Data Center Stocks Drop 4.35% in the 4th Quarter

By David Gross

Data Center Stocks fell just over 4% in the 4th quarter, with our DataCenterStocks.com Services Index falling from 100.0 to 95.35.  However, it was all because of the Equinix warning in early October.    The index fell to 88.95 at the opening bell October 6th, and rose 7.53% for the rest of the quarter.

The REITs had a weak quarter, with DuPont Fabros, Digital Realty, and CoreSite all dropping between 15% and 17%.   Some of this is attributable to rising Treasury yields, which reduced the spread between risk-free government bonds, and data center REIT dividend yields.   30 year Treasury yields rose from 3.7% to 4.36% during the quarter, and when this happens, dividend investors often demand higher returns due to the added risk of a REIT over a Treasury Bond.   Interestingly, the leading apartment and office REITs did not take much of a hit during the quarter.  However, the big difference between those stocks and the data center REITs is that the data centers were raising rents during the recession, while the apartments and offices were not.   Now the apartment and office owners, including Avalon Bay and Boston Properties, are benefiting from expectations that their pricing power will improve.

Managed services and hybrid managed-colo providers had a good quarter, with Terremark advancing 25%, and leading all stocks in our index.   Rackspace and Savvis were also up over 20%.    Internap also had a strong quarter, rising 24%, while no one else with a CDN presence had a particularly good quarter.  Akamai and Limelight were down, and Level 3 bobbed up and down with all the Netflix news, but finished in the delisting zone at 98 cents a share.  

		DataCenterStocks.com Services Index
Company	Ticker	Mkt Cap	Dec 31 Close	Oct 1 Open	Quarterly Chg
Equinix	EQIX	$3,704,643,400	81.26	102.35	-20.61%
Digital Realty	DLR	$4,499,442,000	51.54	61.70	-16.47%
DuPont Fabros	DFT	$1,259,822,100	21.27	25.15	-15.43%
Rackspace	RAX	$3,925,307,700	31.41	25.98	20.90%
Savvis	SVVS	$1,409,724,800	25.52	21.08	21.06%
Level 3	LVLT	$1,626,800,000	0.98	0.94	4.59%
Akamai	AKAM	$8,544,750,500	47.05	50.18	-6.24%
Navisite	NAVI	$139,792,800	3.71	3.34	11.08%
Terremark	TMRK	$850,944,500	12.95	10.34	25.24%
Limelight	LLNW	$571,471,600	5.81	5.89	-1.36%
AboveNet	ABVT	$1,471,438,200	58.46	52.09	12.23%
CoreSite	COR	$233,380,400	13.64	16.39	-16.78%
Internap	INAP	$315,612,800	6.08	4.90	24.08%
Total		$28,553,130,800

Index Value October 1		100.00
Index Value December 31		95.65