Indonesia Data Centre M&A: Four Deal Structures, and Why Buyers Are Paying for Power

Indonesia has about 456 MW of installed data centre capacity. Between mid-April and early August this year, four global AI infrastructure players announced plans for roughly 2,170 MW more, almost five times what the country runs today. Malaysia sits at around 1.3 GW and Singapore at 1.4 GW, so we start from behind. But the capital has clearly decided to come.

That capital has to land somewhere, literally. Looking at Indonesian data centre deals done over the past eighteen months, they fall into four patterns: buying land, buying operating assets, buying out joint venture partners, and buying infrastructure that telcos no longer want on their balance sheets. Each works differently, and each has its own traps.

1. Powered land: the industrial estates are the first winners

The deal that set the tone was DAMAC Digital's. In 2025 the Dubai group acquired a 50,000 m² site in Cikarang, inside the Greenland International Industrial Center (GIIC) at Deltamas, for a US$2.3 billion AI campus planned at more than 144 MW. JLL brokered the land and Dentons HPRP acted as counsel.

In April this year Princeton Digital Group followed in the same estate. It bought a 106,217 m² site for its JC4 campus, planned as four 60 MW buildings, 1.7 km from its existing JC3 so the two can share power and connectivity. PDG's own announcement did not call it land. It called it 240 MW of "powered land".

Do the maths and the point makes itself. DAMAC's plan works out to roughly 29 MW per hectare and PDG's to about 23 MW per hectare. No factory buyer has ever thought about land that way.

The estates are feeling it. Deltamas sold about 46 hectares in 2025, and data centres took around 60 percent of it. Its land pipeline this year is about 85 hectares, with roughly three quarters from data centre demand. Microsoft and PDG are already tenants. Surya Semesta expects to sell around 10 hectares of data centre land in Karawang by the end of this year, and its management names the three things data centre tenants check first: power, water and network.

That matches what I see. Diligence on data centre land in Indonesia looks very different from diligence on a factory plot:

• Power. Is there a confirmed supply commitment from PLN, how far is the substation, and when can the load actually be delivered?
• Water for cooling, and whether the estate can guarantee it at scale.
• Fibre. How many routes, how diverse, how close.
• Room to grow. Hyperscale buyers want adjacent parcels or options on them. PDG's second site 1.7 km from its first is exactly that.
• Title and permits. What land certificate is on offer, what the zoning allows, and whether the buyer's structure can hold that title. A foreign-owned PT PMA can hold HGB but not Hak Milik, which is still missed more often than it should be.

For landowners, the practical point is that a plot with a documented power commitment is a different asset from the same plot without one. Get the power story on paper before you go to market, and price it accordingly.

2. Operating assets: listed companies want a data centre story

The market is paying extraordinary multiples for data centre exposure. DCI Indonesia traded at about 327 times earnings and 103 times book value in mid-September. At those valuations, putting operating data centre assets into a listed vehicle is an obvious move, and we are starting to see it.

The clearest recent example is NexAI Digital Infrastruktur (MGLV). In February its new controlling shareholder, Nextier Datamate Center, took over the company. On 7 September MGLV completed the acquisition of 99.9 percent of two data centre companies from that same controlling shareholder. The deal was worth Rp670.61 billion in total, but only about Rp2 billion was for the shares. The rest, about Rp668.61 billion, was the purchase of receivables the controller held against the two companies. The operating company runs 6 MW in Jababeka and booked Rp36.3 billion in revenue and Rp9.49 billion in net profit in the first half. The expansion plan is another 36 MW in Jababeka and 60 MW in Batang from 2027, funded by a rights issue of up to 285.7 million shares.

A few lessons are worth drawing out, whatever you think of the valuation:

• How the deal is split matters. When most of the consideration buys shareholder loans rather than equity, the buyer is stepping into a creditor position as much as an ownership one. Read the terms of those receivables as carefully as the share purchase.
• Related-party transactions in listed companies need approval from independent shareholders and an independent valuation. If you are a minority investor, the appraiser's report and fairness opinion are where the real numbers sit.
• For private owners of small operating data centres, listed buyers are paying for megawatts in operation plus a believable expansion pipeline. Your tenant contracts, power agreements and land rights are the asset. Clean them up before anyone asks.

3. Joint venture buyouts: the local partner takes the keys

The quietest deal of the year may turn out to be one of the most important. Salim Group bought out Keppel Data Centres' stake in their Bogor joint venture, IndoKeppel, and relaunched it as IndoData Data Center. The deal closed in December 2025 but was only made public in late August, and the terms were not disclosed. The existing campus is modest: the first 5 MW phase went live in 2022. What stands out is what IndoData says it holds, up to 500 MW of power capacity secured under contract with PLN.

Read that way, Salim did not buy a data centre. It bought a power position with a data centre attached, and sole control over what gets built on it.

Many Indonesian data centre platforms began as joint ventures between a local group that brought land and relationships and a foreign operator that brought know-how and capital. As the market matures, some of those partnerships will unwind. If you are in one, the time to look at your joint venture exit terms is now, not when the other side calls. The questions that matter:

• Who has the right of first refusal, and is the pricing mechanism set out or left open?
• Who holds the power contract, the land title and the key tenant contracts? The JV company, one of the partners, or a separate property vehicle?
• Does a change of control trigger consent rights with PLN, lenders or hyperscale customers?
• Can the remaining partner actually run the platform, or does the operator's exit take the operating capability with it?

4. Carve-outs and sale-and-leaseback: telcos sell the infrastructure and keep using it

The fourth pattern is telcos turning physical infrastructure into cash while keeping the service. Indosat sold its data centre portfolio to BDx Indonesia for Rp2,625 billion, in what appears to be a sale-and-leaseback. More recently it moved its fibre network into a joint venture, which bought 74.9 percent of the fibre-holding company for Rp11.7 trillion. Indosat kept 49.9 percent of the joint venture. BDx, for its part, secured a US$320 million loan facility this year and has just broken ground on a new campus.

In a sale-and-leaseback, the lease is the asset. A buyer should spend less time on the buildings and more on the leaseback term, the rent reviews, the seller's credit quality as a tenant, and who controls expansion rights on adjacent land.

What slows Indonesian data centre deals down

Power is the biggest constraint. Moody's has flagged execution risk on the large projects, and much of it comes down to whether the grid can serve high-density loads reliably. A signed land deal without a realistic energisation date is an option, not a data centre. That is also why a contract like IndoData's 500 MW is worth more than most of the buildings in the market today.

Regulation is the second. Regulated sectors, especially banking and financial services, generally have to keep their data centres and disaster recovery sites in Indonesia unless OJK approves otherwise. That is a real driver of onshore demand, but buyers should not assume it applies equally to every customer. On the deal side, check the business classification (KBLI) and foreign ownership limits early, check whether the land title fits the buyer's structure, and if a listed company is involved, check whether the material transaction and related-party rules apply.

The chair of the Indonesian data centre association, IDPRO, has said the window is narrow and the next two to three years will decide Indonesia's position in the region. I agree. For landowners, estate developers and operators, this is the time to get assets ready to sell. For buyers, it is the time to do diligence on power, not just price per square metre.