Bankinter | Iberdrola is finalising an agreement with a large investment fund or group of funds to launch a subsidiary specialising in the data centre business. It intends to turn this subsidiary, which it has initially christened CPD4Green, into the largest European hub to house data centres and processing for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Its intention is to close the operation of incorporating a partner before mid-2025. Iberdrola’s objective, unlike other partnership operations, is to sell the majority (80%) of the capital of the new subsidiary to the partner, keeping the rest (20%) and ensuring the long-term supply of electricity and infrastructure maintenance. Initially, the value that would be given to the new subsidiary would be, given the proposed size in terms of megawatts (MW), at least €2,000 million, which would require a partner to contribute around €1,600 million. Although Iberdrola prefers a single partner as an interlocutor, it could be a group of funds united in a consortium. The company has a potential portfolio of 5,000MW that could be incorporated into the data centre subsidiary, of which 1,000MW is at an advanced stage of development. The data centres house other companies’ computer-intensive processing computers. The standard investment is estimated to be around €10M/MW, excluding IT equipment. This includes network deployment up to the main electricity and telecommunications network; premises; constant power supply and other maintenance services. Iberdrola aims to overtake the current Spanish market leaders: Nabiax, the subsidiary of Telefónica and the Asterion fund, and Data4, the group acquired a year ago by Brookfield from AXA.
Opinion of the analysis team: Positive news for Iberdrola, which aspires to enter strongly into this business with good growth prospects. Data centres are going to be the new big consumers of electricity. The digitalisation of the economy has boosted the need for data centres and, in turn, the consumption of electricity.
Electricity demand from data centres in Spain is expected to reach 80TWh in 2030, compared to the 40TWh estimated for 2026. In 2030, this would already be close to a quarter of all the electricity consumed in Spain. Spain has the characteristics to be a major European hub. Spain connects the submarine cables of three continents, has the renewables to supply green energy and plenty of land for large industrial bays. Iberdrola has already signed agreements with Google, Meta and other technology giants for data centres in Spain. In addition to large electricity consumers, Iberdrola’s business would be in infrastructure maintenance. Iberdrola is in the model portfolio of 5 Spanish stocks and also the European model portfolios.
