Tag Archives: dlr

Charter Stock Falls; Digital Realty Up On S&P 500 Add, Equinix Deal

Charter Communications ( CHTR ) stock fell Monday after the soon-to-be No. 2 cable TV firm was not added to the S&P 500, as some analysts and investors had expected, following the final approval of its Time Warner Cable acquisition. Standard & Poor’s announced late Friday that Digital Realty ( DLR ), a data center operator whose stock has been rising of late, would replace Time Warner Cable in the S&P 500 . Digital Realty will take TWC ‘s place on the index after the close of trading on Tuesday. Charter expects to close its purchases of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks on Wednesday, after gaining the final regulator OK on Thursday. It will then become the No. 2 cable company, behind Comcast ( CMCSA ). Equinix ( EQIX ) early Monday announced that it will sell eight European data centers to Digital Realty for $874 million. Regulators required Equinix to divest some assets in approving its acquisition of Telecity. The eight data centers consist of five in London, two in Amsterdam and one in Frankfurt. Shares of Digital Realty, which announced an equity offering to fund the Equinix deal, were up 2.5% early Monday, near 96 and touching an all-time high for the sixth day in the past eight trading days. Digital Realty stock is up 25% this year. Equinix stock was up a fraction early Monday. Charter stock was down nearly 4% in early trading in the stock market today , near 206. California regulators last week approved the Time Warner Cable ( TWC ) deal, the final hurdle to Charter’s makeover. Liberty Broadband ( LBRDA ) will own about 18% of the new Charter, while privately held media firm Advance/Newhouse will own about 13.5%.

Equinix Price Target Hiked, With Unmatched Data Center Assets Cited

Equinix ’s ( EQIX ) global footprint of data center assets and network connections to cloud services providers give it a growing edge over rivals, says Pacific Crest Securities, which raised its price target on the stock to 375. Equinix stock is about even for 2016 so far, after breaking out of a flat base with a 304.87 buy point at the end of 2015. It’s been consolidating ever since. Shares of Redwood City, Calif.-based Equinix edged up a fraction in early trading in the stock market today , near 302. Pacific Crest analyst Michael Bowen said the company’s acquisitions of Europe-based Telecity Group and Japan-based Bit-isle in 2015 will expand Equinix’s reach. “The magnetic pull Equinix has been able to achieve by having a dense global footprint of data center assets cannot be ignored. No other data center company in the world can offer equivalent scale of interconnection services as Equinix,” Bowen wrote. Data center operators provide space, power and cooling. Customers pack the warehouse-sized data centers with their own computer servers and other gear. Equinix also specializes in providing connections to high-speed, fiber-optic networks. Demand for data-center space has been driven by the rise of social networking, mobile devices, cloud services, online gaming, computer-based stock trading and more. Equinix’s customers include leading cloud computing services providers Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ), as well as other large companies. “Equinix  is the only company that can enable enterprise adoption of the cloud, since it has created an ecosystem in which service providers can connect with enterprises,” added Bowen. “The ecosystem should be very difficult to replicate, and interconnection is one of the keys to Equinix’s success.” The data center market is divided among wholesale providers such as Digital Realty ( DLR ) and DuPont Fabros ( DFT ) and retail operators such as Equinix. Wholesale providers sell huge amounts of space over contracts that run several years, while retail operators sell less space over shorter contracts and provide more specialized services, such as hook-ups to high-speed data networks. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Equinix Targets Telecity, Data Center M&A Heats Up

Equinix’s (EQIX) sudden $3.5 billion takeover bid for U.K.-based TelecityGroup, which had agreed to merge with Interxion Holding, could spur yet more data center operators to jump into the industry’s M&A fray, analysts say. Potential acquirers and takeover targets include Digital Realty Trust (DLR) and Coresite Realty (COR). Equinix stock was up 2% in morning trading in the stock market today, hitting a more than 14-year high above 270 earlier