Revenues jump to €75.3m at Irish arm of data-centre operator Equinix, despite profits falling by 12pc

New accounts show Equinix (Ireland) Ltd recorded the decrease in profits despite revenues rising by 15pc from €65.2m to €75.3m.

Equinix (Ireland) Ltd operates data centres in Dublin at Northwest Business Park (two), Citywest, Blanchardstown and Kilcarbery Park. Globally, Equinix owns and operates a network of 270 scalable, AI-ready data centres strategically located in 75 locations.

The company’s clients include ­Oracle, Nvidia, Google Cloud, Netflix, Dell Technologies, AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Zoom.

During the year under review, Equinix expanded its operations here with the proposed €59m purchase last December of the BT Group data-centre business in Ireland, which includes data centres in CityWest and in Ballycoolin, Dublin.

In August, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) cleared the proposed acquisition of BT Data Centres Ireland by Equinix.

On the business environment in 2024, the directors said: “Demand for Equinix Ireland’s premium data centre capacity remained solid.

“The market continues to show strong growth, driven by increasing internet traffic, rises in requirements for power and cooling, the expansion of computing requirements of the financial services industry, the emergence of cloud computing and software as a service, despite the high capital costs associated with building and maintaining sourced data centres,” the directors state.

The company “is benefiting from a growth in demand for data centre and interconnection offerings and intends to continue to increase its capacity”.

On the 2024 performance, the directors said that “gross profit margin has decreased to 23pc mainly due to the increase in cost of sales in the current year, which was primarily driven by the higher commisionaire expenses”.

The profits take account of non-cash depreciation costs of €8.5m.

Numbers employed by the Irish unit increased from 92 to 101 made up of 76 in engineering and technical; 22 in sales and administration and three directors.

Staff costs increased sharply from €11.98m to €14.18m. Pay to directors totalled €345,000.

The company recorded post-tax ­profits of €7.6m after incurring a corporation tax charge of €652,000.