AI stocks have been the hot trade over the past year. Companies like Nvidia have made a mint by developing GPUs and other chips for data centers training AI models. The semiconductor's data center revenue has exploded 66% over the past year. That has helped drive a nearly 50% surge in Nvidia's stock price in the last 12 months.
However, the Nvidias of the world aren't the only ticket to AI profits. AI companies need physical real estate to house all their Nvidia Blackwell GPUs and other tech hardware to support their AI ambitions. That's opening the doors to a generational value-creation opportunity for Prologis (PLD 1.92%) to leverage its expertise in constructing powered building shells to cash in on the AI megatrend.
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Right in Prologis' wheelhouse
Prologis is one of the world's largest real estate investment trusts (REITs). It has a nearly irreplaceable portfolio of roughly 5,900 buildings totaling 1.3 billion square feet across 20 countries. Prologis has developed many of these buildings from the ground up.
The leading industrial REIT's development experience has led it to build a vast land bank to support its future growth. It has enough land to support $42.6 billion in total future investments. Prologis has also become a leader in installing solar and battery storage systems at its sites to provide for its customers' power needs, installing over 1 gigawatt (GW) across its portfolio.
NYSE: PLD
Key Data Points
Prologis's experience in constructing powered building shells has led it to start investing developing data centers. It's building these facilities on some of its land bank.
A generational value-creation opportunity
The world needs to invest a staggering $7 trillion in data centers by 2030 to keep pace with the growth in compute power, according to McKinsey Research. Prologis is working to secure a slice of this massive opportunity. It has started developing modern AI-enabled buildings to suit the needs of large-scale data center operators. It will build facilities from the ground up or convert existing warehouses to data centers.
Prologis believes that it can build up to 10 GW of data center capacity over the next decade. That would require an investment of $30 billion to $50 billion. The company estimates that this investment has the potential to create $7.5 billion to $25 billion in value for its shareholders. That's due to the very lucrative economics of data center development projects. While each project costs $150 million to $500 million (much higher than a warehouse, which costs between $25 million and $75 million), the development yields are also much higher at 7.5% to 10% compared to 6%-7% for a warehouse development.
Leveraging its expertise to cash in on AI's real estate needs
Companies need physical space in data centers with secure power sources to support their AI operations. That has opened the doors to a very lucrative opportunity for Prologis to leverage its development experience, power expertise, and land bank to build data centers. These investments should be highly profitable for the REIT, making it a great way to grab some AI profits without chasing high-flying AI stocks like Nvidia.
