At a glance

  • Twelve analysts asked Goodman one question on 20 August 2026: when does the money spent on data centres start coming back?
  • Goodman expects the projects it started in the year to 30 June to earn 9.2% a year against what they cost to build.
  • Chief financial officer Nick Vrondas said a twenty-year lease to one of the world's biggest technology companies sits at the bottom of that range.
  • The double-digit return analysts referred to was Ord Minnett's forecast. Goodman's own target was a range of 9% to 11%.
  • Goodman held its payment to investors at 30 cents for a fifth year while earnings rose 10.1%, leaving about three quarters of the profit funding the build.

Goodman lifted earnings 10.1% and the shares fell

Goodman is spending more on data centres than on anything else it builds. It has A$19.7 billion of construction under way and 78% of it is data centres.

It reported its full-year result on 20 August 2026 with earnings per security up 10.1% to 129.9 cents. Twelve analysts then took turns asking a version of the same question. When does all that spending start coming back?

Goodman gave a full answer on the returns and a group-level one on the timing. The shares fell 1.5% that day against a rising market, and about 5% the next.

Bank of America asked why the return had come down

Goodman expects the projects it began in the year to 30 June to earn 9.2% a year against what they cost to build. Adam Calvetti of Bank of America put it to the company that this looked low, and that Goodman had been talking about double digits a year earlier.

Greg Goodman said the figure depends on where a building is and what sort it is. Chief financial officer Nick Vrondas made it plainer. A twenty-year lease to one of the world's biggest technology companies, he said, "you are not going to expect the high end of the range". A smaller building let to ordinary business customers would earn "significantly higher".

A long lease to a customer that will certainly pay is worth less each year than a short lease to one that might not. Goodman is buying twenty years of certainty and paying for it in annual return, which is a choice any landlord recognises.

The double-digit figure Calvetti cited was not Goodman's. The target Goodman reiterated in June was a range of 9% to 11%, quoted against its own warehouses, which earn above 7%. The double digit belonged to Ord Minnett, a broker that had lifted its own forecast to 10% in the same month.

Citi and Morgan Stanley asked when the money arrives

Howard Penny of Citi asked how the money from a data centre contract reaches the accounts across the next three years. Simon Chan of Morgan Stanley asked how much of the year's profit had come from data centres at all.

Greg Goodman replied:

"Look, I think we're not going to get specific about different projects. We're not being specific because we do not have a specific."

Cody Shield of UBS asked how long the next half gigawatt would take. The answer: "Let's get through what we have got on the page. This is a serious game we are in. We are going to do this properly."

Goodman is negotiating leases in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Amsterdam, and project-level timing would tell those customers what it can afford to accept. That is a commercial reason to hold the detail back, and it comes at a cost.

Goodman is changing how it earns. A builder books its profit when the building is finished. A landlord collects rent for twenty years. Goodman is moving from the first job to the second, and until that move is done the only figure the market has is a group promise of 9% earnings growth in the year to June 2027, weighted to the second half.

Investors are funding the move in the meantime. Goodman held its payment to them at 30 cents for a fifth year, which leaves roughly three quarters of the profit inside the company, paying for the build.

Goodman signed a Tokyo lease three days before the result

A global technology customer signed a 20-year lease over the first 50MW of Goodman's Tsukuba campus outside Tokyo on 17 August 2026. Goodman will fit out that building and run it, a job that at every earlier Goodman site belongs to the customer or to another operator, and it is due in service in early 2028. JLL puts the wait for a grid connection in Greater Tokyo at eight to ten years.

The full-year result three days later set out what sits behind that. Goodman has electricity lined up for 6.4GW of data centres across 16 cities, 3.6GW of it secured and 0.5GW under construction. Seven of the projects are Australian, across Sydney and Melbourne, and Project Pluto at Guildford West won approval on 23 July 2026.

Goodman, NEXTDC, DigiCo and Macquarie are moving to co-owned buildings

Goodman holds about 90% of its data centre projects under construction in partnerships, and expects an Australian partnership by 31 December 2026. NEXTDC is bringing outside investors into its two biggest Sydney projects while keeping, in its own words, "operational control". DigiCo is selling its Chicago and Los Angeles buildings to fund the Sydney site it runs. Macquarie Technology says it is exploring the same kind of sell-down for its planned Macquarie Park campus, and has signed nothing yet.

In each case the investors take a share of the buildings, and the company keeps the running of them and the customers. Goodman's partners in Hong Kong include the pension investors PGGM, APG and CPP Investments. Twenty years of rent from one of the world's biggest technology companies is a low return for a developer and a steady one for a pension fund.

The number that moved prices in July and August was capacity switched on rather than capacity announced: NEXTDC rose 7.7% the day it reported its contracted total, and Goodman fell on questions of timing. Power and planning now carry deadlines of their own. Transgrid can cancel a grid allocation where a project cannot show evidence including planning approval, land and finance within three months of signing, and Greg Goodman told the results call that planning needs "equal weighting" with power.

What to watch

The terms of Goodman's Australian partnership. Due by 31 December 2026, it will show what share the investors take of an Australian data centre build and what Goodman keeps for developing and managing it.

The half-year result in February 2027. Goodman has guided to 9% earnings growth for the year to June 2027, weighted to the second half. The half-year is the first read on that shape.

A signed lease in Los Angeles, Hong Kong or Amsterdam. Greg Goodman named those three as closest to contract. A signature turns the argument about returns into an argument about rent.

NEXTDC and Macquarie Technology on 27 August 2026. Both report on the same day, and both run what they build. They face the same question every half, and they answer it in megawatts switched on.