AAON vs GDS Comparison

AAON Inc is a manufacturer of air-conditioning and heating equipment. The products include rooftop units, chillers, packaged outdoor mechanical rooms, air-handling units, makeup air units, energy-recovery units, condensing units, geothermal heat pumps, and self-contained units and coils. The company operates through three segments: AAON Oklahoma, AAON Coil Products, and BASX. It generates the majority of its revenue from the AAON Oklahoma segment which derives maximum revenue, engineers, manufactures, and sells, semi-custom, and custom HVAC systems, designs and manufactures control solutions, and sells retail parts to customers through retail part stores and online.

GDS Holdings started as an IT service provider in 2001 then moved to the data center business with its first self-developed data center opening in 2010. The company now develops and operates data centers in China and also builds, operates and transfers data centers for other clients. It offers colocation and managed services and mainly targets hyperscale cloud service customers who take large areas of its data centers or even whole data centers under long-term contracts. Its data centers are located predominantly in and around the Tier 1 cities in China and it has also started an expanding into Southeast Asia via the now 38% owned DayOne. GDS listed on the Nasdaq in 2016 and completed a secondary listing in Hong Kong in 2020.