Summary
- Tritax placed 213.4 million new shares at 164p, raising approximately £350m gross.
- Additional grid agreements support two Greater London schemes totalling 235MW.
- Completion remains conditional on shareholder approval and admission of the new shares.
Tritax Big Box REIT has secured subscriptions worth approximately £350m to fund an enlarged UK data centre development pipeline backed by 507MW of power.
The company placed 213,414,634 new shares at 164p through an institutional placing, retail offer, and subscriptions by directors and senior managers. The transaction is expected to produce net proceeds of approximately £343m.
The new shares represent about 7.9% of Tritax’s existing issued share capital. The price was 4.5% below the 5 August closing price and 11.8% below the company’s reported net tangible asset value of 185.9p per share at 30 June.
The equity issue remains conditional on shareholder approval at a general meeting expected on 24 August and admission of the shares to the London Stock Exchange, provisionally scheduled for 26 August.
Tritax intends to use the proceeds to advance its data centre pipeline after securing another 235MW of grid connection agreements. The additions nearly double its secured power position to 507MW.
Two more Greater London schemes
The latest grid agreements are intended to support two data centre developments in Greater London availability zones, with delivery targeted between 2030 and 2031.
Tritax has not disclosed their precise locations or individual capacities. Together, they account for the additional 235MW and are expected to require early-stage funding before substantial construction expenditure begins.
The company is targeting development yields of 9% to 11% across its data centre programme. It said the two new schemes could eventually produce £50m to £60m of annual rent and £300m to £400m of capital profit in aggregate.
These figures remain development assumptions rather than contracted returns. They depend on planning, pre-letting, power delivery, construction costs, financing, and the eventual valuation of completed assets.
Tritax’s existing programme includes the 107MW first phase of Manor Farm near Heathrow, which has planning consent and a prospective pre-let in solicitors’ hands.
The company is targeting £34m of annual rent and a 9.3% yield on cost from that first phase. It is also progressing a 125MW scheme at Chelmsford under a development management agreement.
The combined projects move Tritax beyond its established logistics-property business. Its approach is built around acquiring or controlling land and power before developing a powered shell for an operator or hyperscale customer.
Grid agreements do not remove delivery risk
A secured power position can materially improve the value of a development site, particularly in Greater London, where new connections can take longer than a normal property development programme.
It does not guarantee that a project will be completed. The connection may depend on reinforcement work, milestone obligations, securities, or changes to the programme imposed through wider grid-queue reform.
The two new schemes also have a long delivery horizon. Between now and 2030–31, technical requirements for rack density, cooling, power distribution, and resilience may change substantially.
Pre-letting can reduce demand risk but may introduce design changes while the facility is still progressing through planning and procurement. Large customers will expect certainty on connection dates, redundancy, cooling capability, and expansion rights.
The projects will also compete for transformers, switchgear, generators, cooling equipment, and specialist contractors with a broad European pipeline. An agreement for grid capacity solves only one part of the buildability problem.
The equity raise transfers part of the development opportunity and risk to existing and new shareholders. Issuing shares below net tangible asset value is dilutive at completion, although Tritax expects the eventual developments to increase earnings and asset value over the medium term.
The company has raised its ambition for adjusted earnings-per-share growth to approximately 65% by 2030–31, using its 2024 result as the baseline. It has expressly stated that the ambition is not a profit forecast.
Before that growth can be realised, the 235MW must move from grid agreements into named, permitted, pre-let, and financed projects. Shareholder approval is the next immediate condition; planning and construction will take considerably longer.
