Earnings Labs

Iron Mountain Incorporated (IRM)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 25, 2017

$112.47

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Iron Mountain Third Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Melissa Marsden, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Melissa Marsden

Analyst

Thank you, Austin. Good day and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2017 earnings conference call. We appreciate that the timing of today's call is a bit unusual for our U.S. audience as we are conducting it today from Sydney, Australia and will be meeting with some new and legacy Recall investors later today and tomorrow. The user-controlled slides that we will be referring to in today's prepared remarks are available on our Investor Relations site along with the link to today's webcast. You can find the presentation at ironmountain.com under About Us/Investors/Events & Presentations. Alternatively, you can access today's financial highlights, press release, the presentation and the full supplemental financial information together in one PDF file by going to investors.ironmountain.com, under Financial Information. Additionally, we have filed all the related documents as one 8-K, which is also available on the Web site. On today's call, we'll hear from Bill Meaney, Iron Mountain's President and CEO, who will discuss highlights and progress toward our strategic plan; followed by Stuart Brown, our CFO, who will cover financial results and guidance. After our prepared remarks, we'll open up the phones for Q&A. Referring now to Page 2 of the presentation, today's earnings call, slide presentation and supplemental financial information will contain forward-looking statements, most notably our outlook for 2017 financial and operating performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to today's press release, earnings call presentation, supplemental financial report, the safe harbor language on this slide, and our most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K for a discussion of the major risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ from those in our forward-looking statements. In addition, we use several non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results and the reconciliations to these measures, as required by Reg G, are included in this supplemental financial information package. With that, Bill, would you please begin?

William Meaney

Analyst

Thank you, Melissa, and hello, everyone. We are pleased to report strong third quarter financial and operating results and solid progress against our 2020 plan. We achieved financial performance in line with our expectations and drove robust internal revenue growth and enhanced profitability across the business. Our results reflect the durability of our high margin storage business and improved contribution from Recall synergies and our transformation initiative, both of which have enhanced profitability and cash flow growth. As a result, today we also announced a 6.8% increase in our quarterly dividend per share, well in excess of inflation. Even after this growth in the dividend, we expect the payout ratio to be a little below our prior guidance with the previous lower dividend per share rate. During the quarter we made meaningful progress on the execution of our strategic plan across all facets of the business. As you know, our plan is focused on extending our durable business model through continued investment in our core developed markets, expanding into faster growing emerging markets and adjacent storage related businesses such as data center and art storage, and capturing opportunities to provide new innovative solutions to both our new and existing customers. We also achieved internal storage rental revenue growth of 3.5%, which reflects our revenue management focus and 1.3% growth in internal records management volume or prior to the effects of acquisitions and dispositions. As noted last quarter, trailing 12 month volume growth now includes Recall volume in the base which increased by about 20%, making percentage growth figures a bit lower even though the growth in underlying cubic feet of records remains consistent. In fact, new volume from new and existing customers of 49 million cubic feet over the past 12 months is consistent with last quarter's reported figure and…

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Thank you, Bill, and good day everyone. We are excited to report another strong quarter of continuing growth at our core storage rental business and good progress increasing our capital flexibility through our refinancing activity. We remain steadily on track to deliver on our financial objectives and strategic goals with a disciplined investment strategy. As Bill mentioned, it is based upon this continued demonstration of growth and business durability that our board of directors increased the fourth quarter dividend by 6.8% to approximately $0.59 per share, reflecting an annualized rate of $2.35 per share, up from $2.20 per share previously. On today's call I will provide some color on the third quarter's operational and financial drivers, touch on the implications of our refinancing activity and then cover our outlook for 2017. As we have noted previously, we will issue specific 2018 guidance in connection with our fourth quarter earnings call in February, consistent with most peers. As you see on Slide 7, which shows our key financial metrics, our third quarter total revenues grew 2.4% over last year or 1.4% on a C$ basis, impacted by the disposition of our legacy Australian business as well as our businesses in Russia and Ukraine. Internal storage rental revenue growth was a strong 3.5% in the quarter, while internal service revenue declined 20%. The growth in internal storage revenue resulted from our revenue management focus and continued growth in internal global net volume. That is growth prior to acquisitions and dispositions. Our gross profit margin improved 210 basis points year-over-year, primarily driven by synergies from the Recall acquisition and the flow through of our revenue management program, partly offset by $3.5 million charge associated with the recent natural disasters. In particular, our service gross profit has improved by $10 million year-over-year to $102…

