Earnings Labs

Equinix, Inc. (EQIX)

Q1 2011 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 28, 2011

$1,089.42

+1.20%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+1.55%

1 Week

+0.07%

1 Month

+2.30%

vs S&P

+3.19%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Equinix conference call. [Operator Instructions] Also, this call is being recorded. If anyone has objections, please disconnect at this time. I'd like to turn the call over to Ms. Katrina Rymill, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Katrina Rymill

Analyst

Good afternoon and welcome to today's conference call. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements that we'll be making today are forward-looking in nature and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may vary significantly from those statements and maybe affected by the risks we identified in today's press release and those identified in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K filed on February 25, 2011. Equinix assumes no obligation, does not intend to update or comment on forward-looking statements made on this call. In addition, in light of regulations fair disclosure, it is Equinix's policy not to comment on its financial guidance during the quarter, unless it is done through an exclusive public disclosure. In addition, we'll provide non-GAAP measures on today's conference call. We provide a reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and a list of the reasons why the company uses these measures in today's press release on the Equinix IR page at www.equinix.com. We'd also like to remind you that we post important information about Equinix on the IR page of our website. We encourage you to check our website with the most current available information. With us today are Steve Smith, Equinix's CEO and President; Keith Taylor, Chief Financial Officer; and Jarrett Appleby, Chief Marketing Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we'll be taking questions from sell side analysts. In the interest of wrapping this call within an hour, we would like to ask these analysts to limit any following questions to just one. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Steve.

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Thank you, Katrina. Good afternoon and welcome to our first quarter earnings call. I'm pleased to report that Equinix delivered strong financial results in Q1, exceeding expectations across all of our key financial metrics. Revenue was $363 million, up 5% quarter-over-quarter and 46% over the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $167.3 million for the quarter or a 46% adjusted EBITDA margin, ahead of our expectations. Our net income was $25.1 million, up 77% over the same quarter last year. Bookings during the quarter were solid across all three regions. The pipeline is very healthy, with later-stage opportunities from each of our industry verticals, with particular strength from cross order deployment. Equinix demand continues to be strong globally and pricing remains firm across the regions. Our Equinix platform positioning is resonating with customers. There has been significant growth for multi-site customers in the past 12 months. We now have over 73% of our Monthly Recurring Revenue coming from customers deployed in multiple metros and 53% of our recurring revenue coming from customers deployed across multiple regions, highlighting our unique offering. Our customers are using our ecosystems to sell to their customers in our IVX, a network and platform effect that is resulting in interconnection growth. Before we get into more specifics on the quarter, I would like to take a moment to express our sincerest empathy to the victims of the northern Japan earthquake and tsunami. I'd also like to thank our entire Tokyo team for their incredible dedication and teamwork during such a difficult time. Although two of the nine Japan cable landing stations were impacted, there was no interruption in our data centers or network services, which couldn't have been achieved without the utmost diligence from our Tokyo team. The construction of our Tokyo 3 IBX remains…

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Great. Thanks, Stephen. Good afternoon to everyone on the call today. I'm pleased to provide you with a review of our first quarter results, including an update of the regional performance. Additionally, given the strength of the first quarter, I'll take this opportunity to highlight some of the one-off and nonrecurring benefits we experienced over the quarter, essentially providing you with a normalized set of key performance and operating metrics. Starting on Slide 8 from our presentation posted today, our financial results for Q1 exceeded expectations across each of our key financial metrics. Global Q1 revenues were $363 million, a 5.2% quarter-over-quarter increase and up 46% over the same quarter last year, above the top end of our guidance range. Our quarterly revenues included about $4 million of one-off or nonrecurring benefits in the quarter. For the quarter, foreign currencies continued to be volatile. We have positive revenue benefits of about $1.5 million when compared to the average rates used in Q4 and about $1.2 million when compared to the guidance rates used. On a normalized basis, our revenues would've been approximately $359 million quarter-to-quarter. And then taking into consideration the $2.8 million goods resale in EMEA last quarter, our normalized revenue growth would've been 4.8% above our expectations. Also, it's worth noting, our backlog. The contractual bookings not yet billings at the end of the quarter saw meaningful increase relative to our prior quarter level. On a regional basis, each of our operating units performed better than expected, with particular strength in the Americas. Also, pricing remains firm across each of our markets. For Q1, Global MRR churn, including Switch and Data, approximated 2.4%, lower than the consolidated churn reported over the prior four quarters. We continue to remain confident that churn will moderate downwards over the next 3…

