São Paulo (Reuters) – The investment manager Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) is looking for an investment bank to advise it on the potential sale of a minority stake in Ascentyone of the largest data center operators in Latin America, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Brookfield () controls Ascenty in partnership with Digital Realty, and wants to find a minority partner for , mainly in Brazil.
The Canadian group is evaluating local banks it has previously worked with to advise on the process, including Itaú BBA and Bradesco BBI, the sources said.
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Ascenty’s expansion plans are aligned with . With the increase in demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence, investors are expected to invest more than US$10 billion in the sector in Brazil over the next decade, according to estimates from Banco Santander and the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
With less than 200 installations, the country is currently among the top 15 global markets. But projections from a Santander report point to above-average growth in the coming years, with an annual increase in revenues of 7.1% from 2024 to 2028, surpassing the global average of 6.6% in the same period.
Brookfield began negotiations with banks last year, aiming to finalize the hiring process in the coming months and complete the sale by the end of 2025.
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Founded in 2010 by North American businessman Chris Torto and investment company Great Hill Partners, Ascenty has 34 data centers, operational or under construction, in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Colombia. These data centers are interconnected by a dedicated 5,000-kilometer fiber optic network.
The manager has not yet defined how much of its stake should be sold or the price, and valuing Ascenty is a challenge, as the company is not publicly traded.
Since Brookfield and Digital Realty acquired Ascenty for $1.8 billion in 2018, the number of data centers in operation and under construction has more than doubled in Latin America.
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“In Brazil there is land available and good connectivity with the whole world,” said Marcos Siqueira, vice president of operations and head of sales at Ascenty in an interview. He said he would not comment on the potential deal.
Brookfield and the banks also declined to comment, and Digital Realty did not respond. The two companies each own 49% of Ascenty, while Chris Torto, current CEO, owns the remaining 2%.
Other companies active in the space include digital infrastructure provider V.tal, controlled by BTG Pactual, cybersecurity company FS, global digital infrastructure company Equinix, ODATA, acquired by Aligned Data Centers in 2023, and Elea Data Centers .
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Market share
With 181 data centers, Brazil represents less than 2% of the global market dominated by the US and Europe, said Maria Paula Cantusio, head of ESG analysis at Santander Brasil, in an interview.
However, the US, Europe and India, another competitor, face energy constraints, she said.
Meanwhile, Brazil has been expanding renewable energy capacity and investing in transmission lines, creating incentives for greater investment by companies.
Data centers require substantial upfront investment, and while weather can influence project location decisions, factors such as proximity to consumers, power availability, network connections and international relations also play a significant role.
For the energy sector, data centers offer new business opportunities, but also challenges in planning transmission and distribution networks.
Several sector projections are based on figures from the Energy Research Company (EPE), a state-owned company linked to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, which predicts that data center load will grow to 2.5 gigawatts (GW) by 2037. This is more than triple the current 671 MW load of operational facilities, according to consultancy JLL.
However, growth could be much greater. Government figures indicate that the potential demand to connect new or expanding data centers to the Brazilian electricity grid could reach up to 9 GW by 2035. If all this materializes, it would add an energy load almost equivalent to that of the entire Northeast region.
The main difficulty is identifying real demand, to avoid excessive costs and idle capacity if forecasts from data center customers prove to be exaggerated.
“If there is expansion without load, the transmission usage fee will increase without a corresponding increase in capacity contracting, distributing the costs to other users. On the other hand, if we are excessively conservative, there will be a lack of space, which will inhibit investments in this new segment in the country”, said Thiago Prado, president of EPE.
