Company: GDHLF
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001410578-25-000935
Chunk: 282

Company: GDS Holdings Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-04-28
Form: 20-F
Item: Item 5
Chunk 282
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 you that financing will be available in the amounts we need or on terms acceptable to us, if at all. The sale of additional equity securities, including convertible debt securities, would result in additional dilution to our shareholders. The incurrence of indebtedness and issuance of debt securities would result in debt service obligations and could result in operating and financial covenants that restrict our operations and our ability to pay dividends to our shareholders. If we were unable to obtain additional equity or debt financing as required, our business, operations and prospects and our ability to maintain our desired level of revenue growth may suffer materially.

Table of Contents

As a holding company with no material operations of our own, we are a corporation separate and apart from our subsidiaries and the consolidated VIEs and, therefore, provide for our own liquidity. We conduct our operations primarily through our mainland China subsidiaries, the VIEs and their subsidiaries in mainland China. As a result, our ability to pay dividends and to finance any debt we may incur depends upon dividends paid by our subsidiaries. If our mainland China subsidiaries, or any newly formed mainland China subsidiaries, incur debt on their own behalf in the future, the instruments governing their debt may restrict their ability to pay dividends to us. In addition, our mainland China subsidiaries are permitted to pay dividends to us only out of their respective retained earnings, if any, as determined in accordance with PRC accounting standards and regulations. Under applicable PRC laws and regulations, our mainland China subsidiaries are each required to set aside a portion of their after-tax profits each year to fund certain statutory reserves, and funds from such reserves may not be distributed to us as cash dividends except in the event of liquidation of such subsidiaries.

Our main sources of cash funding for the VIEs and their subsidiaries have included intercompany loans and cash advances from GDS Holdings, our subsidiaries and cash generated from operations. In the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2023, GDS Holdings and our subsidiaries did not provide any additional intercompany loans to the VIEs and their subsidiaries and the VIEs and their subsidiaries did not repay any existing intercompany loans to GDS Holdings and our subsidiaries. In the year ended December 31, 2024, GDS Holdings and our subsidiaries did not provide any additional intercompany loans to the VIEs or their subsidiaries and the VIEs and their subsidiaries repaid RMB132.0 million (US$18.1 million) of existing intercompany loans to GDS Holdings and our subsidiaries. As