The Gemini Brief – Investment Deep Dives

Investment Research Report: Digital Realty Trust Inc. (DLR)

All investment deep dives on this site were written by Gemini and Claude LLMs with light human editing. Nothing on this site constitutes investment advice. All materials are for informational purposes only.

The Gemini Brief - Investment Deep Dives
The Gemini Brief – Investment Deep Dives
Investment Research Report: Digital Realty Trust Inc. (DLR)
Loading
/

Slide Deck

Executive Summary

An objective, evidence-based evaluation of Digital Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE: DLR) reveals a business operating at the epicenter of a historic global infrastructure buildout, yet simultaneously struggling to translate massive secular macro tailwinds into outsized, per-share shareholder value. Operating as a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), Digital Realty possesses a formidable global scale, managing over 300 data centers across more than 50 metropolitan areas worldwide.1 The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and enterprise cloud computing has driven demand to unprecedented levels, resulting in a record backlog of $1.4 billion and total 2025 revenue of $6.11 billion.3

However, viewed strictly through the analytical framework of competitive advantage, capital allocation, and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), Digital Realty presents a complex paradox. The company operates in a highly capital-intensive industry where the barriers to entry are rapidly shifting from real estate acquisition to gigawatt-scale power procurement and grid interconnection.5 While the company benefits from high switching costs and an expanding network effect via its “PlatformDIGITAL” initiative, its historical financial performance suggests a persistent inability to generate an aggregate ROIC that meaningfully exceeds its Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC).7

Growth over the past decade has been funded through aggressive equity dilution and debt issuance, raising critical questions about whether management’s empire-building through premium-priced M&A (such as the acquisitions of DuPont Fabros and Interxion) has genuinely accrued value to the individual shareholder.9 Furthermore, looming industry controversies regarding capital expenditure classification and power allocation safety cast a shadow over the true quality of earnings across the sector.12 This report provides a forensic, highly critical analysis of Digital Realty’s industry dynamics, competitive positioning, quality of earnings, and capital allocation track record to assess its true underlying business quality and investment merit.

1. Industry Dynamics & Structure

The Oligopoly of Digital Infrastructure

The global data center market functions as an oligopoly dominated by a select group of institutional-scale operators. Equinix and Digital Realty are the primary publicly traded global behemoths, controlling roughly 13% and 11% of the colocation market, respectively.13 Legacy competitors such as CyrusOne, QTS, and CoreSite have largely been absorbed by private equity or broader infrastructure funds, leaving Digital Realty and Equinix as the primary pure-play public vehicles for global data center exposure.14 More recently, specialized GPU-cloud operators like CoreWeave have emerged, though they often act as tenants within the facilities of traditional landlords rather than direct real estate competitors.

Over the past decade, market share has aggressively consolidated among operators capable of securing massive capital and international footprints. The total addressable market, valued at $52.6 billion in 2024, is projected to expand at a 12.5% CAGR to $117.4 billion by 2032.16 This consolidation is driven by the sheer capital intensity of the business; constructing hyperscale data halls currently demands $12 million to $15 million per megawatt (MW), inflated by recent steel and switchgear shortages.17 Small, regional operators simply lack the balance sheets to compete for hyperscale contracts.

Demand Drivers: The AI CapEx Supercycle

Historically, data center demand was underpinned by enterprise migration from on-premise IT to hybrid cloud architectures. However, the current demand profile has been entirely hijacked by the AI and ML supercycle. Generative AI requires exponential increases in compute density. Traditional enterprise racks operate at 5 to 10 kilowatts (kW) per cabinet. In stark contrast, Nvidia H100 and Blackwell clusters utilized for Large Language Model (LLM) training routinely exceed 100 kW per cabinet.17

This physical reality requires fundamentally different infrastructure, specifically direct-to-chip liquid cooling, rear-door heat exchangers, and reinforced floor loads, which older facilities cannot easily support. Consequently, demand for new, purpose-built AI capacity is insatiable. In the third quarter of 2025 alone, U.S. hyperscalers leased a staggering 7.4 gigawatts (GW) of capacity, surpassing the entire 7 GW leased in all of 2024.6 Major cloud service providers (CSPs)—Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle—are currently engaged in a relentless infrastructure arms race, committing over $250 billion to buildouts in 2025.18

Supply Constraints and the Power Chokehold

If capital is the fuel of the data center industry, electricity is its oxygen. The primary barrier to entry is no longer land acquisition or local permitting; it is the availability of utility-scale power. Interconnection queues in the United States currently contain 1,570 GW of generation projects waiting to connect to the grid, a figure that astonishingly exceeds the total installed capacity of the entire U.S. grid.6

These severe power constraints extend development timelines significantly. In Tier-1 markets like Northern Virginia, securing a transmission grid connection can take up to 10 years.19 As a result, vacancy rates across North America have plummeted to 2.3%, and in prime hubs like Northern Virginia, vacancy is functionally zero (below 1%).6 Developers are racing to build, with 7.8 GW under construction globally, but nearly 90% of this capacity is pre-leased long before the foundation is poured.6

Pricing Power and Mark-to-Market Dynamics

The acute supply-demand imbalance has definitively shifted the industry into a structural “sellers’ market”.20 Landlords currently wield unprecedented pricing power. Digital Realty reported renewal lease rate increases of 6.1% on a cash basis and 12.0% on a GAAP basis in Q4 2025.21 Base rental rates per kilowatt on large wholesale bookings escalated from $115 in Q1 2023 to over $169 in early 2024, and have continued to compound.22

Furthermore, lease structures have evolved to protect landlords. Wholesale deals now routinely pass raw power costs directly to the tenant, protecting the operator’s margins from utility inflation.23 Because the cost of migrating out of a facility is exorbitantly high—involving network downtime, physical hardware moving costs, and the risk of catastrophic data loss—tenants effectively become captive. This switching cost allows operators to capture high mark-to-market renewal spreads upon lease expiration.