William Meaney

Analyst

Thank you, Stuart and just to sum up. We had a very good quarter punctuated by another period with strong revenue growth and particularly strong storage revenue growth of 3.5% before acquisitions. We continue to be on track with our integration of Recall which shows through our continued growth in EBITDA margin. Based on this performance, we have pulled forward our anticipated 6.8% dividend per share increase by a quarter and even with this payout ratio of roughly 80% of AFFO, we will be below our original guidance for the year with the previously lower dividend. We continue to make good progress in our adjacent business areas with the closing of the FORTRUST data center business in this quarter and the announcement of our agreement to purchase some of Credit Suisse's data centers. And doing all this whilst improving our financial flexibility, extending debt maturity and reducing our interest cost. With that, I would like to turn the call over to the operator so we can begin Q&A. Operator?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Sheila McGrath with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Sheila McGrath

Analyst

Good morning in Australia. Another solid storage same store revenue growth of 3.5%. You did cite the yield management system. I am just wondering if there are any other factors driving that strong growth relative to your 2016 kind of growth levels.

William Meaney

Analyst

No. I mean you can see if you look at the overall business, it's the result of the volume growth that we had. And so if you look across the whole business it’s positive volumes, and the revenue management together yield to 3.5%. But I think that the most -- the big difference as you say, the year ago, Sheila, is the revenue management program that we started putting in place two years ago. And it takes a while to ramp that through as contracts becomes renewed. And you can see the difference between, say, North America, from an internal revenue growth versus Europe. Where in Europe we are probably about a year behind, in developed markets as well, about a year behind from when we rolled it out in North America. So we think there is still more to be done specifically in Europe and developed markets as those results are flowing through from the work that we did starting a year ago in those geographies. But a big part of it is the revenue management systems.

Sheila McGrath

Analyst

Okay. Great. And just one follow up. On the data center space, I know it's still small in your adjacent business, but you are allocating more capital there. I just was wondering if you could talk about pricing of the two acquisitions. How you look at it? Is it just on a stabilized basis or how you are underwriting it because I realize it's a competitive environment out there.

William Meaney

Analyst

It's a good question, Sheila. You can probably appreciate having watched -- having you watched this phase for a while. We have passed on more than we actioned. In other words, it's an area where you have to be disciplined in terms of your capital allocation. So our first and foremost thing is to make sure that on a stabilized basis that we get the types of returns that makes sense given our cost of capital, both on an IRR and an NPV type basis. So typically what we find is that if we are doing a Greenfield like northern Virginia, you are kind of in the 14%-15% internal rate of return. And when we do the acquisitions, it is that we are pretty disciplined if we look at something that’s north of 11%. So it is a little bit - it's fair that when you are buying something with revenue already attached to it, it is a little bit lower in terms of internal rate of return; but on the other side is, you are taking less risk, right. Because it's coming across with customers. So when we look at it, we first look at it on an NPV and IRR basis and we also look at the cost of acquiring a megawatt versus what it costs us to build it out. So we kind of look at two different lenses and that goes without saying as we only focus on high quality assets. And high quality assets is not just the physical aspect of the building, but it's also that the absorption rates we see in the markets that they operate in. So we are really excited about, for instance, the Credit Suisse, and we look forward to closing that because London and Singapore are amongst the best markets globally in terms of absorption and specifically the London operation is in the [Floyd] [ph] estate, which is a great location. And Denver is also in the top ten markets. A great question.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Yes. The only thing I would add real quickly, Stuart, is that if you look at it on a replacement cost basis, which Bill touched on, FORTRUST, we paid about $13 million per megawatt. And you need to remember, this 85% lease. So that in itself is good and then the cost to build out the future capacity is actually -- that’s $6 million a megawatt. So you sort of think about where the replacement cost is, we feel really good about this investment as well for instance.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

So why are you guys not giving guidance out for '18? Again, usually you have been doing that ever since I have been covering you. Just why are you not giving it out now?

