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Digital Realty, a rising international colocation and interconnection data center owner/operator, is intent upon expanding its literal IT footprint in the real estate investment trust business.
The Chicago and Santa Clara, Calif.-based company revealed Sept. 14 that it has completed its merger with DuPont Fabros (NYSE: DFT), an owner, developer, operator and manager of enterprise-class, carrier-neutral, multi-tenant data centers.
The two companies said the merger would amount to an all-stock transaction with an enterprise value of about $7.8 billion.
The addition of DuPont Fabros’ 12 data centers in Ashburn, Va., Chicago and Santa Clara (plus a development project in Toronto and land parcels in Phoenix and Oregon, slated for future development) will bring Digital Realty’s total number of data centers to 157.
Digital Realty thus becomes the world’s eighth-largest REIT corporation with a $25.2 billion market cap. Simon Property Group Inc. is No. 1 with a market cap of $55.8 billion.
Digital Realty said the addition of DuPont Fabros’ high-quality, purpose-built data center portfolio to Digital Realty’s existing franchise enhances the combined company’s ability to serve its customers in the top U.S. data center metro areas. The merger also provides meaningful customer and geographic diversification for DuPont Fabros shareholders from the combination with Digital Realty’s global platform, the company said.
“This highly strategic and complementary transaction further expands our product offering, and solidifies our blue-chip customer base,” Digital Realty CEO A. William Stein said. “This deal is consistent with our investment criteria and is likewise consistent with our strategy of offering our customers the most comprehensive set of data center solutions, from single-cabinet colocation and interconnection, all the way up to multi-megawatt hyper-scale deployments.”
In conjunction with the merger closing, Digital Realty appointed former DuPont Fabros board members Michael A. Coke and John T. Roberts, Jr. to Digital Realty’s board of directors.
Digital Realty supports the data center, colocation and interconnection strategies of more than 2,300 firms across its secure network portfolio of data centers located throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
The company’s clients include domestic and international companies of all sizes, ranging from financial services, cloud and information technology services, to manufacturing, energy, gaming, life sciences and consumer products.