Build vs. Lease: The Hyperscaler Calculus

A perpetual existential question for third-party operators is whether hyperscalers will simply bypass them and build their own facilities. Hyperscale operators accounted for 44% of global data center capacity in early 2025, and this is projected to rise to 61% by 2030.24 Over half of this hyperscale capacity is currently in self-built, owned facilities.24

However, the “build vs. lease” pendulum has recently swung back toward leasing. Despite their vast capital resources, hyperscalers face the exact same grid constraints, supply chain bottlenecks, and zoning restrictions as independent developers. Data center operators possess specialized expertise, entrenched relationships with utility providers, and, most importantly, pre-secured land banks with allocated power.25 Furthermore, leasing allows hyperscalers to convert massive upfront capital expenditures (CapEx) into operating expenditures (OpEx), preserving their balance sheets for semiconductor acquisitions and core technological development.25 Therefore, while hyperscalers will continue to self-build massive sovereign AI campuses, they remain highly dependent on operators like Digital Realty to deploy capacity at the speed required to win the AI arms race.

Secular Risks to the Industry

Despite the euphoric narrative, the industry faces severe secular risks:

  1. Technological Obsolescence: If AI hardware rapidly evolves to require entirely new cooling physics, legacy data centers will face massive impairment charges or require exorbitant retrofitting costs.
  2. Regulatory Backlash: Data centers consume vast amounts of water and power. In markets like Dublin, Amsterdam, and Singapore, governments have previously instituted moratoria on new builds. While this restricts supply and boosts pricing power for existing assets, it severely caps long-term volume growth.
  3. The Jevons Paradox Failure: The current bull thesis assumes the Jevons paradox will hold—that as AI becomes more efficient, consumption will increase, driving perpetual demand.19 If this paradigm breaks and end-user AI monetization stalls, the $250 billion hyperscaler CapEx cycle will abruptly halt, resulting in stranded capacity.

2. Digital Realty’s Competitive Position

Evaluating the Economic Moat

A critical investment framework dictates that a business without a durable competitive advantage is a poor investment. Digital Realty possesses a narrow-to-wide economic moat built upon three structural pillars:

  1. Scale Advantages: With over 300 facilities and 43.2 million square feet of net rentable space 1, Digital Realty can procure specialized equipment (e.g., generators, chillers, switchgear) at volume discounts and negotiate favorable terms with utility monopolies. Smaller developers cannot replicate this supply chain leverage.
  2. High Switching Costs: The operational friction of migrating mission-critical IT infrastructure is immense. Churn rates reflect this stickiness; Digital Realty’s total churn sits at a remarkably low 1.0% to 1.6% annually.27 Once a customer installs millions of dollars of server equipment into a facility, they are highly unlikely to leave over marginal rent increases.
  3. Network Effects (Interconnection): The most potent competitive advantage in digital real estate is interconnection. When multiple telecommunications networks, cloud on-ramps, and enterprise IT deployments reside in the same physical building, they can connect directly via physical fiber optic cables (cross-connects). The more participants in the building, the more valuable the building becomes to new entrants. Digital Realty facilitates over 232,500 cross-connects globally.29

Digital Realty vs. Equinix: The Strategic Divergence

While Equinix and Digital Realty are peers, their historical business models represent opposite ends of the data center spectrum.

  • Equinix has historically dominated the “retail colocation” and interconnection market. It leases small amounts of space (cages or individual cabinets) to thousands of customers at very high per-kilowatt rates. Its moat relies heavily on network density and enterprise cross-connect fees.
  • Digital Realty originated as a wholesale provider, leasing massive, multi-megawatt data halls (or entire buildings) to single tenants like Microsoft, Meta, or IBM.30

The strategic implications of this mix are profound. Wholesale leasing provides highly predictable, long-term cash flows (often 10-15 year leases backed by investment-grade credit) but suffers from lower unit economics and limited pricing power due to the negotiating leverage of massive hyperscale tenants.23 Conversely, retail colocation requires more intensive operational management but yields superior gross margins and immense pricing power over fragmented enterprise customers.23 Equinix’s historical dominance in retail has allowed it to generate higher ROE and trade at superior valuation multiples compared to Digital Realty.31

The PlatformDIGITAL Pivot: Substance over Marketing

Recognizing the superior economics of interconnection, Digital Realty launched “PlatformDIGITAL” to pivot toward retail colocation and network density. Evidence suggests this is not mere marketing, but a genuine strategic shift gaining tangible financial traction.

In 2025, the company’s “0-1 Megawatt plus Interconnection” segment generated nearly $340 million in full-year bookings, a 35% increase over 2024 levels, culminating in a record $96 million in Q4 2025 alone.32 Interconnection revenue itself reached $18.9 million in Q4 2025, up 22% year-over-year.34 Furthermore, the company’s ServiceFabric product now enables access to over 300 cloud on-ramps and connects more than 700 data centers globally.32 This provides concrete evidence that Digital Realty is successfully building a high-margin ecosystem to complement its wholesale foundation, directly encroaching on Equinix’s historical territory.

Global Footprint and Asset Quality

Digital Realty’s geographic diversification is a structural advantage that mitigates regional regulatory risks. While 52% of its annualized base rent originates in North America, the company derives 32% from EMEA, 10% from APAC, and 6% from Latin America.13 The 2020 acquisition of Interxion essentially purchased the premier network ecosystems in Frankfurt, Paris, and Marseille (a critical subsea cable hub connecting Europe to the Middle East and Asia).11 Recently, the company expanded into Indonesia and Malaysia, positioning itself in high-growth, emerging digital economies.36 Tier-1 markets (Northern Virginia, Frankfurt, London, Singapore) remain highly valuable due to zero vacancy and power constraints, while secondary markets face slightly higher risks of commoditization if utility capacity abruptly unlocks.

3. Financial Performance & Quality of Earnings

The Illusion of Top-Line Growth vs. Per-Share Value

To ascertain true business quality, an analyst must separate total corporate revenue expansion from per-share value creation. Over the past decade, Digital Realty has exhibited explosive headline growth. Total operating revenue compounded from $1.06 billion in 2011 to $6.11 billion for the full year 2025, an increase of roughly 476%.4 Adjusted EBITDA has followed a similar trajectory, reaching $3.34 billion in 2025.29

However, this growth was not purely organic; it was aggressively acquired, and it was funded predominantly through the continuous issuance of new equity.