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Shlomo, this is Stuart. I will take that one. Since I have just joined a year ago when we issued guidance at the third quarter. So what you are seeing is that -- and you see sort of some of the things have changed even now in terms of how the business changes from February to March. And the end of the day, we have given 2020 outlook out there at our investor day. So you have got a little bit of a roadmap to work from already. And we would be able to give the most appropriate guidance, it's really better for us to get 2017 closed out to what final results are, tax rates, things like that. So in February we will be able to give a better quality guidance in the sense of number of business decisions that have been made. So this is something we talked about really back in the first quarter already. I think actually in the fourth quarter last year we had mentioned this.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

So did you say anything -- I missed something about adjusted EBITDA set up for, I thought you said for '18. Did you make any comments about the EBITDA for '18 or I just misheard that.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Yes. I mean basically I said consistent with the 2020 plan that we expect EBITDA margins would be 50 to 75 basis points higher in '18 relative to '17.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

I mean based on what I am seeing in terms of both the transformation, the integration, some of the pricing, that sounds like kind of a low ball number to me.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

No. We will give more detailed guidance in February. We are just trying to lay out the roadmap with what the 2020 plan is and that’s consistent with that.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

Okay. And can you just talk a little bit more about the North American volumes. You are negative by two-tenths of a percent, last quarter one tenth of a percent. Excuse me, this quarter one tenth of a percent to last quarter. I think you alluded a little bit to the kind of juggling between pricing and volume over there. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit more?

William Meaney

Analyst

Yes, sure. Shlomo, this is Bill. So I think the best way to think about it, if you look at North America and western Europe, right. Both very similar markets in terms of level of maturity. If we look at this quarter in North America rim, we had 3.5% internal revenue storage growth and in western Europe we had 2.3%. And then if you look at the volume that’s made up that, is that in, as you pointed out, North America was negative 0.2% and western Europe was, internal volume growth of positive 2%. So this tells you where we are -- we are obviously a little bit ahead in North America than we are in Europe in terms of rolling out the revenue management system. We started rolling it out about a year ago in Europe. And what we are doing with the revenue management is optimizing it. For sure, when you adjust price it does at some point affect the speed of incoming volume from customers and you can see that a little bit happening in the divergence between North America and western Europe. But at the end of the day what we are interested in is what you eat is cash. And so we are really happy with the North American results that we had 3.5% internal storage revenue growth. And that allows us to even further optimize the CapEx because we are getting more value for stakes on the shelf, if you will. So western Europe at 2.3%, I am not saying it's bad, we are actually -- we are happy with the 2.3% internal storage revenue growth but we think there is more to come. But there is some elasticity as you try to optimize that and you can see that in the North American and western European numbers this quarter.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

Okay. That’s good color. And then just two kind of metrics type numbers. I want to get some color on, first, my calculation on the mature markets is, between pricing and mix. The west was 2.7%-2.8%. Stuart, does that look right to you? And then also for Stuart, it looks like ARDSO moved up both sequentially and year-over-year. May be you could give us a little color on what's going on there.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

I missed the second question, Shlomo. Can you say it again?

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

The second question is receivables days. It looks like they were up to me sequentially and year-over-year. So just wondering what's going on over there.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Yes. So the first question was specifically on developed markets?

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

I was just looking at total company -- I mean the days that I am getting were 73 days versus 69 days for the last two quarters and if I look year-over-year it looks like it was 67 days last turn 3Q '16.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Yes. So on the -- going right to the first question. On the receivables, the receivables is up mostly in North America where AR is up and that’s really driven by fewer collection days that we actually had in September in the U.S. And it was up a little bit in India as well. It was the other market where receivables are up. We had a tax law change there and so what you are seeing in India is little bit of a lag in terms of getting billing out and collections done as over a pretty short period of time. You have got an entire system in India changing to new tax regulations. So that’s what's going on in the receivables. If you look at the developed markets and other international volumes which is in the appendix to the presentation, the net internal growth number there is about 0.2%.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

Okay. So we should see that reverse in the fourth quarter on receivables?

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Yes. You should see some improvement in trend in the fourth quarter.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

Okay. And I am sorry I have used up a lot of the time but just a pricing thing I want to confirm. Was that 2.7, 2.8 between mix and pricing sound right in developed markets.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

Yes. In total that’s about right. Both North America and in Europe, yes.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Andy Wittmann with Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Andy Wittmann

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Thank you for presenting the cash chart, that was very helpful. When I look at the cash chart, it looks like you took up your guidance for the year in terms of the customer inducements and customer relationship spend from $60 million from $35 million, which is a pretty decent amount, I would say. I wanted to ask you, Bill, what you are seeing in the marketplace? Was this just you guys being opportunistic on a select handful of deals or is the inducement need a little bit higher today to get those organic boxes in the door.

