NextDC shares closed Wednesday at $5.35, down 41.7 per cent from Tuesday and their lowest level since 2018.
The Brisbane-based company said in a statement that it was downgrading its guidance and taking steps to reduce expenditures.
Because of community opposition, power operator Jemena in September suspended work to increase electricity grid supply to NextDC's M3 data centre in the outskirts of Melbourne.
The work involved replacing electricity poles in parts of Yarraville and West Footscray with much larger poles capable of transmitting 66 kilovolts of power.
"Jemena has attributed the suspension to safety concerns and lack of access to work sites arising from community and stakeholder opposition to the works and to the local council, as the relevant road authority, not giving its consent while further community consultation takes place," NextDC said in a statement.
The power company has told NextDC that it doesn't intend to recommence work on the project before February.
As a result, NextDC has taken the affected M3 contracts out of its guidance for its 2026/27 earnings.
It had been counting on $140 million in both net revenue and underlying earnings from those contracts.
To conserve cash NextDC said it plans to reduce its capital expenditure for 2026/27 by $750 million, to between $4.5 billion and $5 billion.
It is also exploring selling certain development sites it doesn't need in the near term.
The M3 site has operated since 2022 in West Footscray, about 10km from Melbourne's CBD.
It spans 41,000 metres of technical space, the size of eight downtown city blocks.
NextDC is also facing delays with the final stages of the expansion project at the site, which could delay its contracts for 2027/28.
Installation of new transformers at the Brooklyn Terminal Station will take longer than expected, and the Victorian government still hasn't signed off on a planning permit that was lodged back in February.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Tom Beadle said while the delays to power supply and development approvals were out of NextDC's control, it showed that community concerns around data centre developments presented a real risk to the timing of contracted capacity for data centre owners.
The potential sale of development sites not needed in the near term might impact the company's longer-term ambitions, Mr Beadle added.
Founded in 2010 by tech entrepreneur Bevan Slattery, NextDC operates 17 data centres across Australia and one each in Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and Auckland.
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