Table 1: Digital Realty Revenue and Share Dilution Trend

YearTotal RevenueOutstanding Shares (Diluted)YOY Share Count Growth
2011$1.06 Billion~99 Million–
2015$1.76 Billion~139 Million+3.73%
2020$3.90 Billion~263 Million+25.84% (Interxion Deal)
2022$4.69 Billion~304 Million+7.42%
2024$5.55 Billion~338 Million+7.30%
2025$6.11 Billion~348 Million+2.96%
Data derived from 4

The company’s diluted average shares outstanding skyrocketed from approximately 99 million in 2011 to 348 million by the end of 2025.10 Because the denominator (share count) expanded by 251%, per-share metrics have grown at a significantly muted pace compared to top-line revenues.

For context, Core Funds From Operations (Core FFO)—the standard metric for REIT cash flow—was reported at $7.39 per share for the full year 2025.38 While this represented a solid 10% year-over-year growth from 2024’s $6.72 per share 38, looking back over a 10-year horizon reveals that FFO per share growth has been a slow grind. The aggressive equity dilution severely throttles the flow-through of intrinsic value to the individual shareholder. Management has historically built an empire at the expense of compounding per-share intrinsic value.

ROIC vs. WACC: The Value Destruction Paradigm

The core tenet of rigorous capital allocation is that a business must generate a Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) that exceeds its Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC). If ROIC is less than WACC, every dollar of growth actually destroys shareholder value, regardless of how much revenue increases.

According to financial analytics and fundamental modeling, Digital Realty’s WACC as of early 2026 sits between 7.24% and 8.36% (reflecting a cost of equity around 7.6%-10.1% and an after-tax cost of debt around 2.3%-5.1%).7

In stark contrast, Digital Realty’s reported aggregate ROIC has languished in the low single digits. Trailing twelve-month (TTM) ROIC calculations place the company’s return between 1.52% and 2.07%.7

Table 2: DLR ROIC vs WACC (Historical Context)

Metric20212022202320242025
ROIC~1.60%~1.70%~1.33%~1.62%~2.04%
WACC~6.50%~7.00%~7.80%~8.00%~8.29%
SpreadNegativeNegativeNegativeNegativeNegative
Data derived from 7

It must be noted that standard GAAP ROIC calculations penalize REITs because they include massive real estate asset bases at historical cost without adding back accumulated depreciation in the numerator. Furthermore, the “denominator effect” suppresses ROIC because Digital Realty carries billions of dollars in “Construction in Progress” (CIP)—capital that has been deployed but is not yet generating operational income.

However, even adjusting for these REIT-specific accounting nuances by analyzing incremental development yields, concerns remain. Management targets stabilized yields on new developments of approximately 10.0% to 11.9%.21 While these incremental returns do exceed the WACC, they only apply to new builds. The heavily diluted historical capital base, burdened by premium-priced acquisitions, continues to drag down the aggregate firm-wide return. In essence, Digital Realty is a mediocre business on a historical aggregate return basis, though its incremental unit economics are vastly improving due to current market supply shortages.

Quality of Earnings: The AFFO Integrity Debate

Adjusted Funds From Operations (AFFO) subtracts recurring maintenance capital expenditures (CapEx) from FFO to provide a true picture of free cash flow available for dividends. In Q4 2025, Digital Realty reported AFFO per share of $1.34.1

The integrity of this metric relies entirely on management accurately categorizing expenses. A highly publicized 2024 short-seller report by Hindenburg Research accused Digital Realty’s primary peer, Equinix, of artificially boosting AFFO by manipulating accounting—specifically, reclassifying routine maintenance CapEx (e.g., battery replacements, light bulb replacements, and minor repairs) as “growth CapEx”.12 Hindenburg alleged this created a cumulative $3 billion artificial boost to Equinix’s reported AFFO since 2015, which in turn triggered massive executive bonus payouts.12

While these specific allegations were directed at Equinix, they cast a long, dark shadow over the entire capital-intensive data center sector. If Digital Realty engages in similar categorization aggressiveness, its true maintenance costs may be understated, meaning its actual free cash flow and dividend coverage are weaker than stated. The company deducted $168.5 million in recurring capital expenditures to bridge Core FFO to AFFO in Q4 2025 1, an amount that analysts must scrutinize continuously for adequacy given the inevitable aging of its legacy facilities.

Balance Sheet and Dividend Health

Digital Realty maintains a highly leveraged balance sheet commensurate with its capital-intensive business model. As of December 31, 2025, total debt stood at $18.4 billion.38 Net Debt-to-Adjusted EBITDA was 4.9x, and fixed charge coverage was 4.5x.1 Management has demonstrated admirable discipline recently, bringing leverage down below its long-term target of 5.5x and maintaining robust liquidity of nearly $7 billion.34

The company pays an annualized dividend of $4.88 per share, yielding approximately 2.7% to 2.8%.39 With 2025 AFFO generation naturally fluctuating quarter-to-quarter (e.g., Q4 AFFO of $1.34 implies an annualized run-rate of $5.36), the dividend is adequately covered, but the margin of safety is not excessively wide. High payout ratios structurally limit the internal capital available to fund the massive $10 billion development pipeline, necessitating ongoing, perpetual reliance on external financing.

4. Growth History, Pipeline & Opportunities

The Development Engine

Digital Realty is effectively a massive, specialized construction company attached to a leasing operation. Entering 2026, the company boasts a gross data center development pipeline of $10 billion, with 769 MW actively under construction at an expected stabilized yield of 11.9%.34 The pre-leasing rates are a testament to the current market supply deficit; 75% of the 289 MW delivered in Q4 2025 was pre-leased prior to energization.29

The company’s future runway is secured by a massive land bank and secured power capacity totaling 5 gigawatts.27 In an era where power is the ultimate bottleneck, owning 5 GW of buildable, power-secured IT capacity is perhaps the most valuable intangible asset on Digital Realty’s balance sheet, representing years of highly visible embedded growth.

