Digital Realty reports record $2.5 billion backlog

Digital Realty reported $1.9 billion in quarterly revenue, up 21% from a year earlier, and a record $2.5 billion backlog including 2028 revenue, according to Data Center Dynamics.

Leasing totaled $855 million for the quarter, with hyperscale bookings of $689 million setting another record. Signings of 0-1MW requirements, which include interconnection, exceeded the prior quarter's record by 40%. The company said pricing on leases above a megawatt set a new high. "Demand was broad-based across geographies, customer segments and deployment types," chief executive Andy Power said on the earnings call.

Digital Realty has 1.5GW under construction at an expected total cost of $22 billion, and 63% of that pipeline is pre-leased. Development capex was $1.5 billion in the quarter and $3.3 billion so far this year, so the remaining spend still depends on leasing capacity that is not yet contracted.

For allocators marking listed data-center REITs against private vehicles, that split separates capacity with a tenant attached from capacity being built on forecast demand.

The company raised full-year guidance, but its shares still fell during broader uncertainty in the AI data center market, according to the report. Power distanced Digital Realty from debt concerns around neoclouds: "We have very little exposure, less than two percent, to some of the noise and names that people are worried about," he said on CNBC.

Leasing ran beyond the US. Power said two sizable hyperscale leases signed in early July in Northern Virginia came alongside APAC signings that beat the company's prior regional record by more than 600%. Chief financial officer Matt Mercier said the 500kW-1MW subsegment was "particularly strong, driven by large enterprise and service provider deployments." He also said one of the leading AI labs deployed a network architecture across 15 Digital Realty sites in EMEA, using them as interconnection hubs with private connectivity to cloud providers, carriers and enterprise customers in each region.

In October the company broke ground on a 22MW Ankara data center with Rönesans, the first project under a joint venture that could eventually reach 200MW and is due online in 2028, as Private Wealth Daily previously reported.