William Meaney

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Andy, you have been watching us long enough -- it's opportunistic and you can't time these things. When the opportunity arrives, it arrives. So there is always a little bit of movement up and down in that number because it's market driven.

Andy Wittmann

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Got you. And then I guess my next question was related to the Credit Suisse acquisitions. It sounds like there is already some vacancy there. Sounds like there might be a little bit more. Can you talk about the lease up plan and how long it takes to get to some level of stabilization? Maybe the way to look at it from our point of view externally is at what point do you get this to be FFO accretive.

William Meaney

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Yes, it's a great question. So the nature of the Credit Suisse acquisitions because they were running these for their own [books] [ph], is think of 2018 as the year when we have to move some of their operations out, which was not data center related, and then prepare the data halls for lease. So in '18 you will see the thing slightly dilutive, and then in '19 it's flat and by 2021 it's fully stabilized. So that’s kind of the -- so already by 2019 you will see that it's flat to slightly accretive and that’s really the first year that we are able to start leasing out part of that 10 megawatt that I talked about. So 2018 is effectively creating the 10 megawatts.

Andy Wittmann

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Got it. Thank you for that. Stuart, maybe one for you. I wanted to ask about, I guess sequentially here with the refinancing we got some benefit to the lease adjusted leverage ratio. Can you talk about the mechanics of the new credit agreement and how that had an impact on that reported results. I guess maybe the fundamental question there is, was it definitional? Was it mostly a definitional change or was there an improvement in the least adjusted ratio sequentially here?

Stuart Brown

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Yes. The most important is, is that if it was definitional, there was a change in the definition and calculation. But what that does is it improves the overall capacity in terms of where our leverage is today and where the covenants are to build real capacity and your ability to fund future growth if we needed again to be opportunistic. Our overall goal is to continue to reduce our lease adjusted leverage ratio. But the way the mechanics work or the key mechanics on the lease adjusted leverage ratio is that to adjust for rent expense and capitalize that in the lease adjusted number. The old credit facility was eight times rent, the new facility is six times rent. So we have got annual rent of around $300 million, right. That’s reduced your overall leverage about $600 million. And the way -- the reason that that was done is essentially it was a backend way to give us credit for the value of the $28 million square feet that we actually own on balance sheet. The value of the real estate that we own is gone up since we lasted the credit facilities. We had to work out mechanism to give us credit for that and this is a way to do that.

William Meaney

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Yes. Andy, the important thing about these ratios is if you look at our total level of indebtedness, it's actually pretty consistent with our peer group, both on the industrial REIT and belt storage and the data center REITs. You don’t see a big diversion. But the important thing is now at 5.5 we have a full turn against our most restrictive covenant which kicks in at 6.5. And what we have always said is, it's less about the absolute number, the 5.5 for instance, it's more about that we would like to see 1.5 over time we would like to see 1.5 to two turns of free board between our most restrictive covenant is versus our debt, it just gives us the flexibility to steward this thing. So right now, I mean the good news is we have got a full turn below where our most restrictive covenant is and over time as we have guided to, is we will see that widen to 1.5 or better.

Andy Wittmann

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

Very helpful and very clear. I wanted to just go one other question on some of these matters and specifically talking around the usage of the ATM. I guess since the Credit Suisse deal is going to be funded with these fresh proceeds of the ATM, is it your intend, Bill, that you have those proceeds in the door before that closes. And maybe more broadly speaking, is the ATM going to be done under a 10b-51 plan or is it going to be at management's discretion opportunistically in the marketplace.

William Meaney

Analyst · Robert W. Baird and Company. Please go ahead.

It's going to be at management's discretion depending on the marketplace. I think again, looking at our balance sheet right now, we are not going to have guns to our heads to say that we are absolutely going to use the ATM to fund the Credit Suisse. Our intention is to do that and Stuart and myself in the board will make a decision on when to use the ATM but the good thing is we have the financial flexibility. So over time I think you are right. You look at a macro level, is it wasn’t a coincidence that we announced the ATM when we announced the Credit Suisse acquisition because what we said at the 2020 plan stood on its own. But we didn’t have any data center acquisitions built into that 2020 plan. So we just think an ATM is the very efficient and kind of great mechanism to fund specific acquisitions such as the Credit Suisse opportunity. So that’s our intention. It's to use the ATM to kind of match fund these tuck-in acquisitions that weren't part of the original plan, original 2020 plan. But again with our balance sheet we have the flexibility on timing. We are not kind of forced to draw down any of it [today] [ph].

