{"id":320977,"date":"2026-03-04T07:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/320977\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T07:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T07:35:12","slug":"this-ai-data-center-reit-just-guided-for-its-first-10-billion-revenue-year-is-it-a-buy-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/320977\/","title":{"rendered":"This AI Data Center REIT Just Guided for Its First $10 Billion Revenue Year. Is It a Buy for 2026?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s no denying that computing technology powerhouse Nvidia\u00a0and all of its hardware peers led the way during the earliest part of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.\u00a0As the business matures, however, it&#8217;s also changing.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not just new leaders emerging, either. New kinds of leaders are emerging as well. Physical hardware isn&#8217;t inspiring investors like it used to. AI data centers are the hot opportunity now, but they&#8217;re a whole different kind of business and might best serve investors with a whole different kind of business model and business structure.<\/p>\n<p>To this end, investors on the hunt for their next must-have AI trade might want to consider a stake in real estate investment trust Equinix (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/quote\/nasdaq\/eqix\/\" class=\"font-bold hover:underline\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">EQIX<\/a> +0.58%) following its recent full-year revenue guidance of more than $10 billion, up 10% from last year&#8217;s top line. While this growth pace isn&#8217;t exactly heroic, it&#8217;s apt to be sustainable for a long, long time.<\/p>\n<p>Not the usual structure for the industry, but arguably the right one<\/p>\n<p>With just a passing look, there&#8217;s nothing especially special about Equinix. It operates 280 different data centers all across the world, supplying a cloud-accessible, AI-capable platform to over 300 Fortune 500 customers, including video game developer Square Enix Holdings, Siemens, and business communications technology provider Zoom Communications, just to name a few. It did a little over $9.2 billion worth of business in 2025, turning just under $2 billion of that into operating income. But it&#8217;s not like other outfits aren&#8217;t in the same business, offering a service of comparable quality.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Equinix Stock Quote\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full flex-none object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772609711_431_.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Change<\/p>\n<p>(0.58%) $5.56<\/p>\n<p>Current Price<\/p>\n<p>$971.66<\/p>\n<p>Key Data Points<\/p>\n<p>Market Cap<\/p>\n<p>$96B<\/p>\n<p>Day&#8217;s Range<\/p>\n<p>$944.58 &#8211; $976.90<\/p>\n<p>52wk Range<\/p>\n<p>$701.41 &#8211; $992.90<\/p>\n<p>Volume<\/p>\n<p>41K<\/p>\n<p>Avg Vol<\/p>\n<p>624K<\/p>\n<p>Gross Margin<\/p>\n<p>31.50%<\/p>\n<p>Dividend Yield<\/p>\n<p>1.98%<\/p>\n<p>Where Equinix shines more than most others in the same space is that it isn&#8217;t trying to escape the obvious nature of the third-party <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/2026\/02\/24\/artificial-intelligence-ai-data-center-stock-amzn\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">data center business<\/a>. That&#8217;s the fact that &#8212; as opposed to its customers paying a hefty up-front cost to build their own data center that may end up not being fully utilized &#8212; Equinix&#8217;s is a recurring revenue business built on renting access to its platforms. It&#8217;s better to embrace and make the most of everything this model is (and isn&#8217;t) than to fight it.<\/p>\n<p>And this company has done exactly that. Rather than aiming for massive long-term growth at any and all costs, Equinix has built a cash cow that supports solid, reliable dividend payments that are rarely seen from stocks in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/stock-market\/market-sectors\/information-technology\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">technology sector<\/a>. Of last year&#8217;s effective cleared cash flow of $38.33 per share, $18.76 of that was passed along in the form of dividends, translating into a trailing yield of right around 2%. That&#8217;s not bad, particularly given the dividend payment&#8217;s 10% announced earlier this year, in step with its expected revenue and earnings growth.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Two people are walking through a data center.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"880\" height=\"495\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"h-auto max-w-full rounded object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772609712_380_.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s the nuance that&#8217;s not readily evident to interested investors but is important all the same.<\/p>\n<p>As was noted, Equinix is organized as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/stock-market\/market-sectors\/real-estate-investing\/reit\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">real estate investment trust<\/a>, or REIT, for short. That just means that as long as the bulk of any of its net profits are passed along to shareholders in the form of dividends, they&#8217;re not first taxed at the corporate level. This ultimately means shareholders are provided with more net value than they would be if it were structured as a conventional company, even though this ticker trades just like any other corporation&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Buy it, or no?<\/p>\n<p>But the question remains &#8230; is Equinix a buy for 2026?<\/p>\n<p>It depends on whether or not you want invest in a quality name within the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/stock-market\/market-sectors\/information-technology\/ai-stocks\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a> data center industry. It also depends (albeit only slightly) on whether you&#8217;re going to make this investment in a taxable account where this REIT&#8217;s dividends will generate taxable income. Although you never really avoid taxes, perhaps you&#8217;d prefer to at least postpone them.<\/p>\n<p>For most investors, though &#8212; and particularly investors who want to dial back some of their risk in the current, unpredictable market environment &#8212; Equinix is poised to sustain its steady revenue and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/2026\/02\/22\/the-ultimate-dividend-growth-stock-to-buy-with-100\/\" class=\"text-cyan-900 hover:text-cyan-800\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">dividend growth<\/a> simply because most AI data center customers are likely to continue paying for access to this REIT&#8217;s tech. They&#8217;re largely committed to it, in fact. This reliability is always marketable but could prove incredibly valuable should the market run into some more serious turbulence that threatens most growth companies&#8217; bottom lines.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Equuinix's revenue and earnings are expected to grow every year at least through 2030.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"880\" height=\"658\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"h-auto max-w-full rounded object-contain\" style=\"color:transparent\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772609712_282_.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Data source: Morningstar. Chart by author.<\/p>\n<p>But you don&#8217;t need income right now? You&#8217;d rather have the growth instead? That&#8217;s OK. You&#8217;ll still get the capital appreciation stemming from the ongoing expansion of its business. You&#8217;ll just also get some of this upside in the form of dividends and dividend growth. This stock&#8217;s recent dividend increase is likely to mark its approximate growth pace for many years to come.<\/p>\n<p>This might help convince you: Despite the stock&#8217;s recent run-up from November&#8217;s 52-week low, 23 of the 30 analysts covering this stock still consider Equinix stock a strong buy, with a consensus target of $1,031.08 that&#8217;s almost 10% above the ticker&#8217;s present price at the time of this writing. That&#8217;s certainly not the worst way to start out a new trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s no denying that computing technology powerhouse Nvidia\u00a0and all of its hardware peers led the way during the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-320977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}