The Hyperscale Joint Venture Pivot

A structural shift in Digital Realty’s growth strategy over the past two years has been its reliance on joint ventures (JVs). The company raised $3.225 billion in LP equity commitments for its inaugural closed-end U.S. Hyperscale Data Center Fund in 2025, providing roughly $15 billion in total “dry powder” alongside partners.42

  • Benefits: This strategy allows Digital Realty to fund the astronomical costs of hyperscale AI development without issuing highly dilutive common equity or over-leveraging its balance sheet. The company earns lucrative asset management and development fees (fee income more than doubled in 2025 42), improving its overall ROIC by transitioning to a more capital-light model.
  • Risks: JV structures inherently obscure financial transparency. They move assets and associated debt off the consolidated balance sheet, making it exceedingly difficult for public market investors to accurately assess the exact unit economics, leverage profile, and risk of the underlying projects.

Organic Leasing and Backlog Conversion

Organic leasing trajectory has been exceptionally strong. Digital Realty concluded 2025 with $1.2 billion in total bookings, marking its second consecutive year exceeding the $1 billion threshold—a pace 70% above its historical five-year average.3

The company’s backlog of signed-but-not-commenced leases reached an all-time record of $1.4 billion at a 100% share ($817 million at DLR’s share).3 This backlog provides near-absolute revenue visibility for 2026 and 2027. Backlog conversion typically features a weighted-average lag of six to ten months between signing and contractual rent commencement.36 Same-capital cash Net Operating Income (NOI) grew by a robust 8.6% year-over-year in Q4 2025, and 4.5% for the full year, indicating that price escalators and mark-to-market renewals are successfully outstripping operating expense inflation.29

5. Capital Allocation

Management’s capital allocation is the critical transmission mechanism between corporate operations and shareholder returns. An evaluation of Digital Realty’s last decade reveals a mixed record, characterized by aggressive expansion that successfully solidified market share but frequently diluted existing owners.

The M&A Track Record

Digital Realty built its global empire through large-scale, premium-priced acquisitions.

  • DuPont Fabros (2017): Acquired for $7.6 billion (including $1.6 billion in assumed debt).9 This deal provided DLR with 12 massive facilities in Tier-1 U.S. markets (Northern Virginia, Chicago, Silicon Valley) and cemented its dominance in the hyperscale space.30 While strategically sound in securing market share and vital cloud relationships, the premium paid required substantial equity issuance.
  • Interxion (2020): Acquired for $8.4 billion.11 This was a transformative deal that provided DLR with 53 facilities across Europe, instantly making it a dominant pan-European player and acquiring crucial interconnection hubs in Frankfurt and Marseille.11 However, the exit multiple was a lofty 23.3x expected 2019 EBITDA.35 Management admitted the deal would be dilutive to per-share earnings in the near term (2020) and only marginally accretive by 2022.15

Critique: The evidence suggests that while these acquisitions created an unassailable global platform, the high multiples paid destroyed economic value on a pure ROIC basis. The company purchased revenue growth and market share rather than generating excess returns on capital for existing shareholders.

Equity Issuance and Dilution

Because REITs must pay out 90% of taxable income to maintain their tax-advantaged status, they cannot retain enough internal cash flow to fund multibillion-dollar pipelines. Therefore, Digital Realty uses its stock as currency.

The share count has expanded relentlessly. For example, during Q2 2025 alone, the company sold 4.15 million shares via its At-The-Market (ATM) program to raise $719 million.46 Over a decade, the share count increased by roughly 250% (from 99 million to 348 million).10 If capital is consistently raised at multiples below the return generated on the subsequent assets, intrinsic value is destroyed. Only recently, with the stock trading at higher multiples and the pivot toward JV funding, has this dilution dynamic stabilized into a more value-neutral posture.

Executive Compensation and Alignment

Proxy analysis reveals that executive compensation is heavily weighted toward performance-based equity. In 2024, President and CEO Andrew Power received $16.25 million in total compensation.47

Incentive structures for NEOs are tied to Core FFO per share, Same Store Cash NOI, Leverage, Leasing Signings, and Total Shareholder Return (TSR).48

  • The Positive: The inclusion of per-share metrics (Core FFO/share) and Same Store NOI prevents pure empire building, forcing management to focus on organic asset yield rather than just total asset base expansion.
  • The Negative: Like many REITs, the reliance on “Adjusted” metrics can mask poor baseline capital allocation. Most critically, the lack of a direct ROIC hurdle in the primary annual bonus weighting (which heavily favors FFO and leasing volumes) 48 allows executives to be richly rewarded for deploying capital at returns that barely clear the firm’s WACC. Management is paid to grow the footprint, not necessarily to optimize the spread between ROIC and the cost of capital.

6. Major Changes, Headwinds & Controversies (Past Two Years)

The Short-Seller Assaults

The data center sector has faced intense, coordinated scrutiny from prominent short sellers over the past three years.

  1. Jim Chanos’ Obsolescence Thesis (2022-2024): Famed short-seller Jim Chanos declared legacy data centers his “big short,” arguing that hyperscalers (their largest customers) were becoming their biggest competitors.49 He argued that economic value would accrue to the cloud software layer, rendering brick-and-mortar facilities obsolete, while criticizing the industry’s poor return metrics.49 While the generative AI boom temporarily crushed this short thesis by creating an absolute dearth of physical capacity 22, Chanos recently reiterated skepticism, betting against Brookfield’s projection of 10x AI capacity growth by 2034, implying the market is currently in a hype-driven overbuild phase.19
  2. Hindenburg Research’s Accounting Allegations (2024): As noted in Section 3, Hindenburg targeted Equinix, alleging severe manipulation of AFFO via the misclassification of routine maintenance CapEx as growth CapEx.12 Furthermore, Hindenburg alleged Equinix systematically oversold power capacity (booking up to 175% of actual physical capability), banking on tenants not utilizing their full allocations.12 While Digital Realty was not the direct target, these allegations cast doubt on the accounting integrity and power-provisioning safety of the entire sector. Because AI workloads operate at near 100% constant utilization, any historical “overselling” of power by Digital Realty poses a severe operational risk of grid failure or breach of Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Interest Rate Sensitivity

The aggressive Federal Reserve tightening cycle (2022-2024) acted as a severe headwind for Digital Realty. As a highly leveraged REIT, rising rates increased debt servicing costs. For example, the 2025 refinancing of maturing Eurobonds with new green bonds resulted in a 160-basis-point increase in interest expense for those specific funds.42 Furthermore, rising risk-free yields caused cap rate expansion across the real estate sector, temporarily crushing the Net Asset Value (NAV) of portfolios and leading to severe multiple compression for DLR stock in 2023.22 Management navigated this by leaning into fixed-rate debt (average maturity ~4.5 to 5 years) 36 and shifting funding to private capital JVs, but the firm remains highly sensitive to a “higher-for-longer” macroeconomic rate environment.