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Thanks, Keith. Now, I'd like to outline our targeted returns for our expansions and provide guidance for 2011. As a number of investors have asked about our expansion decision process, I would like to reiterate how we determine when to move forward with an expansion project. Each quarter, we compile a fill rate analysis of all of our IBXs, reviewing inventory, bookings and projected demand for that particular region. The decision to proceed with an expansion has to pass three internal gates, which include a regional review, a corporate-level review that includes both the CEO and CFO and then finally, a Board of Directors Real Estate committee approval. Considerations include the analysis of the economic returns, competitive landscape, high clients, bookings, pricing, current and projected fill rates, as well as customer demand. We target a 10-year IRR of 30% to 40% when improving new expansion investments independent of region, which remains unchanged from past expansion projects. Also, we expect to realize a full return of our capital investments within a five-year time period. Our goal is to bring on additional capacity just in time before we run out of inventory in an IBX upon market, assuming it meets our returns target. Slide 15 is a summary of how our investments have performed so far. It is a returns analysis of all organically opened IBXs in the U.S. through Q1 of 2010. For these 21 IBXs, our investment of $1.6 billion currently generates about $670 million a year in revenue, with an average of 75% cash gross profit margin. Ongoing capital expenditures include maintenance CapEx are less than 3% of revenue. This means we are generating $500 million in annual cash gross profit from these assets, generating an unlevered cash on cash return on investment of 32%. And yet, only at…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Chris Larsen of Piper Jaffray.

Christopher Larsen - Piper Jaffray Companies

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Thanks. First question for Keith. You had a sequential decline in your operating expenses despite the fact that you added a bunch of cabbies and brought on a new facility. You mentioned a little bit about salary. What else drove that lower OpEx, sequential decline in OpEx? And then secondly, in the notes, you had something about a restructuring charge and that was different, called out different than the acquisition cost. What specifically was that?

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Okay, Chris. So Q4, like anything, when we gave our guidance off the Q4 call, we said that at the time it was roughly $300 million of SG&A. We knew that the expansions were going to be a little sort of somewhat flattish through 2011. That all said, when we go into specifically Q1, you got $1.5 million of rebates and refunds, specifically around the tax rebate in Silicon Valley, so we got a recovery of roughly $1 million. But we also get occasionally rebates from the power utility provider given certain programs that we have in place. So that was $1.5 million of benefit. So just couple that with the fluidity of when and where we spend our repairs and maintenance programs and expenses associated with that, gives you a sense that you can have a little bit of movement in any given quarter. When it comes to the restructuring question that you have, the biggest issue though that we -- well, [indiscernible] biggest issue. We have one asset that continues to have effectively a restructuring charge attached to it. And that's an adjacent building to our New York- 2 property. And so that ebbs and flows every quarter and anytime that we have to revisit our assumption, any adjustment to that liability goes through the restructuring line because that's where it was originally classified. So if you go into our 10-K or our 10-Q, you'll see that there is roughly a $5 million or $6 million, I think it's $5 million to $6 million restructuring charge. It still sits there and we get paid out over time. And so it's the adjustment for that assumption.

Christopher Larsen - Piper Jaffray Companies

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Excellent. And then question for Steve, EC2 [ph] had some problems over the weekend, Amazon's EC2 [ph]. What are the long-term implications of that? Does that change anything, whether it's customer demand? Is it accelerated, decelerated? Do you have any thoughts on what the implications of that might be or if you seen anything from customers as a result of that?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Well, not yet, Chris. And as you can imagine, we've been talking about it quite heavily, as I'm sure everybody is that's in the middle of this space. But not surprising to us with the amount of volume they have that they're going to be the first people running into new technical issues. Our understanding was the software upgrade that has some issues. It was completely unrelated as probably everybody knows in this phone call to any of the deployments in our data centers. That had nothing to do with what we were doing. They're deployed in several of our centers. So it was a software issue. With the scale and volume they have, I'm sure they'll work through that. They're a very important customer to us and we're there to help them figure that out where and when we can. So I don't think at this point, it's our belief that it's way too early for us to think that this is going to slow down the pace of cloud or -- I think it's just part of the growing pains of a new technology.

