Company: GDHLF
Filing Date: 2025-05-29
Form Type: 424B5
Source: 0001104659-25-053917
Chunk: 25

Company: GDS Holdings Ltd
Filing Date: 2025-05-29
Form: 424B5
Chunk 25
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 in service.

Anchor customers with largescale commitments typically move in over a period of 6 to 24 months, whereas financial institutions and large enterprise customers typically move in over a period of 3 to 12 months. The longer move-in period for anchor customers is due to the larger scale of their deployments and operational models, under which they increase utilization of committed data center capacity in multiple phases and in line with the increasing load on their IT systems. During such move-in periods, customers have the right to use part or all of the services for which they have committed. They are billed for the amount of services they actually use, subject to a minimum billable amount as stated in the sales agreements. Such minimum billable amount typically steps up over time. Customers are usually not allowed to terminate their sales agreements before the end of the move-in period. See “Business Overview — Our Customers — Sales Agreements.” The portion of area committed by customers which is revenue generating is referred to as area utilized. As a result of the flexibility granted to customers to use part or all of the services during the move-in period, some of our data centers have lower utilization rates.

#### Commitment and Utilization Rates
Our business model provides us with high levels of revenue visibility due to the long-term nature of our customer agreements and substantial backlog. Backlog is defined as area committed or pre-committed by customers but yet to be utilized (total area committed minus area utilized at the end of each period). As of December 31, 2022, 2023, 2024 and March 31, 2025, we had backlog of 228,787 sqm, 213,640 sqm, 176,904 sqm and 187,138 sqm, respectively. We maintained a consistent level of backlog across these periods primarily due to higher levels of customer commitments and pre-commitments. We endeavor to provide high levels of customer service, support, and satisfaction to maintain long-term customer relationships and high rates of agreement renewals for our services. Our churn rate, which we define as area terminated or expired without renewal during the quarter divided by total area utilized at the end of the preceding quarter, averaged approximately 1.4%, 1.2% and 0.9% in 2023, 2024 and the three months ended March 31, 2025, respectively.

For our in-service data centers, we aim to maintain high levels of long-term commitment and utilization rates. We had commitment rates for our area