Customer Concentration Risk

Digital Realty exhibits significant customer concentration risk. As of December 31, 2024, the top 20 customers represented 51% of total annualized recurring revenue, with the top three customers alone accounting for 23%.50 While these tenants are predominantly investment-grade tech behemoths (Fortune 50 software providers, global cloud providers), this concentration grants tenants immense negotiating leverage upon lease renewal. In wholesale deployments, churn is a binary, high-impact event; if a top-three tenant vacates a 20 MW data hall, it creates an immediate, massive drag on regional NOI until a replacement tenant is secured.

7. Valuation Context

Note: This section provides analytical valuation context only and does not constitute a buy/sell recommendation or establish a definitive price target.

Current Multiples vs. Historical Averages

At the end of 2025, Digital Realty’s stock traded in the $175 range.51

  • P/FFO (Forward): Based on the midpoint of management’s 2026 Core FFO guidance of $7.95 ($7.90 – $8.00) 32, the stock trades at a forward Price-to-Core FFO multiple of approximately 22.0x.
  • Historical Context: Historically, DLR has traded in a P/FFO range of 15x to 20x. The current 22x multiple implies the market is pricing in a structural premium for the “AI infrastructure narrative.”
  • Peer Comparison: Equinix (EQIX) traditionally trades at a premium to DLR (often 24x to 28x AFFO) due to its higher-margin retail colocation mix and historically superior ROIC profile.31 Conversely, traditional commercial real estate REITs trade at significantly lower multiples (12x to 16x). DLR’s current valuation sits awkwardly between a traditional real estate multiple and a pure technology infrastructure multiple.

Implied Growth and Scenario Analysis

To mathematically justify a 22x FFO multiple, the market is aggressively pricing in sustained, high-single-digit cash flow growth without corresponding margin compression.

  • Base Case (Implied by current valuation): Assumes the AI CapEx cycle continues steadily, pushing 2026-2029 Core FFO growth at an 8% CAGR. Pre-leasing remains strong, and power constraints keep pricing power firmly in DLR’s hands. Rent spreads remain positive (+6% to +8%). The stock treads water, providing a market-average total return inclusive of the ~2.8% dividend.
  • Bull Case: Assumes the adoption of private AI exchanges (PlatformDIGITAL) drastically increases the mix of high-margin interconnection revenue. Hyperscaler JVs scale massively, generating off-balance-sheet fee income that drives ROIC upward toward 5%+, triggering a rerating closer to Equinix’s historical multiples (25x+). Total return could compound at 12-15% annually.
  • Bear Case: Assumes the Jevons paradox does not hold, and AI infrastructure buildouts face a sudden cyclical plateau by 2027 as hyperscalers pull back on spending. Vacancy rates tick up as the 7.8 GW of industry pipeline comes online. The 22x multiple compresses to its historical 15x mean. Combined with a heavy debt load, the stock could suffer a severe 30%+ drawdown.

Valuation Disconnects

The market appears to be accurately pricing the structural demand tailwinds (zero vacancy, soaring rents), but it is structurally underappreciating the cost of fulfilling that demand. Constructing AI-ready, liquid-cooled facilities is exceptionally capital intensive. If construction costs outpace rent growth, development yields will compress. The market is paying a high premium for growth that, historically, has not translated into excess returns on capital.

8. Key Risks & Bear Case

The strongest bear case against Digital Realty posits that the company is fundamentally a capital-hungry, low-return utility masquerading as a high-growth technology stock. A combination of the following factors would render the stock a poor investment from current levels:

  1. ROIC < WACC (The Value Trap): The fundamental flaw in the DLR thesis is its historic inability to generate an ROIC meaningfully above its cost of capital. If the $10 billion development pipeline suffers from cost overruns (due to copper, switchgear, or skilled labor inflation) and stabilized yields fall below 8%, the company will be forced to continue diluting shareholders to fund value-destroying growth.
  2. Hyperscaler Insourcing & Bargaining Power: The top three tenants account for 23% of revenue.50 While hyperscalers are currently leasing due to speed-to-market constraints, they possess infinite capital. If supply chain bottlenecks ease and grid access normalizes by 2028-2030, AWS, Google, and Microsoft will revert to self-building. This would leave third-party operators fighting over a shrinking wholesale pie, structurally crushing DLR’s pricing power.
  3. The AI CapEx Plateau: The current valuation assumes linear, perpetual growth in AI infrastructure. If end-user software monetization for LLMs fails to materialize, hyperscalers will abruptly halt their $250 billion CapEx cycles. Because DLR is building massive capacity specifically tailored to dense GPU clusters, a cyclical tech downturn would result in stranded, over-engineered capacity.
  4. Technological Obsolescence: Data center hardware evolves rapidly. If advanced cooling mechanisms or next-generation semiconductor efficiency leapfrogs current infrastructure parameters, DLR’s legacy facilities could face massive impairment charges. The maintenance CapEx required to retrofit old buildings to handle new compute densities could obliterate free cash flow.
  5. Accounting and Transparency Contagion: Following the Hindenburg allegations against Equinix regarding AFFO manipulation and power overselling 12, any regulatory or audit scrutiny into DLR’s categorization of maintenance versus growth CapEx could instantly re-rate the stock. If true free cash flow is lower than stated due to under-reported maintenance costs, the dividend payout ratio is dangerously stretched.
  6. Interest Rate Rebound: As a highly indebted REIT relying heavily on external capital markets, a resurgence in inflation and a return to a rising interest rate environment would instantly increase WACC, compress real estate multiples, and stall the development engine.

