SDHG (00412) plans to strategically invest in VNET.US to lay out the new infrastructure industry track.

On November 16th, SDHG (00412) announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary plans to invest a total of $299 million to subscribe to a newly issued 650,424,192 ordinary shares of VNET.US, a US-listed company. The completion of this transaction is subject to the fulfillment of the preconditions stated in the investment agreement (including approval by the shareholders at a special general meeting). The announcement stated that the subscription price for each Class A common share is $0.4597, or $2.7582 per American Depositary Share (ADS). Each ADS represents 6 Class A common shares. The subscription price is determined by referencing the average price of the ADSs during the last 90 trading days up to and including the last trading day preceding the date of the investment agreement, as well as the unaudited financial performance of VNET until the second quarter of June 30, 2023. VNET is a leading operator-neutral and cloud-neutral data center service provider in China, dedicated to improving the reliability, security, and speed of customers' internet infrastructure. It offers services such as data centers, cloud services, and dedicated business VPNs. Currently, VNET operates in more than 30 cities in China, providing stable and diverse services to over 7,000 corporate clients, including internet companies, government agencies, blue-chip companies, and numerous small and medium enterprises. SDHG is an important overseas investment and financing platform for Shandong Hi-speed Group and emerging industries. In May 2022, SDHG acquired SDHS NEW ENERGY Group (formerly known as Beijing Enterprises Clean Energy Group), a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, to enter the new energy industry at a high starting point. Leveraging the abundant resources of its controlling shareholder, Shandong Hi-speed Group, SDHS NEW ENERGY is driving the high-quality integration development of infrastructure grids and energy networks. Currently, the installed capacity of its photovoltaic and wind power is over 4 GW. Market analysts believe that in recent years, with the trend of promoting the digital economy and the construction of a digital China, the scale of computing infrastructure has been growing rapidly. Particularly, with the further expansion of AI computing power applications represented by ChatGPT, the demand for computing power has increased dramatically, leading to a sharp rise in electricity consumption. Against the background of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality," it has created market demand for the green and low-carbon development of data centers. Through this strategic investment in VNET, SDHG aims to complete its industrial layout in the digital new infrastructure track, promote the synergistic linkage between its green energy industry and the data center industry, and create a collaborative industrial ecological model of "source-network-load-storage integration". It is expected to establish a "green power + computing power" ecological closed loop characterized by "power generation on demand, power usage when needed, fair pricing, and mutual benefit," promote the transformation of high-energy-consumption data center business towards green and low-carbon, and optimize the industrial ecology and enhance enterprise competitiveness.