Opinions
Mike S. Newton, CIM FCSI
Digital Realty Trust
DLR-N
TOP PICK
Dec 05, 2017
Stock price when the opinion was issued
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The chart shows a nice uptrend since late May, and coming after a 2-year downtrend before peaking at $180. It's a recovery story. Is there enough interest for this to break above $120 to $140? Watch weekly closes, rather than daily closes, because there are five data points in a week.
DLR is a fundamentally strong REIT, with expanding net profit margins and ROE, and it generates good free cash flows. Its yield is attractive, although its Funds From Operations (FFO) to debt have been declining over the past few years, indicating its debt levels have increased at a faster rate than FFO. It trades at a high valuation, but this can be justified given its strong fundamentals. Given a potential peak in interest rates, the underlying secular trend growth in the data center industry, and its strong fundamentals, we would be comfortable holding or adding slowly to this name.
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One of two pure plays on data centres. Beat on top and bottom raised guidance. 12-month price target of $162.50. Yield is 3.4%.
Owns most of its data centres, whereas EQIX has arrangements with customers. As well, EQIX stock went through the "death cross", which is usually not good.
Second-largest data centre REIT globally. Record industry leasing last quarter, 4 times as much as a year ago. Tenants are big tech, with lots of capital to put into data centres to support cloud rollout. Coming AI boom, will benefit. Pricing power. Over 5% internal growth annually, could be higher. Modest premium to NAV, and the NAV will increase over the years. Yield is 3.4%.
(Analysts’ price target is $147.70)
The world is using an increasing amount of technology with Cloud spaced server space. This company bought a data Centre for about $4 billion recently, which gave them access to a lot of European property, a nice added bonus. Has about 150 data centres globally, and some of the biggest names in the S&P 500. To move this beyond just being a commodity of acreage of data farms, they are adding a level of IT consulting, which have higher margins. Has an effective tax rate of only 3%, so are not getting a lot of love in the last couple of days. Under this pressure, the shares represent a pretty good buying opportunity. Dividend yield of 3.4%. (Analysts’ price target is $127.)