Data center landlord Equinix vaulted Thursday to lead the S&P 500 after the real estate investment trust cleared earnings forecasts late Wednesday noting strong artificial intelligence and cloud demand.
Redwood City, Calif.-based Equinix is a REIT specializing in data centers and internet infrastructure.
The company reported adjusted funds from operations increased 3.1% year over year to $8.86 per share, beating forecasts of $8.59 per share.
Revenue rose 6% to $2.13 billion, but fell just short of estimates of $2.14 billion. The revenue results marked 85 consecutive quarters of top-line growth, the longest streak of any company in the S&P 500, Equinix said.
Equinix closed 3,800 deals across more than 3,100 customers during the quarter. The company noted that cloud and artificial intelligence activity continued to drive strong demand.
On April 15, Equinix partnered with PGIM Real Estate on a $600 million joint venture to develop and operate the first xScale data center in the U.S. The xScale is a hyperscale, the largest type of data center, and competes with the likes of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google parent Alphabet Cloud. The partnership increases Equinix's Global xScale portfolio to more than $8 billion with more than 725 megawatts of power capacity.
Equinix reported that xScale leasing increased by 48 megawatts due to accelerated hyperscale demand in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as the Asia-Pacific region.
The company guided 2024 revenues between $8.692 billion and $8.792 billion, up 6% to 7% from last year. FactSet analysts expect that revenue will rise 8% to $8.846 billion.
Equinix expects adjusted funds from operations to increase 7% to 10% in 2024 to range from $34.45 to $35.29 per share. Wall Street consensus forecast is $34.96 per share.
Equinix Stock
EQIX stock spiked 11.5% Thursday. Shares briefly cleared the stock's 200- and 50-day moving averages, then retreated back below those technical levels of resistance.
Equinix had fallen about 24% from its March 4 record high of 914.93 prior to the report.
The stock is now down 4% so far this year.
You can follow Harrison Miller for more stock news and updates on Twitter @IBD_Harrison
