Brookfield's Csquare Misses IPO Target As Data Center Cost Skepticism Rises
Dallas-based data center operator Csquare’s initial public offering Wednesday fell roughly $300M short of the capital it hoped to raise.
Csquare, backed by Brookfield Asset Management, had aimed to raise $1.35B by selling 50 million shares at between $23 and $27 a pop during its Wednesday IPO. But its shares wound up fetching $21 each, potentially indicating lessening investor appetite for data center infrastructure.
Csquare, which owns 63 North American data centers and one in London, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday using the ticker CSQR.
The offering generated $1.01B for the company after paying $40M in commissions and discounts. It plans to use part of the IPO’s net proceeds to pay down its debts, according to a release, which include a $771M revolving credit facility, $150M in promissory notes to Brookfield and variable funding notes, PitchBook reported.
Csquare also paid a $785M distribution to Brookfield last year, four times as much as its 2025 operating cash flow, according to PitchBook’s analysis. The data center firm lost $66M during the first quarter as its financing costs outpaced its growth.
Brookfield declined to comment. Csquare didn't respond to a request for comment.
Brookfield formed Csquare after buying bankrupt colocation company Cyxtera Technologies in 2024 and merging it with its own colocation company, Evoque. It self-funded the purchase of 10 additional data center properties in October, valued at $1B, later rolling them into the Csquare portfolio.
The majority of Csquare’s revenue comes from colocation and interconnection services, Bloomberg reported.
The IPO follows other recent AI infrastructure IPOs, including SK Hynix’s $26.5B July listing and artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems’ $6.4B May listing.
But private investor appetite for those stocks may be starting to show signs of waning. SK Hynix’s shares lost 10% in its first days of trading, and Cerebras’ shares lost almost 50%, Business Insider reported.
Blackstone has also made moves to shed some assets in recent weeks. The private equity giant sold stakes in three fully leased data centers to Digital Realty Trust. Days later, its data center arm, QTS, terminated plans for a Virginia data center that would have been the largest in the world.
