SYDNEY, June 9, 2026, 22:06 AEST
Megaport Ltd rose 3.03% to A$19.04 on Tuesday, extending the sharp rerating that followed its AI infrastructure contracts and capital raising. The ASX-listed network and compute company opened at A$17.55, dipped to A$17.09, then pushed as high as A$19.25 before the close.
The timing matters. Tuesday was the first trading session after the ASX cash market’s King’s Birthday closure on Monday, and Megaport is now heading into the retail leg of an A$827.3 million entitlement offer — a capital raising that lets existing shareholders buy new shares in proportion to their holdings.
The retail offer opens at 9:00 a.m. Sydney time on Thursday and is priced at A$14.30 a share, leaving Tuesday’s close about one-third above the offer price. That gap is the live market signal retail investors will weigh before deciding whether to follow institutions into the raise.
Megaport said on Friday the institutional component raised about A$518 million and drew roughly 99% take-up from eligible institutional shareholders. Chief Executive Michael Reid said the result reflected “strong support” from institutions as the company builds what it calls a globally distributed AI inference cloud with Latitude.sh; the retail component is expected to raise about A$309 million and closes on June 29. ASX Announcements
The company’s AI push rests on four U.S. technology-provider contracts worth A$458.9 million. Reuters reported the contracts are expected to start in the first half of 2027 and require about A$369.5 million of capital spending, mainly for high-performance Nvidia GPUs — chips used to run AI workloads — plus network and storage infrastructure.
Hebe Chen, a market analyst at Vantage Markets, told Reuters that Megaport was positioning itself as a “picks-and-shovels player” in the AI buildout. She also said the GPU pool could move Megaport “further up the value chain,” from linking data centres and cloud platforms to giving customers access to AI computing power. Reuters
The stock also stood out because the broader local technology tape was weak. The S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.24% to 8,604.2, the information technology sector lost 0.59%, and Market Index listed WiseTech Global down 4.5% while noting Megaport as a rare gainer in the sector; the same market wrap showed Morgans downgraded Megaport to “accumulate” from “buy” but lifted its target price to A$21.00 from A$15.50. Market Index
The competitive comparison is not exact, but it is now harder to avoid. NextDC sells data-centre and colocation capacity, including AI-ready facilities and cloud access, while Megaport is pushing a software-provisioned mix of compute, network and storage. Both sit inside the same investor debate: who captures the next wave of AI infrastructure spending.
But the risk is that Megaport’s new story is capital-heavy and still needs execution. The company plans to issue about 57.9 million new shares, equal to roughly 32.5% of existing shares on issue, and says proceeds will fund A$369.5 million for new compute contracts, A$350 million for an on-demand server pool and A$88.5 million for balance-sheet capacity; its own materials also warn that investment in the stock carries company-specific and general risks.
For now, the market is paying up for the AI option. The next test is quieter but important: whether retail holders take the discounted stock, or decide the jump has already priced in enough of the future.