Conclusion

Digital Realty Trust is an undisputed titan of the digital economy, wielding an impossible-to-replicate asset base that serves as the physical backbone of the internet and the artificial intelligence revolution. Its sheer scale, secured gigawatt power access, and growing interconnection moat ensure its structural relevance and survivability in the digital age.

However, evaluated strictly as an investment vehicle through the lens of competitive advantage, it demands extreme caution. The company operates a highly capital-intensive, historically low-ROIC business model that has been dependent on aggressive shareholder dilution to fund its expansion. While the current AI-driven supply deficit has gifted management with unprecedented pricing power and improving incremental development yields, the core issue remains: the company’s aggregate return on capital struggles to clear its cost of capital. Investors must rigorously monitor whether this new paradigm of high-density AI leasing and private joint ventures finally translates into genuine, compounding per-share value creation, or if it merely continues a long history of unprofitable empire building.

Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

What thoughtful questions have other investors asked about this company? Investors and analysts have recently focused their questions on development yields, capital expenditure requirements, labor bottlenecks, and the company’s ability to scale AI and inference use cases. Short-sellers have also raised more critical questions about the sector, questioning whether data center operators are systematically overselling power capacity or artificially boosting profitability by misclassifying routine maintenance CapEx as growth CapEx. Furthermore, skeptics have asked if brick-and-mortar legacy data centers face technological obsolescence as large cloud providers potentially build proprietary facilities.

Cyclicality & Earnings Nature

Are earnings at a cyclical high or cyclical low? Earnings appear to be at a cyclical high. The company reported a record Core FFO per share of $7.39 for the full year 2025, up 10% from 2024, alongside double-digit growth in Adjusted EBITDA.

Are earnings driven primarily by the external environment or internal company actions? While internal initiatives like the PlatformDIGITAL rollout are helping, current earnings acceleration is overwhelmingly driven by the external environment. A massive supply-demand imbalance—fueled by AI/ML workloads and severely constrained utility power availability—has shifted the industry into a structural sellers’ market, granting operators unprecedented pricing power.

How stable are revenues? Revenues are highly stable. Digital Realty boasts 20 consecutive years of revenue growth and relies on long-term contracts. Customer stickiness is exceptional, with total churn sitting at a very low 1.0% to 1.6%. The company ended 2025 with a record backlog of nearly $1.4 billion in signed-but-not-commenced leases, providing immense visibility for future revenues.

Outlook for the company’s products and services? The outlook is exceptionally strong. Management projects total revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth to exceed 10% in 2026, with Core FFO per share expected to grow by roughly 8%. The high-margin “0-1 megawatt plus interconnection” segment is seeing breakneck demand, with bookings up 35% year-over-year in 2025.

How big will this market be? Is it growing? Shrinking? Domestic or international? The global colocation data center market is experiencing explosive international growth. Valued at $52.6 billion in 2024, it is projected to grow at a 12.5% CAGR to $117.4 billion by 2032. While North America is DLR’s largest market, it operates in over 50 metros across six continents, with significant growth happening in EMEA and Asia-Pacific.

Business Quality & Competitive Moat

Is the industry getting more or less competitive? The industry remains highly competitive but is simultaneously experiencing a supply shortage. Hyperscalers and private operators are aggressively expanding, but because securing utility power and grid connections can now take years, incumbent landlords with existing inventory currently hold significant leverage over tenants.

How profitable is this business? What is the return on capital invested? Return on equity? Despite massive revenue, underlying capital return metrics are poor. Digital Realty’s trailing Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) typically hovers around 1.5% to 2.1%. Return on Equity (ROE) sits between 5.3% and 5.9%. Because the company’s Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) is estimated between 7.2% and 8.4%, the historical aggregate ROIC consistently fails to exceed its cost of capital.

What are the barriers to entry? Barriers to entry are extraordinarily high. They include the immense capital intensity of construction (currently $12-$15 million per MW for hyperscale deployments), severe supply chain shortages for switchgear, and the ultimate bottleneck: utility power availability, with interconnection queues sometimes stretching up to 10 years in Tier-1 markets.

Can this business be easily understood? The basic premise—leasing secure, powered real estate for servers—is straightforward. However, evaluating the business requires understanding complex physical engineering (liquid cooling densities), grid mechanics, joint-venture accounting, and the nuances of REIT-specific metrics like AFFO and CapEx categorization.

Can this company be undermined by foreign, low-cost labor? No. This is a highly localized, capital-heavy infrastructure business, not a labor-intensive manufacturing operation.

What are the customers switching costs? Switching costs are immense. Migrating out of a data center involves high physical hardware moving costs, the risk of catastrophic data loss, and network downtime, which locks tenants in and supports DLR’s low churn rates.

Financial Condition & Balance Sheet

Does the company have assets that are not fully recognized in the balance sheet? Yes. Standard real estate accounting records facilities and land at historical cost minus depreciation. Given that prime data center land (like in Northern Virginia) has appreciated rapidly, the book value likely understates the true market value of its properties and secured power rights. Additionally, DLR has substantial investments in unconsolidated joint ventures.

What off-balance sheet liabilities does the company have? The company heavily utilizes unconsolidated joint ventures (holding 89 data centers in such structures by late 2025). While the debt of these JVs is kept off the consolidated balance sheet, Digital Realty does guarantee certain unsecured debt of its operating partnership and various subsidiaries.

How conservative is the company’s accounting? The data center REIT sector is currently facing scrutiny over accounting aggressiveness. A 2024 short-seller report targeted DLR’s main rival, Equinix, alleging it artificially inflated its Adjusted Funds From Operations (AFFO) by misclassifying routine maintenance expenses (like battery and lightbulb replacements) as “growth CapEx”. While these specific allegations were directed at a peer, they highlight the accounting subjectivity inherent in the industry’s capital expenditure reporting.

