Keith D. Taylor
Chief Financial Officer at Equinix
Thanks, Charles. Good afternoon to everyone. I'll start my prepared remarks by saying our business is performing exceedingly well. Frankly, better than our expectations for both the quarter and year and we're bringing our momentum into 2022. We had a great end to the year delivering record gross and net bookings with very strong channel activity while recording our highest ever recurring revenue step-up in the quarter. For the year without any major acquisitions, revenues were up over $600 million. We closed over 17,500 deals in the 2021, highlighting the tremendous scale and reach of our business and the velocity of our go-to-market engine. The Americas region continues to pick up steam growing 10% over the prior year, effectively double the rate improved from last year benefiting from strong leadership and it's distributed portfolio of highly interconnected IBX assets resulting in record bookings and lower churn.
For the company, our churn settled at the lower end of our guided range of 2% to 2.5% per quarter or an average of 2.1% per quarter for the year, our lowest level since 2016, which is highly reflective of our strategy to put the right customers with the right application into the right IBX. Quite simply, the decisions we're making are strengthening and extending our leadership position as the world's digital infrastructure company.
Now, as previously discussed, and perhaps top of mind for you there are a number of macroeconomic factors that we continue to proactively manage such as supply chain, power costs, interest rates and inflation. As it relates to power costs, we're seeing approximately 130 basis points of in-year margin pressure due to the temporarily inflated power rates in Singapore, and the lapping of the favorable VPPA settlements from Texas last February. For 2022 we're predominantly hedged to meet our Global priorities but intend to continue to layer in additional hedges for the remaining '22 exposure to meet the demand for future periods as we navigate past this unusually volatile period. As Charles noted, we expect the market dislocation in Singapore to be transitory largely given the current prices are significantly higher than any other markets that we operate in, and the spot market rates appear to be trending down, although they do remain volatile.
As reflected in our guidance, we expect second half margins to improve over the first half and we remain on our path to deliver against our Analyst Day adjusted EBITDA and AFFO margin expectations. As it relates to the rising interest rate environment. Our balance sheet is very well positioned. We have minimal near-term exposure to rising interest rates with 95% of our debt fixed across the weighted average maturity period of over nine years. And despite the recent increase in interest rate the cost of borrow remains at historically low levels, while we enjoy returns substantially higher than or multiples of our cost of borrow and lack. Our financial strength continues to feel significant and our balance sheet, fueled by our strong cash generation capabilities, has great flexibility.
Lastly, with regards to supply chain and the inflationary pressures in the marketplace, we've invested heavily in a sophisticated and forward leaning procurement and strategic sourcing organization, allowing us to execute against a robust development pipeline across our platform while continuing to deliver against our return expectations. This is not to say there isn't congestion in the supply chain, but we feel very well placed with our partners and suppliers, resulting in limited delays against our expectations. In the fourth quarter alone, we added 17 new projects to our IBX and xScale Go program across 14 separate markets, while we completed 7 projects across 6 markets.
Now let me cover the highlights for the quarter. Note that all growth rates in this section are on a normalized and constant currency basis. As depicted on Slide 4, global Q4 revenues were $1.706 billion, up 10% over the same quarter last year and above the top end of our guidance range due to strong business performance led by the Americas. Consistent with our expectations, non-recurring revenue stepped down to 6% of total revenues in the quarter due to timing of large customer installations. Interconnection revenues were 19% of recurring revenues with strong growth across all three regions, reflecting the continued benefit of our global platform and diversified product portfolio. Q4 revenues net of our FX hedges included a $5 million headwind when compared to our prior guidance. Global Q4 adjusted EBITDA was $788 million or 46% of revenues up 11% over the same quarter last year, and above the top end of our guidance range due to strong operating performance and timing of spend. Q4 adjusted EBITDA, net of our FX hedges included a $3 million headwinds when compared to our prior guidance rang and $5 million of integration costs. Global Q4 AFFO was $564 million, in line with our expectations while absorbing the anticipated and seasonally higher recurring capex investments similar to prior years. Q4 global MRR churn was 2% at the bottom end of our targeted 2% to 2.5% range.