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Michael Cohen

Analyst

This is Michael Cohen for Andrew. Just a quick follow up on that discussion around leverage and the ATM. I mean it seems like a lot of financing capacity or flexibility coming on board. I mean is there anything particular that’s driving that decision for more flexibility now versus some other point.

William Meaney

Analyst

I think, Michael, you can fill on this -- I think the year where we see the most relevance in the ATM quite frankly is the data center space. We feel really good at the results we have been able to build on over the last three years in the data center. We are really pleased in terms of the pre-lease commitment that we had in the Northern Virginia. So we are really seeing the proof points in the markets that one plus one equals three. So the ATM at this point is mainly focused on making sure if we see other opportunities like the FORTRUST and the Credit Suisse come down to pipe, that we have a mechanism or a tool and a tool kit that allows us to do that efficiently. So again we don’t guide to acquisitions in the data center because as I pointed to out to Karen, or Sheila rather, is that we have passed on more than we executed on because we are pretty disciplined but at the same we are very pleased in terms of the traction that we are getting in that segment.

Michael Cohen

Analyst

Understood, thanks. And if I could just follow one quick question around, I know we touched on this on the North America volumes. And I knew you gave some color with North America and western Europe. Did you say for North America, I just want to make sure I got this that that customer's are holding back new volumes because of pricing. Is that what I heard or...?

William Meaney

Analyst

What you see is there is a relationship between organic volume growth from existing customers based on the pricing. I mean like people will determine whether or not they decide to store on side or how quickly they sent boxes in to trust to be stored depending on the price of that. Like anything else it's not completely inelastic. So we do try to optimize that and so we feel pretty good where we planned it right now and as Stuart remarked is that we expect volume going forward is as a result in North America to be kind of plus or minus with zero points as we continue to drive better results in terms of internal storage revenue growth. Because revenue growth is the thing that drives EBITDA which drives our ability to grow cash flows. It drives our ability to grow dividend. So that’s really the name of the game. So since I have been in the company this is the best result that we had in North America overall, say looking at optimization. If you look at western Europe which as I say is similar level of maturity and similar customer behavior is much stronger internal volume growth but the overall result, in other words how much price growth we are getting at the same time is lower. So we are only getting 2.3% internal storage revenue growth and going forward we will continue to look to optimize western Europe as well.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Karin Ford with UMFG Securities. Please go ahead.

Karin Ford

Analyst

First a clarification. Stuart, did you say that there would be limited EBITDA growth looking quarter-over-quarter from 3Q to 4Q and if so, just why is that?

William Meaney

Analyst

Yes. Consistent with what -- the answer is, yes, that’s what I said. And that the main reasons for that are higher integration cost that we will be incurring and will flow through adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter as well as then the fact that the shared service cost of some of the innovation spend is backend weighted. So those are two main causes. The timing of acquisitions, right. Original guidance and assumed acquisitions would be earlier in the year, so you would have picked up the EBITDA and would have incurred the integration cost by now. Obviously, you get delayed EBITDA. The other thing is you also have gotten, from a year over year standpoint, we have disposed of Russia and Ukraine. It isn't sequentially but year-over-year basis.

Karin Ford

Analyst

Right. Got it. And the $3.5 million of disaster expenses, what line item is that in on the income statement?

Stuart Brown

Analyst

That is in corporate and other from a -- it's sitting in CFG. Sitting in sort of the corporate overhead costs. I am sorry, in cost of sales.

Karin Ford

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then just last question is, to sum the revenue management topic, I know you said you still think you have some more wood to chop there and you are going to get some more benefit from there. But once you get at sort of rolled fully through and get your system where you want it. Is that kind of a onetime benefit or do you think that that will help elevate core organic revenue growth going forward?

William Meaney

Analyst

It's a great question. We think the level that we are talking about -- if you look at 3.5% for the North America, we think that we can continue to maintain kind of north of 2.5% going forward. So there is a little bit of catch up but for the most part we feel really good that customers understand the value equation that we provide and they understand that that’s kind of an appropriate level of price increase for them. Which will just naturally over time increase our margins as well. So we feel pretty good that we can continue to push that through. I think where we still have probably the most wood to chop, as I said is Europe and developed markets. I mean we already have started chopping that year, year and half ago but it just takes longer to because visible.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Kevin McVeigh with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst

Congratulations on the dividend boost. So you are kind of 235 existing this year. If we look at kind of the equity issuance into '18, do we maintain the 235 or is it goal to kind of keep it at the 220 that it was throughout all the 2017? Or would there be a step up commensurate with the equity issuance to keep it at that 235.

