expenditure

Historically, big capital expenditure is not rewarded — Subramanian points out, in data stretching back to 1986, the relative performance of companies in the top decile of spending growth has lagged the equal-weighted S&P 500.

Platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime and any other streamers with over one million subscribers will have to contribute at least 10% of their local expenditure, or 7.5% of revenue, on Australian content.

The top five tech giants—known as hyperscalers in the data-center world—total more than a third of all S&P 500 capital expenditures.

Iren said it will fund the capital expenditures associated with the deal through a combination of existing cash, customer prepayments, operating cashflows and additional financing.

The company’s capital expenditure last quarter was nearly $35 billion, driven by its spending on data centers and AI infrastructure.