Turning to our regional highlights, whose full results were covered on Slides 5 through 7. APAC and the Americas were the fastest MRR growing regions on a year-over-year normalized basis at 11% and 10%, respectively, followed by the EMEA region, which stepped back up to 9% year-over-year growth as expected. The Americas region had another outstanding quarter, delivering record bookings with robust channel activity, strong net positive pricing actions and lower churn. The Americas momentum is broad based with 24 of our 27 metros increasing gross bookings year-over-year, led by our Boston in Denver and Mexico City, Los Angeles and Toronto markets. The former Bell Canada assets continue to perform better than expected in part due to increasing carrier and cloud deployments in our key Canadian market.
Our EMEA region had a solid quarter with strong retail bookings led by our UK, Dutch, and German businesses. Interestingly, we're seeing growing customer interest in this region given our sustainability efforts, including the recently signed VPPA with a wind farm developer in Finland to cover over 30MW of capacity.
And finally the Asia Pacific region had a solid quarter with strong pricing and new logo activity. We're experiencing good momentum in India with the GPX assets performing well above plan. Although Singapore remains capacity constrained, we welcome the government's recent decision to lift the moratorium on new datacenter builds. Going forward, new construction will need to deliver strategic value and international connectivity for Singapore's digital economy but also needs to be at the forefront of sustainability. We feel extremely well positioned to deliver against the government's criteria.
Now looking at our capital structure. Please refer to Slide 8. At the year-end, we had unrestricted cash of approximately $1.5 billion, a step up from last quarter due to strong operating cash flow and approximately $400 million of ATM funding, offset by our investments and the dividend payments. In early January, we renegotiated our line of credit, providing us access to $4 billion of additional liquidity while also increasing our financial flexibility under a new revised covenant package. Looking forward, we'll continue to take a balanced approach to funding our growth consistent with our investment grade rating while staying focused on creating long-term value for our shareholders.
Turning to Slide 9 for the quarter, capital expenditures were approximately $817 million, including a recurring capex of $86 million, a meaningful increase over the prior quarter as expected. We opened seven major projects since our last call, including new IBXs in Genoa, Munich and Perth, and a xScale asset in Osaka. We also purchased land for development in Belmont and Istanbul. Revenues from owned assets represented 59% of our recurring revenues.
Our capital investments delivered strong returns as shown on Slide 10. Our now 158 stabilized assets increased recurring revenues by 5% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, the top end of our growth rates as expected due to strong Americas growth. These stabilized assets are collectively 86% utilized, and generate a 27% cash-on-cash return on the gross PPE invested.
And please refer to Slides 11 through 16 for our updated summary of 2022 guidance and bridges. Do note, all growth rates are on a normalized and constant currency basis and our guidance does not include the anticipated results from the pending close of the MainOne acquisition or any potential future capital market activities.
Starting with revenues, for 2022 we expect topline growth of 9% to 10% above the top end of our long-term rate replacing the continued momentum in the business. MRR churn is expected to remain within our targeted range of 2% to 2.5% per quarter. We expect 2022 adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 46% excluding integration costs, the result of strong operating leverage and efficiency initiatives in the business, temporarily muted by the higher utility expenses. We expect to incur $20 million of integration costs in 2022 for our various acquisitions. 2022 AFFO is expected to grow 8% to 10% compared to previous year, and the AFFO per share is expected grow 7% to 8%. 2022 capex is expected to be approximately $2.3 billion to $2.6 billion including approximately $100 million of on-balance sheet xScale spend, which we expect to be reimbursed as we transfer these assets into the JV, and about $160 million of recurring capex spend. And finally, we expect our 2022 cash dividends to increase to slightly greater than $1.1 billion, a 10% increase over the prior year or an 8% increase on a per share basis.
I'll stop here. Let me turn the call back to Charles.
