Share count
348Mpeak FY2025
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DLR, Digital Realty Trust Inc.
Digital Realty Trust, Inc., through its controlling interest in Digital Realty Trust, L.P. and the subsidiaries of the Operating Partnership, is a leading global provider of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions for customers across a variety of industry verticals.
Companies increasingly need to operate ubiquitously, on-demand and with real-time intelligence serving customers, partners and employees across multiple channels, business functions and points of business presence.
The Internet of Things, 5G, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence, among other technological advancements, are driving this digital transformation.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$6.1B
+10.0% YoY · 9% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $6.3B 5-yr avg $5.3B
Revenue $1.6B +16.2% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 16.4% yr-ago 14.0%
Net income $175M yr-ago $106M
Net margin 10.7% yr-ago 7.6%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Occupancy, rents, and the cost of debt. Read on funds from operations and net asset value, because GAAP depreciation distorts the earnings, and a property downturn meets a balance sheet built on leverage. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Funds from operations per share have compounded about 4% a year across the record. The dividend takes 54% of FFO, and is covered. Debt is 33% of assets, conservative for a REIT. The quality and location of the properties, the lease terms and occupancy, and the cost of the debt are what the 10-K settles, and no single ratio captures them.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →48% of revenue comes from outside the United States.
Revenue by geography, FY2025
- United States52%$3.2B
- International48%$2.9B
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $2.1B | $2.5B | $3.0B | $3.2B | $3.9B | $4.4B | $4.7B | $5.5B | $5.6B | $6.1B | $6.3B | RevenueRevenue |
| $426M | $248M | $331M | $580M | $356M | $1.7B | $378M | $949M | $602M | $1.3B | $1.4B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $956M | $1.1B | $1.4B | $1.7B | $1.7B | $3.2B | $2.0B | $2.6B | $2.4B | $3.2B | $3.2B | Funds from operationsFFO |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| 55% | 62% | 59% | 53% | 67% | 43% | 74% | 58% | 69% | 54% | 54% | Dividend payout (FFO)Payout |
| $11.6B | $16.9B | $17.1B | $16.9B | $23.1B | $23.6B | $26.1B | $27.3B | $27.6B | $31.4B | $31.6B | Real estate (gross)RE gross |
| $12.2B | $21.4B | $23.8B | $23.1B | $36.1B | $36.4B | $41.5B | $44.1B | $45.3B | $49.4B | $48.9B | Total assetsAssets |
| 34% | 31% | 35% | 39% | 33% | 35% | 32% | 30% | 31% | 33% | 33% | Debt / assetsDebt/assets |
| $4.2B | $6.7B | $8.3B | $9.1B | $12.0B | $12.9B | $13.1B | $13.4B | $14.0B | $16.2B | $16.0B | Total debtDebt |
| $4.1B | $6.7B | $8.1B | $9.0B | $11.9B | $12.8B | $13.0B | $11.8B | $10.1B | $12.7B | $13.6B | Net debt / (cash)Net debt |
| 2.1× | 1.7× | 1.7× | 1.7× | 1.7× | 2.4× | 2.0× | 1.2× | 1.0× | 1.5× | 1.6× | Interest coverageInt. cov. |
| $5.1B | $10.3B | $9.9B | $9.9B | $17.7B | $18.0B | $17.6B | $19.1B | $21.3B | $22.9B | $23.4B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 151M | 175M | 207M | 209M | 263M | 283M | 298M | 309M | 332M | 348M | 353M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $6.34 | $6.01 | $6.96 | $8.32 | $6.56 | $11.28 | $6.56 | $8.55 | $7.16 | $9.21 | $9.20 | FFO / shareFFO/sh |
| $3.46 | $3.70 | $4.11 | $4.40 | $4.43 | $4.87 | $4.87 | $4.92 | $4.93 | $4.97 | $4.96 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $33.82 | $59.17 | $47.70 | $47.17 | $67.49 | $63.57 | $59.02 | $61.86 | $64.37 | $65.91 | $66.15 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +2.4%/yr | +3.4%/yr |
| EPS | +3.2%/yr | +22.6%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +4.1%/yr | +2.3%/yr |
| Book value / share | +7.7%/yr | −0.5%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$6.1Blow FY2016
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- about $8.98 per shareNet income $1.3B + depreciation $1.9B − gains on sale $80M
What this means
GAAP net income with property depreciation added back, because the buildings a REIT charges against earnings usually hold or grow their value. This, not net income, is what a REIT is actually priced on. It is an approximation here: where a filing reports gains on property sales, we remove them, the way the NAREIT definition does.