Christopher Larsen - Piper Jaffray Companies

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Thanks, that's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next, we have David Barden of Bank of America.

David Barden

Analyst

I guess two questions. I guess, Keith, if I could, mostly related to guidance. Number one, I guess looking at the normalized number 4Q to 1Q, looks like we had about a $13 million EBITDA increase, the midpoint of second quarter guidance is a $6 million increase. In order to get to the $6.85 kind of EBITDA number, it feels like we see a slowdown to $4 million of sequential EBITDA growth relative to a history that's much stronger than that. So based on what you guys talked about record bookings, et cetera, it seems like you're teeing up a very kind of meet-able year even though I think every single estimate on Wall Street is below that number. So if you could kind of just talk to that, that would be helpful. And then the second question would be, I think you've talked in the past about the conviction that revenue can accelerate in '12 versus '11 because of the expanding portfolio and the sales people. Your first quarter annualized revenue growth rate was about 20%, the Street's looking for 15%. Could you talk about where you see the potential disconnect there? Thanks.

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Great questions. I think what's most important, Steve alluded to it a little bit, we are investing very heavily in the sales. So when you think about it from a cost perspective first, we have not yet -- we're still absorbing and we will meaningfully absorb in Q2 and Q3 the full impact of all of our new sales programs. And that includes, of course, the individuals that all the programs to get attached to those sales people. And so recognizing that we have to figure out exactly how that's all going to time out how we're making [indiscernible] from that, we give you the guidance that we want to still be a greater than number. So we gave you greater than 6.85. Now it's fair to say though, when we look to the back end of the year and I sort of alluded to in my comments, we see the back end of the year being meaningfully -- we see an uptick in the back of the year and it's really, you should start to take hold or take root, if you will, in Q3 and really accelerate in Q4. And we had a great first quarter, a very good Q4 last quarter, but great first quarter. We're setting ourselves up for a nice Q2. But you got to recognize that some of that revenue had not yet installed, and that's why we made a comment on backlog. And so it's important, as you think about the year, we're setting ourselves up to have a big 2012. And if we exit at the rate roughly that we think we can, we have a meaningful step up in not only the numbers that Steve would be expecting on an EBITDA basis but you're also going to have an impact on what revenue would look like. And again, it's going to tie directly into that sort of Q4 and of course more specifically that December exit rate this year. But we feel very good about the numbers we're giving you today and we'll continue to refine that as we get more and more data and we have more time under our belt.

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

I'd add a point David that, to Keith's point, as you guys know, we've been pretty clear, I think, on the fact that we're trying to get this done, the hiring done, by Q2. And the productivity of these additional sales heads, we're also hoping to be able to be a little bit quicker than that typical nine-month productivity cycle we've seen in the past. So we're bringing people in by industry vertical, they're very knowledgeable of the business, they're learning very quickly and a key to success is, we'd like to some productivity out of this sales engine as we get to the fourth quarter. But as I stated in my comments, this is really aimed at 2012, 2013.

David Barden

Analyst

Okay, that's great, guys. Congrats. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Next, we have Frank Louthan of Raymond James. Frank Louthan - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Great, thank you. Can you give us a little bit more color on the stake in the Brazilian assets, give us some revenue and some other metrics? And then looking forward, what sort of further investment are you looking to make down there? Is there just expansion of their existing data centers or does it give you an -- major opportunity to do some greenfield builds?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

I'm sorry, we sort of lost that little bit on your question. Could you repeat the question please? Frank Louthan - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Yes, just looking at the Brazilian assets. If you could give us a little bit more color on the revenue and some of the metrics there. And then going forward, where do you see, from an expansion standpoint -- do you see expanding those data centers just give you a platform to jump into some greenfield builds? Or what sort of further thoughts in Brazil?

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Again, a great question. Although as you know, we just closed the transaction this week. Clearly, they're already expanding in the third data centers that we expect to open in the not-too-distant future. So that's really the first phase of future expansion. But certainly the second piece is, that incremental to that expansion property, you can add a lot more [indiscernible]. So we can certainly scale in the Sao Paulo market, so we feel very, very good. It's just a little bit early, given the closing just happened this week, to get into the specifics. But what we really want to do is set up the July call for giving you much more clarity around this acquisition. But clearly, as Steve alluded to, we're very excited by this opportunity and we have a number of customers who already have expressed a strong interest in going to that market with us. Frank Louthan - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: And then just one other question. Saw a little bit of outside to ARPU, any particular reason that you're seeing better pricing currently or seeing some improvement?

