DLR Q2'26 Conference Call Notes
Three things from Digital Realty Trust's call, starting with: The fee income transformation is the real story: promotes and Columbia Capital create an asset manager disguised as a REIT
Three things that matter from Digital Realty Trust (DLR) in its Q2’26 call:
The fee income transformation is the real story: promotes and Columbia Capital create an asset manager disguised as a REIT: $200M promote income this quarter plus $9B AUM from Columbia acquisition transforms DLR into a Blackstone-lite model; management buried the lede that fee income could reach $200M+ quarterly run rate by 2027.
Record renewal spreads of 25% (66.7% on hyperscale!) signal pricing power nobody’s modeling correctly: Singapore repricing drove monster spreads, but management’s language suggests this happens ‘periodically’ in constrained markets; the embedded mark-to-market opportunity across the portfolio is massive.
They stopped disclosing interconnection revenue as a percentage of total while claiming record interconnection growth: ServiceFabric adoption ‘demonstrably increased’ with ‘2x customer usage’ but no actual revenue numbers; classic metric disappearance when monetization disappoints.
Disclosure Quality: B | Financial Quality: C
Track DLR’s promise history and grade trend: callsheetdaily.com/tickers/dlr
Delta Sheet
▼ Core FFO per share (ex-promote): $2.04 (15% YoY) → $2.13 (14% YoY) (100 bps deceleration YoY)
▼ Total bookings: $707M at 100% share → $108M (0-1MW only disclosed) (Stopped reporting total bookings)
▲ Renewal spreads (cash): 5% blended → 25%+ blended (+2000 bps explosion)
▲ Greater than 1MW renewal spreads: 7.4% → 66.7% (+5930 bps surge)
▲ Backlog at DLR share: $1.0B → $1.4B (+40% sequential)
- Development pipeline: 1.2GW at $16.5B → 1.4GW at $20B (+17% MW, +21% cost)
▲ Leverage (Debt/EBITDA): 4.7x → 4.7x (4.6x adjusted) (Flat despite $6B investment)
▲ Fee income (normalized): Not disclosed → ~$45M quarterly (New recurring revenue stream)
▲ Promote income: $0 → $188M net ($0.52/share) (First promote realized)
▲ Same-capital cash NOI (constant FX): 2.5% → 7.2% (+470 bps acceleration)
▲ 0-1MW + interconnection bookings: $98M record → $108M new record (+10% sequential growth)
- AI % of 0-1MW bookings: 21% → ~20% (Stable at elevated levels)
- Development CapEx (net): $910M → $1.1B (+21% sequential surge)
▲ Pre-leasing %: 61% → 63% (+200 bps despite pipeline growth)