How CapEx hungry is this business? It is extremely CapEx hungry. Digital Realty spent roughly $3 billion on development in 2025 and forecasts total CapEx between $3.25 billion and $3.75 billion for 2026.

Capital Allocation & Management

How much free cash flow does the business generate? How does management use this free cash flow? Because REITs must distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to maintain their tax status, retained free cash flow is limited. In 2025, DLR generated roughly $2.41 billion in free cash flow but paid out $1.73 billion in dividends. To fund its massive $10 billion development pipeline, management relies on outside capital—issuing debt, selling stock, and raising private equity through joint ventures.

Has the company made any significant acquisitions recently? While historically known for mega-deals like Interxion (2020) and DuPont Fabros (2017) , recent activity is focused on strategic land acquisitions (e.g., a $120 million parcel in Atlanta) and entering emerging markets like Indonesia and Malaysia via joint ventures.

Is the company buying back shares or issuing new ones? The company is aggressively issuing shares to fund growth. The outstanding share count has ballooned from roughly 139 million in 2015 to 348 million by the end of 2025. In mid-2025 alone, the company raised $719 million by selling over 4 million shares via its At-The-Market program.

What is the compensation policy of directors and management? Executive compensation is heavily weighted (57% to 74%) toward long-term equity incentive awards. Annual bonuses are tied to metrics like Core FFO per share, Same Store Cash NOI, Leverage, and specific leasing volume targets. In 2025, the Board also approved a “Carried Interest Plan” that allows executives to receive a share of the profits generated by the company’s private investment vehicles and joint ventures.

Valuation & Market Data

Is the stock an ADR? MLP? K-1? No, it is a traditional Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) structured as a Maryland corporation.

Dividend Policy? The company pays a consistent quarterly dividend, currently at an annualized rate of $4.88 per share, yielding roughly 2.7% to 2.8%. It has a reliable track record of maintaining and growing this payout.

Is net income diverging from cash from operations? Yes, drastically, which is normal for REITs. Due to heavy non-cash real estate depreciation charges, Net Income for 2025 was roughly $1.31 billion, whereas Operating Cash Flow was much higher at $2.41 billion.

Risks & Downside

What factors would cause the stock to decline? The stock is highly sensitive to interest rates due to its heavy debt load. Other downside catalysts include a potential plateau in AI-driven hyperscale demand, an easing of utility constraints that could flood the market with supply and ruin DLR’s pricing power, or increased regulatory scrutiny regarding the classification of maintenance CapEx.

What is the risk of a catastrophic loss? A total wipeout is highly unlikely because the company owns a massive, globally distributed portfolio of hard real estate assets backed by long-term leases with Fortune 50 companies. The primary catastrophic risk would be a sudden technological shift in hardware that renders legacy data center cooling and power infrastructure completely obsolete.

Recent News & Events

Has the business environment changed recently? Yes, the AI supercycle has fundamentally shifted the market. Power has become the ultimate gatekeeper, pushing vacancy rates near zero in prime markets and allowing operators to demand massive premium pricing and pass-through utility costs on long-term leases.

Recent changes in the business or management? The most significant recent change is DLR’s pivot toward private capital. In 2025, the company launched its inaugural closed-end U.S. Hyperscale Data Center Fund, raising over $3.2 billion in LP equity to fund hyperscale development without relying solely on its own balance sheet. This shift towards a hybrid funding/asset management model is a major strategic evolution for the firm.