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

[indiscernible] Seriously, we're focusing on the right customer. I think you've heard us sort of pound the table on this one a lot as of late. We feel very good about the verticals that we're going after. Certainly, when you think about the financial or cloud and IT services, for that matter, network, no matter which vertical you look at, just making sure we're getting the right deployment in the right sort of data centers or IBXs. So from our perspective, having sort of strong intelligence, Jarrett running the marketing organization, giving us a lot of good leads and sort of linking that back into our key verticals, gives us the confidence for going after that right customer at the right price point. So I'll tell you it's more about focus. But we also got to recognize, as I said, when you think about the Switch and Data assets, which are now going to be fully embedded in the Americas region. There's some low-pricing markets and there are some higher-pricing markets, and so what we are going to really focus on is getting the right price point given the market that we're serving or the vertical that we're in. And so our confidence today is just really about focus and knowing that we have good solution for many customers.

Jarrett Appleby

Analyst

I could build on that, Keith. Interconnection growth is driving as well. I think customers came for the network effect, coming to connect the networks. But our big growth now is financial, connecting the financial enterprise, the cloud. It's the community or the platform effect that we're really heading. That's showing off in the interconnection numbers and it's helping us with the ARPU as well.

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Generally, pricing strength tends to follow ecosystem targeting. So wherever we're deep into an ecosystem, we're generally going to have strength. And so that can vary by market. So if you're in an ecosystem and you're doing exactly those interconnections that Jarrett pointed to, we're going to tend to have some less price sensitivity. Frank Louthan - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next, we have Clay Moran of Benchmark.

Clayton Moran - The Benchmark Company, LLC

Analyst

A couple of questions. First, on M&A, just wanted to get your updated thoughts now that Switch and Data is integrated and doing better on expansion through acquisition, do you still, for the favor, just doing the one-off data centers or would you look at something more sizable? And can you give us a sense of where private market values are today? And then secondly, more of a technology question, just wondering what you think the effect of modular data centers and the Facebook open data center has on the industry and on Equinix?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

This is Steve. Let me play start off and then Keith can add some color here. From an M&A standpoint, our position is unchanged in that we're continuing to scale in the critical regions. And again, we feel like we're in a pretty strong position in the Americas, the Brazil decision's been at the top of our list for some time in terms of the market. Our European and Asian teams are continuing to look in a couple of markets in each of those parts of the world. And so, smaller bolt on, [indiscernible] like -- Brazil-like type opportunities that are opportunistic are probably closer to the sweet spot today. The more digestible, the more manageable and that's where our focus has been. It's not to exclude that there might not be an opportunity for a larger transaction some day. But our focus right now is to put ourselves in markets where there's customer demand, where there's ability to put our differentiated value proposition to work and be able to extend beyond our reach. Do you want to add anything on the product market values?

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

In the end-user [indiscernible] market values, clearly there's certainly a lot of private equity just getting into the space. In some cases, they're paying a relatively high multiple. But we can't focus on that. We're really focused on running our business and getting the right economic return for the investment, whether it's through an organic build or whether through an inorganic bolt-on acquisition. We're comfortable that we as a company will focus on the returns that are important part for our shareholders to get, particularly out of that shareholder base.

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

And in terms of the modularity theme, very, very important, our technical teams have been tracking and watching and working with modularity for quite some time. I would tell you, in some of the new builds that we're doing now, Silicon Valley and New York, there's modular design built in to those for additional power when and if needed. We're obviously paying attention to the new announcements in the market. We have relationships with many of those companies today. Our technical teams spent time with them. So it's an important factor and it's probably the biggest issue that our CTO organization is paying attention to. We're not unfamiliar with what Facebook or IO [ph] or any of the other players are doing. Our folks are very familiar with all of these activities. And so there's good relationships there. They have good customer relationships with us. We have a pretty open dialogue with them on a technical front. And so it is an important trend. We're paying very close attention to it.

