New York-listed DigitalBridge has been named preferred bidder for Ausgrid's Plus Es, Australia's largest smart meter provider, in a deal valuing the business at about $3 billion. The digital infrastructure investor beat a consortium of Future Fund, Morrison and Aware Super in the final round of a long-running auction run by RBC Capital Markets, having earlier seen off KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners.
The deal hands DigitalBridge control of a business with 36% share of the smart meter market, ahead of rivals Intellihub and Bluecurrent. Plus Es supplies meters to AGL Energy, Alinta Energy, EnergyAustralia and Red Energy, and generated $150 million in earnings for the 2025 financial year after compounding at 25% annually, driven by a legal requirement for retailers to phase out old meters by 2030.
For Ausgrid, the sale caps years of shareholder disagreement over how to handle the business between NSW, IFM Investors, APG and AustralianSuper. S&P has said offloading Plus Es would reduce Ausgrid's exposure to unregulated earnings, leaving the group drawing about 90% of earnings from its regulated network operations.
DigitalBridge has framed Plus Es as sitting at the intersection of digital infrastructure and the energy transition, with the deal adding to a run of global capital treating metering networks as a new class of digital infrastructure. It follows DigitalBridge's unsuccessful tilt at Macquarie's AirTrunk in 2024, when it lost out to Blackstone and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
