeccable with your word is something that Jacky and Severin and I really believe in a lot. And as we chart the path going forward and move into this acceleration phase, you can expect the same thing with us. Walking down the road with you hand in hand as partners will continue to transform the business. We're going to continue to deliver our performance. And we're going to work incredibly hard for you. It's been a tremendous, tremendous year. And we still actually have, as Jacky reminds me, there's still almost another 60 days left in the year for us to continue to do great things. And that's what we're doing every day here. So thank you for your trust. We really appreciate the dialogue with all of our shareholders. And we look forward to getting together with you in the coming months and continue to share our accelerated version of what the future of digital infrastructure looks like. Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend. And we'll see you soon.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a great day.