- Lightly coveredDividends $1.7B ÷ FFO $3.1B
What this means
A REIT must distribute most of its taxable income, so a high payout is normal and the question is whether FFO covers it. Above 100%, the trust is funding the dividend with debt or asset sales, and a cut usually follows.
Is it sound?
- Debt / assets 33%ConservativeTotal debt $16.2B ÷ assets $49.4B
What this means
Every REIT runs on leverage; how much is the question. Heavy debt is what turns a property downturn into a wipeout, as 2008 showed, so a conservative balance sheet is part of the moat here, not a drag on it.
- Strong(operating income + depreciation) ÷ interest $438M
What this means
How many times the property cash earnings cover the interest bill. Comfortable coverage is what lets a REIT refinance through a tight credit market instead of being forced to sell into one.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
In its own filing A competitive risk, new this year
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.
“The tenant improvements may also become outdated or obsolete as the result of technological change, the passage of time or other factors, including the recent acceleration in AI adoption and rapid advancements in compute, cooling and power technologies, which continue to drive evolving customer requirements, deployment…”
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
Goodwill & intangibles$11.5B23% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity42%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$3.5Bover 10 years buying other businesses
None written down over the record; the goodwill is still carried at full cost. That is the deals holding their value on the books so far; whether they keep doing so is the test an owner watches, since the write-down, when it comes, is the admission the price was too high.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | A. William Stein | $17.1M | $30.5M | $1.7B |
| 2022 | A. William Stein | $23.7M | −$14.1M | $378M |
| 2022 | Andrew P. Power | $6.8M | −$6.5M | $378M |
| 2023 | Andrew P. Power | $12.4M | $22.3M | $949M |
| 2024 | Andrew P. Power | $16.3M | $28.0M | $602M |
| 2025 | Andrew P. Power | $21.1M | $21.5M | $1.3B |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio174:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
Peers, Data-center REITs
The same industry, side by side on the REIT lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | FFO margin | FFO / assets | Payout (FFO) | Debt / assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EQIXEquinix Inc. Common Stock REIT | $9.2B | 32% | 7.8% | 49% | 43% |
| DLRDigital Realty Trust Inc. | $6.1B | 46% | 6.0% | 58% | 33% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / FFOA REIT is priced on a multiple of its funds from operations (FFO), the cash it earns once the depreciation on its buildings is added back. Type today’s price; we show the multiple you would pay and the income and growth it implies.
$
The assumptions
FFO / share, delivered2%/yr’20→’25
The justified multiple is 1 ÷ (required return − growth), a perpetuity on FFO. At an 8% required return and 3% growth, a REIT is worth about 20× FFO.
Enter a price above to run it.
Price / FFO—
Justified by growth—
Dividend yield—
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
FFO about $9.20 per share on 351M shares. The dials set the multiple they justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. FFO here adds back depreciation and removes property-sale gains, the NAREIT method; it does not net out maintenance capex (AFFO), occupancy or lease terms, which the 10-K does.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Digital Realty Trust Inc. (DLR), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/DLR, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← DLB its page in the Manual DLTR →
Industry order: ← DHCNL the REITs — Specialty & Diversified chapter DOC →