Telecom Ramblings

As the year draws to a close, datacenter developer Digital Realty Trust (DLR: chart, news) has made an aggressive move on the New England market.  In a filing today, the company revealed that it is buying three properties from several unrelated sellers for $375M. Two of the facilities are in Massachusetts:  most of 128 First Avenue in Needham and 55 Middlesex Turnpike in Bedford.  The third facility is in Connecticut at 60-80 Merritt Boulevard in Trumbull, north of Bridgeport.   All told, the purchase will add 550,290 square feet to the company’s footprint, which is a substantial move by any measure but especially so given that it is outside the major hubs.  As always, Data Center Knowledge has additional detail.

In a separate filing, the company gave notice how it will pay for the purchase: by selling $400M in stock.  As Paolo showed yesterday, data center stocks have had a very good year, and hence if they’re going to dilute in the name of expansion this is probably a pretty good time to do it.   As a REIT, Digital Realty is a bit of an odd duck amongst public companies in this sector, but it has been very stable and like Equinix has been making a complicated business look easy.

Bring on 2010, we are so ready for a fresh start aren’t we?  Happy New Year everyone!