Report: Blackstone Acquiring QTS for $6.7B
The transaction is valued at $10 billion including the REIT’s existing debt.
Blackstone Group is taking data center REIT QTS private in an approximate $6.7 billion deal, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Blackstone Infrastructure Partners and BREIT have agreed to pay $78 a share for QTS, according to the WSJ, which says the companies plan to announce the deal today. The price is a 21% premium to QTS’s closing share price Friday and a 24% premium to the volume-weighted average over the last 90 days.
The transaction is valued at about $10 billion, a number that includes the REIT’s existing debt.
Data centers are among the commercial real estate asset classes that the private equity giant has targeted. Blackstone has been partnering with Corporate Office Properties Trust to invest in data center shell properties, as one example.
Other big players are showing interest in the sector as well.
Last year The Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division formed a global data center infrastructure platform. It initially committed to fund up to $500 million of equity capital to enable approximately $1.5 billion in near-term investments deployed across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.