Barry Hytinen
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thanks, Bill, and thank you all for joining us to discuss our results. As you've heard this morning, we are off to a strong start to the year. Our team delivered record first quarter performance across all of our key financial metrics, underscoring the significant momentum we have in the business. In terms of the first quarter, revenue of $1.94 billion was up $344 million year-on-year. This was well ahead of the projection we provided on our last call, driven by continued strength across our business. As compared to last year, revenue increased 22% on a reported basis, 19% on a constant currency basis and 17% on an organic basis. While the change in FX rates contributed approximately $40 million in revenue year-on-year, I would like to note that this was slightly below what we had assumed in our outlook as the dollar strengthened following our last call. Looking at the $80 million revenue upside in the quarter, this was driven by outperformance in our ALM, records management and data center businesses. Total storage revenue was $1.1 billion, up $146 million or 15% year-on-year. Total service revenue was $841 million, up $197 million or 31% from last year. Adjusted EBITDA of $708 million increased $128 million or 22% year-over-year. This exceeded the projection we provided on our last call by $23 million driven by the revenue upside and operational efficiency across the business. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 36.6%, an increase of 20 basis points from last year. Our margin performance was particularly impressive, especially when considering the substantial growth in our services revenue, which naturally drives a mix headwind. AFFO was $426 million, up $78 million, this represented an increase of 22% as compared to last year. And AFFO on a per share basis was $1.43 and up 22% to last year and was $0.04 ahead of the projection we provided on our last call. Now turning to segment performance. In our Global RIM business, first quarter revenue of $1.4 billion was a quarterly record and grew $148 million as compared to last year. Reported growth of 12% year-on-year was supported by 8% organic growth. This success was driven by strong performances in both our storage and services businesses. Sequential growth in Global RIM revenue was in excess of $30 million as compared to the fourth quarter. Performance was driven by revenue management, consistent positive volume trends and sustained strength in our service business, where the team successfully completed some project work that carried over from late last year. Storage revenue growth was up 9% on a reported basis and up 6% on an organic basis. Global RIM service revenue grew over 16%, and the team delivered a strong organic growth in excess of 12%. This was driven by the continued strength of our core services and our fast-growing digital business. And as you heard from Bill, we are significantly expanding our government business across the world and especially here in the U.S. As it relates to the multiyear Department of Treasury contract, we recognized approximately $9 million of revenue in the first quarter. We continue to expect $45 million revenue in 2026 and in excess of $100 million annually in 2027 and beyond. From a profitability perspective, Global RIM adjusted EBITDA increased $61 million to $618 million. This was an increase of 11% year-on-year with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 44%. Turning to our Global Data Center business. We achieved revenue of $255 million in the first quarter, an increase of $82 million or 47% year-on-year. Growth was driven by lease commencements, positive pricing trends and customers ramping power faster than we expected. In the first quarter, we signed 22 megawatts of new leases, commenced 24 megawatts and renewed 193 leases totaling 7 megawatts. I am also pleased to note that we have increased our future development capacity in Northern Virginia by 20% to 195 megawatts. Pricing remains strong with renewal pricing spreads of 12% and 14% on a cash and GAAP basis, respectively. First quarter data center adjusted EBITDA was $133 million, up $42 million year-on-year, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin of 52.1%, 30 basis points below last year. As our clients continue to experience very strong growth in cloud and AI deployments, we are seeing their usage ramp faster. As we've discussed before, Power is a pass-through item, and correcting for that, our data center margin was up 120 basis points year-over-year. Turning to asset lifecycle management. Total ALM revenue was $232 million, an increase of $111 million or 92% year-over-year. On an organic basis, our team grew revenue $93 million or 77%, this was driven by greater than 100% organic growth in our data center decommissioning business and more than 45% organic growth in the enterprise channel. As it relates to our recent acquisitions, Premier Surplus and ACT Logistics continue to perform well, contributing $17 million of revenue in the quarter. And from a profitability perspective, our team's execution led to significant ALM margin improvement year-over-year. I know there is a lot of interest in the price environment for memory, so I want to provide some context. As we've discussed on prior calls, memory prices continued to trend higher in the quarter. In late March and early April, we saw prices moderate, and over the last few weeks, they have stabilized. At current levels, pricing is in line with our original guidance and meaningfully above last year. With that said, we are increasing our full year outlook for ALM revenue to $950 million. This is $100 million higher than our prior expectation with $40 million of ALM revenue upside delivered in the first quarter. The additional $60 million will be driven over the balance of the year by volume and data center decommissioning and growth in enterprise. I will note that the majority of that is reflected in our guidance for the second quarter. Now turning to cash flow on a consolidated basis. First quarter operating cash flow was $339 million, up $141 million from last year. This marks the best first quarter operating cash flow the company has ever achieved. As we have discussed before, we expect retained cash flow to continue to expand meaningfully over the next several years. And with our strong start to the year, we are raising our projection for retained cash flow to be at least $300 million ahead of last year. Turning to capital allocation. Our focus remains on growing our dividend and investing in high-return opportunities that drive double-digit growth while maintaining our strong balance sheet. Our Board of Directors declared our quarterly dividend of $0.864 per share to be paid in early July. On a trailing 4-quarter basis, our payout ratio is now 61%, in line with our target ratio of low 60s percent. In terms of capital investments, in the first quarter, we invested $492 million of growth CapEx and $35 million of recurring CapEx. We continue to plan for full year CapEx to be slightly down from last year. Turning to the balance sheet. With strong EBITDA performance, we ended the quarter with net lease adjusted leverage down slightly from last quarter to 4.8x. This is the best performance we've had on this metric since prior to the company's REIT conversion in 2014. Now turning to our outlook for full year 2026. With the trajectory we are on, we have increased our financial guidance for the year. We now expect total revenue to be within the range of $7.825 billion to $7.925 billion, which represents year-on-year growth of 14% at the midpoint. Relative to our prior guidance, we are raising revenue by $175 million at the midpoint with $80 million of the beat in the first quarter and $95 million driven by the improved outlook across our business for the balance of the year. I'd like to provide a little more context for the revenue increase. As I noted a moment ago, $100 million of that is driven by our ALM business. The remaining $75 million is driven by upside in records management, digital solutions and data center, of which $40 million occurred in the first quarter. And to be clear, we are using the same FX rates as we had in our prior guidance. So none of this increase is FX driven. We now expect adjusted EBITDA to be within the range of $2.925 billion to $2.965 billion, which represents year-on-year growth of 14% at the midpoint. Relative to our prior guidance, this is an increase of $45 million at the midpoint. We expect AFFO to be within the range of $1.735 billion to $1.755 billion or $5.79 to $5.86 on a per share basis. At the midpoint, this represents 13% growth and is an increase of $25 million for AFFO and $0.09 per AFFO per share relative to our prior guidance. And now turning to the second quarter, we expect revenue of approximately $1.965 billion, an increase of 15% to last year, adjusted EBITDA of approximately $715 million, an increase of 14% last year. We expect AFFO of approximately $418 million or $1.40 and per share. This represents an increase of 13% to last year. With that, I would like to thank all of our Mountaineers for delivering another quarter of outstanding performance. Our growth opportunity remains substantial and our ability to capitalize on it is becoming more and more evident with each passing quarter. And with that, operator, would you please open the line for Q&A.