Clayton Moran - The Benchmark Company, LLC

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next, we have Jonathan Schildkraut of Evercore Partners.

Jonathan Schildkraut - Evercore Partners Inc.

Analyst

I guess I'd like to start with the sales force hiring. I think over the last couple of quarters, Equinix has been out there looking to kind of ramp the sales force. And I know that our last quarter we thought that much of this would be done in the first quarter. So I was wondering if you might kind of take us through some of the challenges you've had and maybe scaling the sales force to a level you want? And then maybe some color on the success that you've had thus far with the people you have brought in to the team?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Sure, Jonathan. I'll take that. We knew that it was going to take up a little bit of time to screen for the right talent that we were looking for and we hired a professional services firm to do that for us. So much of the time in late Q4 and early Q1 was focused on screening and interviewing. We've interviewed thousands of candidates for these roles. So we've got a funnel effect just like we do on our pipeline. And so we're in the mode now of hiring. And we've got great start in the first quarter and the order of magnitude with the changing quota-bearing sales count that we're roughly going to add 35 to 40 in the North American market, call it 20, give or take, in Europe and somewhere in the eight to 10 range in Asia. So that's the order of magnitude and we're well down the path. We will wrap it up in Q2. And very excited about the talent we're bringing in, Jonathan. It's going to change the game and raise the profile of the sales force in this company. We're going to go build the best sales force in the industry, in our industry. So we are really excited about the level of talent bringing in and, like I said earlier to the previous question, the productivity of these people we believe is going to go quicker and the end result is we believe we're going to have one of the most knowledgeable and capable sales engines in the market.

Jonathan Schildkraut - Evercore Partners Inc.

Analyst

Are these coming from other players in the space? So most of these people are coming over with relationship database and experience in the space or they coming in from tangential kind of markets, or kind of fresh out of school? I mean what are you really targeting?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

No, these are experienced sales people that have carried a bag, have been successful in other companies. They're coming in by industry verticals. So they're coming in with a knowledge of customers in those verticals. And their ramp time is very, very quick. So they're familiar with the Data Center business, they're familiar with network, they're familiar with our value proposition and that's why I think we're going to see a quicker connectivity of these folks and a quicker productivity. So we're pretty excited about what's happening. I've met -- most of them, we're bring them in here for a week when we first -- the first week we bring them on. And our entire leadership team is exposed to them and we have a lot of energy and momentum around that. So pretty exciting. And our Global Account programs have been completely staffed at the management level and we're attacking our biggest, most sophisticated Global accounts in a much different fashion than we have in the past.

Jonathan Schildkraut - Evercore Partners Inc.

Analyst

Great. I have a question about churn. We were all looking for churn, I think, to come down this quarter. It did come down 10 basis points. And certainly, when we talk to players in the space, we hear that the company is, Equinix is doing a good job or better job kind of retaining customers and I was wondering if you could kind of take us through how churn turned out in the quarter relative to your expectations and maybe where there's some variance. And then, some color on the relationship between pricing discounts versus customer loss embedded in that churn number.

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Let me take the first part, Jonathan. I would tell you that, again, I was looking at the averages and like anything, we plan our churn at summertime. We plan the bookings and we look debt numbers. And sometimes, something will happen that will come to a quarter that will come out of another quarter. Overall, we actually feel very confident and I tried to sort of work that into the script that we feel confident, although maybe sort of a 0.1% or 0.2% higher than we originally expected this quarter that for the year, we seem to be looking very, very good. And part of it's because we're focused on trying to maintain the customer. There's customers as you know, and I'll talk about it a fair bit, that will bifurcate or will do other things in some cases as consolidation. And we're working with the customer to try to mitigate as much as possible a loss of revenue. So our focus as a team, and this is on a Global basis, but in particular in the Americas that is making sure that we work very closely with the customer not to churn. So we remain quite confident that the next three quarters are going to be better churning quarters for us. But it is, I have to tell you though, it is lumpy. And sometimes, it's going to fall into, if you will, the last month of the quarter versus the first month of a new quarter. And we have to deal with that. But where possible, we'll make sure that we've guided to it. But we feel good about our churn position right now.

Jonathan Schildkraut - Evercore Partners Inc.

