Today we’ve seen HMC Capital-backed Digico REIT (ASX:DGT) hit a new all-time at $4.80; a 3% jump in the first half hour of Thursday trades.

The company is a relatively recent entrant onto the market and its debut was, while not a disaster, something of a flop. Or, at least, contained flop-like qualities.

That shaky first start could soon be well forgotten.

Driving upward momentum on Thursday is around 48-hour-old news from Donald Trump, freshly back in office at the head of the world’s largest economy, that the country will spend US$500 billion on data centre buildouts intended to support AI, broadly.

It’s a consortium of tech companies behind the whole initiative, working alongside the White House, and ultimately symbolises that the latest big tech thematic remains in vogue.

Just don’t look at iPhone 16 sales. If you peer too closely at those storefront numbers, it starts to look like AI is something Wall Street wants – and not necessarily what most consumers might want.

At any rate, the value proposition here for Digico Infrastructure REIT is obvious, even if reliant on contagion sentiment from the U.S.

But one must note the spending target is ambitious. With all of this talk of billionaires and billions in recent years, it can be easy, somehow, to overlook how much money US$500B is.

That’s half a trillion dollars. Apparently just for AI data centres.

I wouldn’t be the first to raise an eyebrow. Time will tell, but for Digico shareholders, it’s a good day.

HMC Capital, too, are probably breathing a sigh of relief. One of the ASX’s biggest IPOs in recent history is now above its launch price.

DGT last traded at $4.80/sh.

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There was some early interest, with DigiCo finding an intraday peak of $5.10 but a quick reversal dragged it back down past its $5 IPO price to around $4.87 a share.

Some of the company’s 2.6% dip on opening day was due to the local bourse dragging lower through a red Friday; only Financials and Discretionary stayed up.

Mostly though, it seemed even the $4 billion HMC Capital-backed data centre landlord couldn’t excite Aussie punters who also shrugged over interesting offerings like Cuscal (ASX:CCL), Symal Group (ASX:SYL), and Whitefield Income (ASX:WHI). The latter opened early yesterday and is selling just 0.39% higher.

Like most other floats since Guzman Y Gomez (ASX:GYG) exploded in June, DigiCo found itself inching by mere cents; by 3:19pm today, it was at $4.93 a share.

The landscape for ASX debutants has been so bad that Whitefield’s Thursday arrival was basically described as “quite brave” by financial analysts.

There had been some that thought DigiCo was too big to follow the same dour trend – especially HMC Capital dealmaker David Di Pilla, who said the early investing opportunities around the infrastructure REIT were simply “huge, especially in the United States, which is a market 20 times bigger than Australia.”

“As the power demand keeps going up, and as the processing capacity keeps going up, the demand for these data centre assets keeps moving up the whole time,” Di Pilla billed. “To be a natural owner of these assets, to bring that to the market here at a moment in time, I think is why we got such a strong reaction to this IPO.”

“This entity has been set up to be able to invest right through the value chain. We think that is a very unique operating model not many groups are pursuing.”

On paper it made sense to back DigiCo to buck the trend too, considering the now-listed company – now trading under DGT from today – came in boasting 13 data centres, a capacity of 44 megawatts, and nearly 570 locked-in customers.

Another strong selling point was its U.S. spearhead, with a weighty $1B development pipeline solidified after DigiCo scooped up infrastructure platform StratCap.

So too the acquisition of the Global Switch Australian data centres for $1.9B.

Not everyone was so sold though; Morningstar tipped DigiCo’s value as $3.40 a share.

It certainly hasn’t dropped that far – and casting an eye over the data centre landlord’s fundamentals, this finance journalist would be shocked if it did – but the HMC-backed float certainly didn’t rock the boat this week.

DigiCo’s next hope will be a Santa-fuelled rally through Week 51, which starts on December 16. Should everything tick up, investors may be more inclined to spend.

For now, though, DGT traded at $4.87 through to near close.

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The material provided in this article is for information only and should not be treated as investment advice. Viewers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a certified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclaimer information, please click here.