Stuart Brown

Analyst

We would intend to keep the dividend rate the same, right. It's very consistent with what we said even back at investor day in terms of passing the synergies and transformation benefits back to shareholders. If you look at the dividend payout ratio, it's actually improving from what we have put out in the original guidance. So we have got plenty of capital to continue to fund the ongoing business and as Bill said, if we do think sort of our outside of the plan like the data center acquisitions, we would look to fund that either through ATM or we also have, or at least opportunities to sell some of our existing real estate to fund data center growth.

William Meaney

Analyst

Yes. Just to be clear, Kevin on that is, it's very [consistent] [ph] dividend per share. So we are very focused on growing dividend per share and we only increase dividend per share when we know we can maintain that as we said we are able to do that and at the same time improve our payout ratios as a percentage of AFFO.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst

That’s helpful. And then just going back to the pricing a little bit. Bill, so if we get to kind of 2.5, if you would, is there kind of a certain level we should think about where the unit volume growth settles. So if there is kind of a tradeoff, does that get to kind of 50 basis points of decline so it's a net two, or any thought around the sensitivity because as you price the price right it looks like the new volume growth has slowed a little bit. Does that -- is there an acceptable range? Is it 50 basis points of decline or anyway to think about the sensitivity of price to volume.

William Meaney

Analyst

Kevin, just to be clear, what we are talking about is internal revenue volume of storage growth. So that’s net of any pluses or minuses. So when we said we did 3.5% in North America, that’s assets are tracking out to 0.2% volume. So when Stuart guided that next year when you feel really good that we are going to be north of 2.5%, that’s 2.5% net of any up or down in terms of volume. So that’s including that. So at the end of the day which we guide on and focus on is internal revenue storage growth because that’s what you eat. Right. That’s what drives the dividend per share growth.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst

I get that. I guess I am just trying to figure out is it, hypothetically would it be three percentage points of price that gets offset by 50 basis points of volume decline that gets you in that 2.5% or.

William Meaney

Analyst

No. No. I mean you don’t see that now Kevin. If you look at the overall company, is we are up in terms of volume growth and up in terms of revenue growth on an internal basis. So, no, you don’t get those types of swings.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is a follow up from Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

Just wanted to follow up, just on items that were, I guess you would say taken out of the garage, Iron Cloud and Policy Center. Is there a significant startup cost on those items that, or is it going to be flowing through over the next several years as you try to grow those business. And can you give us just a little bit of color on that and how we should think of it.

William Meaney

Analyst

It's a great question Shlomo. First of all, as we look at both of those things, a lot of the original startup cost has already been come through. There is a little bit more development that we still have to do or we are doing on Iron Cloud to add more features to it. But that’s kind of on a go forward basis. I mean where I see the bigger investment in both of those things is on the go to market side which typically have a shortage of patient period. I mean if we see an opportunity to ramp that up, we will talk about that on guidance in February for '18. But specifically for those two, most of where I would call the development cost, a little bit still ongoing which is about say building out more features, is pretty much done. And you have seen that in the lower service margins, in the EBITDA margins in data management process which was a reflection of some of the expense that we have done to launch Iron Cloud but still it was 53% but it's lower versus a year ago. But I think if we do make investments in either of those areas next year, it's more in the go to market side.

Shlomo Rosenbaum

Analyst

And what you talked about [adjacent] [ph], I mean I am just trying to think about what are you looking for because there are newer things that you are rolling out and clearly when there is a go to market and something like that, there is an investment that’s going to show up on the numbers. When you are looking for a return on something like that, like what's the time that you expect to see like a material return on something like that.

William Meaney

Analyst

These things are pretty quick, right, because of just the nature and the size of the investment. And then if you look at pure market investment is that you are definitely getting a payback within two years and in some cases it's within a year. To be honest with it, the thing that we are looking at more on things like Iron Cloud because the market interest, and we have been getting a lot of positive feedback from some of the technical analysts on these things is it's more like the question is, is it something we can build and also do we need to use partners to really execute -- to take advantage of the opportunity. So those are kind of decisions we are going through. But on the go to market side you generally see fairly quick payback. It's definitely within two years and lots of times within the year that you make them.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. We currently have no more questions.

William Meaney

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and good evening for those in United States and good morning to all those here in Australia. Thanks a lot.