Analyst

Have you made any changes to your compensation plans relative to the sales force in order to sign up renewals and things like that?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Yes. We've been doing that consistently Jonathan. We're doing that for a lot -- we have a lot of incentives cross-border, churn reduction and, yes, the simple answer is, we've got pretty sophisticated incentive programs around the world that do all of that.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Jason Armstrong of Goldman Sachs.

Scott Goldman - Bear Stearns

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

It's Scott Goldman on for Jason. Two questions, I guess. Looking at some of the data you provided on the same IBX information, if you kind of compare that to what you guys laid out back at the analyst day, it looks as though there's might have been a slight drop off in utilization, but at the same time, you've actually seen this same IBX revenue growth accelerate. So I wonder if you can maybe provide a little bit more information about sort of what's going on those same IBXs that allows you to grow or accelerate revenue growth in the face of maybe slightly lower utilization. And just in the context of that utilization, what's going on with the churn. And then secondly, maybe you could just comment a little bit about what we saw in the European cross-connects. It looks like there was a little bit of a drop off in terms of the number of cross-connects added this quarter versus the very healthy run rates you've been running at for the last few quarters. So just seeing if there's anything there that we should be thinking about. Thanks.

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Good question, Scott. I think if you take the highest level, the reason that you see the numbers vary a little bit from what we did in the analyst day in what we did, I think was on the Q2 earnings call last year, is now that we're looking at it from anything prior to Q2 2010, we brought in new assets. And because of those new assets, we have one asset was publicly dead, it's not performed as well as some of the other assets at our LA4 property. It has a large cost basis. When you put that into the numbers, it has an impact. And all that we're excluding today, you see that probably on the bottom of the page from a sizable perspective is our D.C. stakes. There's Silicon Valley-5 and sort of the last two phases of New York-4 for all intents and purposes. So I feel very good about the numbers. We feel very good about where we are from a utilized [ph perspective. Because we're bringing in some of those, some additional assets. But you also now are seeing the revenue capacity and the margin potential of those assets. So that's when I feel -- don't think churn's a big issue on this one. Certainly, it's an umbrella issue for all of our revenue activity. But churn per se, as it relates to this analysis, hasn't really impacted in any meaningful way.

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Scott, I think the only thing I'd add is, I think your point to that last bullet on the slide where you see the percent growth has gone up since we talked to you at the analyst day, I think a percentage point or 2. And it's really underpinned as Keith is suggesting by interconnection growth, power growth, the typical volume stuff that we see that helps the revenue growth. That's what you're seeing in the growth in those older IBXs.

Scott Goldman - Bear Stearns

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Great. And on the European cross-connects?

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

So generally, as you can appreciate, cross-connects move the ebb and flow. And as I said, this quarter was a little bit lower than we saw in the prior quarters. But part of it is just to due to migration. We moved some customers into some of our new data centers. And so when customers move to new data centers, at times there can be a lot of pruning. And so what you're seeing there is some pruning activity. But overall, when I look at sort of March exit rate of cross-connect activity, and looking into sort of the first part of Q2, it's back to sort of its normal level. So it's more fundamental to adjust the migrations that took place as customers needed to scale their business and move into newer and more power advanced environments.

Scott Goldman - Bear Stearns

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

I'm sorry, what was that?

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

There were important customers who were cross-connect heavy.

Scott Goldman - Bear Stearns

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Okay, great. Thanks, I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Next, we have Gray Powell of Wells Fargo.

Gray Powell - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Analyst

Thanks for taking the questions. I just had a couple. So with Savvis and Terremark being acquired by larger telcos this year, do you think that creates any temporary disruption or I guess I should take any temporary opportunity for you to gain share against a potentially distracted competitor? And then longer term, how do you think these deals impact the competitive environment?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

This is Steve. I'll take that. It's a good question and it's obviously relevant with all the financial services consolidation and the telco consolidation. And we have a couple of thoughts here in the leadership team. One, generally speaking, we consider all of this to be a sign of the good health as these industries continue to evolve and provide value-added services to their customers. So we believe that this is for the long-term health of the market and creates opportunities for us. So the bottom line for us is, we think it's going to create opportunities for us. We find ourselves in a very good position today and we're quickly becoming the only network-neutral global player that is positioned to help all these ecosystems that we continue to talk about in cloud, electronic trading, mobility, video, Internet. And so we like the position we see. Quite frankly, the 2011 CapEx is a reflection of our belief in this opportunity. So generally speaking, we like the position we're in, we like the fact that we're scaled and reached to be able to satisfy all of these consolidations that's going to go on. And the growth is so strong from all these secular trends that it's going to outstrip any concern we would have in customer grooming or taking away a business from us. It's a very large market we're playing in. It's growing very fast. Our offering is very differentiated. We like where we're sitting today.

