NextDC shares fell 41.7 percent on Wednesday after the company cut its FY27 revenue guidance. Delays to electricity upgrades at its M3 Melbourne data centre forced it to remove about $140 million in anticipated revenue from affected contracts.
Net revenue guidance is now $475–500 million. The drop wiped about $3 billion from the company’s market value in a single session. Capital Brief described it as a demonstration of the financial risk when power delays and community opposition hit the data centre sector.
What the NextDC shares fall was about
NextDC is an established operator. It is not a pre-revenue developer. The cut was to contracts that depended on the Melbourne power upgrade arriving on time. The company did not name the counterparties. It did not say how long the delay will last.
The same week, Firmus told the ABC that full funding for its Long Reach site in Tasmania has not been secured, and that it is still pursuing private capital after withdrawing its ASX application. Independent senator David Pocock has floated a 5 percent levy on local data centre revenue, which he believes could raise $500 million over four years. The NextDC move is the listed-market version of the same pressure.
Why the power delay matters
Australian data centre operators have spent the last two years arguing that the constraint is not demand. It is power, water and planning. M3 is a live site. The revenue that came out of guidance was already contracted. When the electricity upgrade slipped, the contracts slipped with it.
NextDC’s peers will now be asked the same question in every investor call: which of your sites still depend on a grid upgrade that has not been finished. The answer is no longer theoretical. It is on the board.
