New York, May 30, 2026, 15:02 (EDT)
- GDS ADRs finished Friday at $35.45, gaining 0.6%. Shares climbed around 1.2% for the U.S. week, shortened due to the Memorial Day market holiday.
- Hong Kong shares climbed 4.6% Friday to HK$33.28, but finished just under last Friday’s closing price.
- Investors are going into next week looking at record AI-related bookings, but they’re also considering how much time and money it will take to actually convert those orders to revenue.
GDS Holdings’ U.S. ADRs edged up into the weekend. Shares got some help from a firm Nasdaq session and the Hong Kong line showing a bounce. The gain was minor, not enough to make up earlier losses.
GDS Holdings’ ADRs ended about 12% lower than they were on May 19, before Q1 earnings sent the stock tumbling. That’s the main issue now. Investors are into the AI demand angle but aren’t sure when that will actually turn into billable sales.
GDS, which runs large data centers in China, posted net revenue of RMB3.37 billion for the first quarter, up 23.6% on the year. Stripping out one-offs, revenue was up 7.9%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 8.0% to RMB1.43 billion.
Profit jumped, but the math was tricky. Net income rose to RMB2.65 billion, with most of that coming from a RMB2.14 billion gain related to DayOne Data Centers, GDS’s Singapore-based hyperscale data center investee. That was after a dilution gain and part share sale.
GDS CEO William Huang said the company entered 2026 with “very strong sales,” booking about 200 megawatts of net new business in the first quarter—its best quarter ever for bookings. Bookings are contracted or pre-committed capacity that the company still has to build out and deliver to customers. CFO Dan Newman said GDS “further enhanced our financial flexibility” this quarter with the DayOne share sale and a private placement of convertible preferred shares. GDS Holdings Ltd
On the call, Huang said GDS is seeing a “resurgence in data center demand driven by AI” and that bookings so far this year have passed 340 MW. The company’s three-year plan aims for 500 MW to 800 MW of new bookings annually, with RMB30 billion to RMB50 billion set aside for new investment or capex over the period.
Pricing stays in focus. Newman said “pricing for new business is stable” and gave the average unit development cost at about RMB20,000 per kilowatt. He said new assets that have stabilized can make an adjusted gross profit yield between 10% and 11%. That’s the figure investors are tracking as GDS grows.
Analyst calls on GDS are mixed. Dan Baker at Morningstar wrote in a May 25 note that GDS is “gearing up for very strong AI demand for data centers” and bumped his fair value up 16% to HK$37. AASTOCKS said Goldman Sachs found Q1 revenue 1% to 2% under its own and market estimates. Daiwa pointed out that although orders were solid, it would take time for them to hit earnings. Morningstar
GDS outperformed Friday, beating peer VNET Group, which dropped 5.1%. Equinix slipped 0.2% and Digital Realty lost 0.8%. VNET calls itself a carrier- and cloud-neutral internet data-center provider in China. Equinix and Digital Realty run big global data-center platforms.
The Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.2% Friday to 26,972.62, ending the week up 2.4%. The S&P 500 clocked its ninth weekly gain in a row. Tech stocks outperformed again, driven by AI computing demand, with Dell up 32.8%.
But the risk is clear. If power permits, building or client ramp-ups get delayed, GDS might face higher capex before the new space starts generating revenue; management said most of the pipeline should become billable in six to eight quarters, not right away. Huang noted this year’s outlook “is not based on any import chips,” meaning local chip supply and delivery are still variables.
Stocks face two questions this week: Can GDS keep its bounce going when U.S. markets reopen, and can tech keep moving higher with new macro reports in sight? The U.S. Labor Department is set to publish the May jobs data June 5 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, a key release for growth stocks if it changes the interest rate debate.