Scott Goldman - Bear Stearns

Analyst · Goldman Sachs

Got it. That's very helpful. Thanks. And then just another question. And just kind of looking at your statistics, it looks like your average customer typically has like 11 cabinets, or call it 40 kilowatts of power. That's very squarely a retail customer. Can you just talk about what percentage of your bookings typically come from larger deals, say over 200 kilowatt-type deals? And then obviously, you guys had a big cabinet addition number in the Americas. Was that just like general strong demand or you did possibly do, like, one or two larger deals?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

Generally, Gray, I would tell you that the overall trend is that larger deals are going down and that's generally driven by the fact that we're very industry vertical-focused. We're very ecosystem-focused. We're very focused on interconnections-type deals. A sweet spot of our size deals is a much smaller footprint. When you get up into the 200 cab or 200 KW-type size deals, you are starting to creep into where some of the wholesale players could participate. And we will occasionally been in that zone if it's a strategic deal and it's critical to an ecosystem. But more and more, what we're seeing is we're evolving the sales force. We're focused on a much more different part of the market and our value proposition is focused on a smaller deployment than lots of them.

Gray Powell - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Analyst

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Simon Flannery of Morgan Stanley.

Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley

Analyst · Morgan Stanley

I wonder if you could just review the CapEx guidance rates in a little bit more detail. I think you explained last quarter the rigorous quarterly process you go through looking at your fill rates and your projected demand and just talk about what really were the key elements driving this. And how can we feel like you sort of bounded this for the year and that this is, you got enough of a buffer to make sure that this is really as high as it's going to go? And what does this imply for 2012? Are we likely to go back to a much lower number in '12 or we may stay at an elevated number if the demand trends you're seeing continue? Thanks.

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Morgan Stanley

Thanks, Simon. Good question. First of all, our view we presented to you today in our guidance is our best full year view. It's our best intelligence about what 2011 will look like for the company. And it was really underpinned by four key projects since we last spoke to you. The New York, Chicago, Paris and Frankfurt decisions are sizable decisions. You can look at that expansion sheet, tracking sheet that we post. We're also seeing very, very good bookings and fill rate and pipeline in Amsterdam and in our D.C. market. So we've got a lot of activity going on in the big critical key markets that really is the underpinning assumption underneath this. It does reflect the tremendous growth and vitality that we're seeing in our targeted ecosystems. For example, in New York, at our New York-4 asset, we're 92% committed today. That's a very large facility as you all know and underpins the decision for the next build. And as I think Keith mentioned in that Metro, that has become our largest interconnection market globally. Let me see, another one might be in our Frankfurt market, where we house a very large, the largest matching engine in that country. Just demonstrates the strength of the financial ecosystem there in the hundreds of members that are connecting to that. So it really is market-by-market driven, quarterly fill rate analysis-driven. We have very good cabinet fill rate in North America this quarter, over 2,000 as you saw. I'm not sure historically, that may be one of our strongest quarters historically as a company. So yes, these quarterly reviews, we're still going through the same level of rigor. We're still building in phases so we provide maximum flexibility for ourselves. But we, as I stated in my closing, we see a very large opportunity to really become the preeminent leader in our space and we see the demand to underpin it and we've made the decision to pursue that agenda. And that's where we're headed.

Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley

Analyst · Morgan Stanley

Any thought on '12 at this point?

Keith Taylor

Analyst · Morgan Stanley

Some of the investments that we're making right now, Simon, the cost will go into '12. But overall, it's a little bit early. But it's fair to say that we are making a big investment this year and they are strategic. A lot of big assets will come online in the 2012 time period and I remain confident that we'll continue to have the same level of focus on any future expansions, as Steve noted.

Operator

Operator

Mr. Smith, do you have any additional comments?

Stephen Smith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray

No, Suzy. Thank you very much and thank you for all the participants on the call. Thank you for your time and we'll end it here.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, you may disconnect. The call has ended.