Works cited

  1. Untitled – Investor Relations – Digital Realty, accessed February 28, 2026, https://investor.digitalrealty.com/static-files/4bac803d-f2a7-400a-b4db-1e8804a60414
  2. Data Center REIT Digital Realty to acquire DuPont Fabros in $7.6, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.reit.com/news/articles/data-center-reit-digital-realty-to-acquire-dupont-fabros-in-76-billion-transaction
  3. Digital Realty Trust (DLR) Q4 2025 Earnings – MLQ.ai, accessed February 28, 2026, https://mlq.ai/stocks/DLR/q4-2025-earnings/
  4. Digital Realty Trust Revenue 2012-2025 | DLR – Macrotrends, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DLR/digital-realty-trust/revenue
  5. Prologis Investment Analysis: Competitive Advantage, https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wpXdzfGUJkjkaOErRqx8nGLBVFG4NA35RnyhVJm99MQ
  6. Did U.S. Data Center Leasing Surpass All of 2024 in a Single Quarter?, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.globaldatacenterhub.com/p/did-q3-2025-mark-the-great-acceleration
  7. DLR (Digital Realty Trust) WACC % – GuruFocus, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.gurufocus.com/term/wacc/DLR
  8. DLR (Digital Realty Trust) ROIC % – GuruFocus, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.gurufocus.com/term/roic/DLR
  9. Digital Realty Trust Inc. Ratings Affirmed Follow – S&P Global, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/-/view/type/HTML/id/1865919
  10. Digital Realty Trust Shares Outstanding 2012-2025 | DLR, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DLR/digital-realty-trust/shares-outstanding
  11. Digital Realty To Combine With Interxion, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.digitalrealty.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/122933/digital-realty-to-combine-with-interxion
  12. Equinix artificially boosting profitability, alleges Hindenburg, accessed February 28, 2026, https://capacityglobal.com/news/equinix-artificially-boosting-profitability-alleges-hindenburg-research-report/
  13. Digital Realty Trust Inc – US EQUITY RESEARCH, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.dbs.com/content/article/pdf/US_clover/Digital_Realty.pdf
  14. Level 3 Communications: Datacenter and AI Infrastructure … – Sparkco, accessed February 28, 2026, https://sparkco.ai/blog/level-3-communications
  15. Digital’s Interxion Deal Eclipses Strong Data Center Sector Results, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/investing/digital-s-interxion-deal-overshadows-strong-data-center-sector-results
  16. Colocation Market Outlook 2025-2032 – Intel Market Research, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.intelmarketresearch.com/colocation-market-13357
  17. US Multi-Tenant (Colocation) Data Center Market Size & Share, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-colocation-data-center-market
  18. Hyperscaler buildouts eclipse enterprise data center expansions, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.ciodive.com/news/hyperscale-ai-infrastructure-eclipses-enterprise-data-center-capacity-srg/751744/
  19. Short-Seller Jim Chanos Bets Against AI Hype, Challenges … – Webull, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.webull.com/news/13515465781478400
  20. Colocation Market Power Shift: Is 2025 a Buyer’s or Seller’s Market?, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.datacenters.com/news/colocation-buyers-market-or-sellers-market-the-power-dynamics-of-2025-deals
  21. Digital Realty Reports Fourth Quarter 2025 Results, accessed February 28, 2026, https://investor.digitalrealty.com/node/20001/pdf
  22. This AI-Focused Real Estate Stock Beat the S&P 500 in the First Half, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/ai-focused-real-estate-stock-beat-sp-500-first-half-2024-it-still-buy
  23. Retail vs wholesale: finding the right colo pricing model, accessed February 28, 2026, https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/retail-vs-wholesale-finding-the-right-colo-pricing-model/
  24. The World’s Total Data Center Capacity is Shifting Rapidly to, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/the-worlds-total-data-center-capacity-is-shifting-rapidly-to-hyperscale-operators
  25. Build vs. Lease: The Hyperscale Landscape | L.E.K. Consulting, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.lek.com/insights/tmt/au/vd/build-vs-lease-hyperscale-landscape
  26. Build vs. Lease: Rethinking the Data Center Strategy for the Mid, accessed February 28, 2026, https://valorc3.com/build-vs-lease-rethinking-the-data-center-strategy-for-the-mid-enterprise/
  27. Digital Realty (DLR) Q2 2025 Earnings Transcript | The Motley Fool, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2025/08/05/digital-realty-dlr-q2-2025-earnings-transcript/
  28. Earnings call transcript: Digital Realty Q3 2025 results miss EPS, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-transcript-digital-realty-q3-2025-results-miss-eps-forecast-93CH-4306399
  29. Digital Realty Trust (DLR) investor relations material – Quartr, accessed February 28, 2026, https://quartr.com/companies/digital-realty-trust-inc_5165
  30. DuPont Fabros Deal Gives Digital Realty More Firepower in the War, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/deals/dupont-fabros-deal-gives-digital-realty-more-firepower-in-the-war-for-cloud-deals
  31. What is Competitive Landscape of Digital Realty Trust Company?, accessed February 28, 2026, https://matrixbcg.com/blogs/competitors/digitalrealty
  32. Digital Realty Reports Fourth Quarter 2025 Results, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.digitalrealty.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/20001/digital-realty-reports-fourth-quarter-2025-results
  33. 4q25 financial results – Cloudfront.net, accessed February 28, 2026, https://d5bp8bijhhba2.cloudfront.net/pdf/803eaff057acb378a83c363741e2cf12681fac25e76d1fcedff1da36d41ec938.pdf
  34. Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript, accessed February 28, 2026, https://intellectia.ai/stock/DLR/earnings/transcript-FY2025Q4-2026-02-05
  35. Interxion finally succumbs to Digital Realty Trust – Colo-X, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.colo-x.com/interxion-finally-succumbs-to-digital-realty-trust/
  36. Digital Realty’s Q1 Core FFO Tops Estimates, 2025 View Raised, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/digital-realtys-q1-core-ffo-tops-estimates-2025-view-raised
  37. Digital Realty Trust Reports Record 2025 Earnings Performance, accessed February 28, 2026, https://intellectia.ai/news/etf/digital-realty-trust-reports-record-2025-earnings-performance
  38. Digital Realty’s Q4 Core FFO & Revenues Top Estimates, Rentals Rise, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/digital-realtys-q4-core-ffo-revenues-top-estimates-rentals-rise
  39. Digital Realty Reports Fourth Quarter 2024 Results – PR Newswire, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/digital-realty-reports-fourth-quarter-2024-results-302376450.html
  40. Digital Realty Trust Inc (DLR) Discount Rate – WACC & Cost of Equity, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.alphaspread.com/security/nyse/dlr/discount-rate
  41. DIGITAL REALTY TRUST INC (DLR) Stock Fundamental Analysis, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.chartmill.com/stock/quote/DLR/fundamental-analysis
  42. Digital Realty (DLR) Q4 2025 Earnings Transcript | The Motley Fool, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/02/05/digital-realty-dlr-q4-2025-earnings-transcript/
  43. DIGITAL REALTY TRUST, INC. – Cloudfront.net, accessed February 28, 2026, https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001297996/9bb80f3a-24b8-4d0b-871d-0cc9644ac8bd.pdf
  44. The Great Colocation Convergence: Power, AI and Pragmatism, accessed February 28, 2026, https://datacentremagazine.com/news/the-great-colocation-convergence-power-ai-and-pragmatism
  45. Digital Realty outlines 8% core FFO growth target for 2026 as, accessed February 28, 2026, https://seekingalpha.com/news/4548366-digital-realty-outlines-8-percent-core-ffo-growth-target-for-2026-as-hyperscale-and-ai-demand
  46. Digital Realty’s Q2 Core FFO & Revenues Top Estimates, ’25 View, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/2617452/digital-realtys-q2-core-ffo-revenues-top-estimates-25-view-raised
  47. Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (DLR.PRK) Leadership & Management, accessed February 28, 2026, https://simplywall.st/stocks/us/real-estate/nyse-dlr.prk/digital-realty-trust/management
  48. DIGITAL REALTY TRUST, INC. – DEF 14A – SEC.gov, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1297996/000130817925000509/dlr000000-def14a.htm
  49. Billionaire Jim Chanos Is Betting Big Against Data Center REITs, accessed February 28, 2026, https://investorplace.com/2022/06/billionaire-jim-chanos-is-betting-big-against-data-center-reits/
  50. DIGITAL REALTY TRUST, INC._December 31, 2024 – SEC.gov, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1297996/000155837025001424/dlr-20241231x10k.htm
  51. Digital Realty Trust (DLR) Earnings Date and Reports 2026, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/DLR/earnings/
  52. Digital Realty Trust, Inc. Stock Price: Quote, Forecast, Splits & News, accessed February 28, 2026, https://www.perplexity.ai/finance/DLR/earnings