Each week, Industry Focus: Financials host Jason Moser and Fool.com contributor Matt Frankel, CFP, discuss one stock on their radar. Here's why they're excited about PayPal (PYPL +1.59%) and Digital Realty Trust (DLR +0.78%) in this "One to Watch" segment.
A full transcript follows the video.
This video was recorded on Sept. 24, 2018.
Jason Moser: Let's wrap this week up here. We're going to talk about One to Watch. This is a stock we have on our radar for the week for one reason or another. Matt, I'm going to let you start it off here. What's your One to Watch this week?
Matt Frankel: Everyone knows me as the REIT guy. I'm going to recommend a real estate investment trust known as Digital Realty Trust. They are one of the biggest owner operators of data centers in the world. They just announced a big acquisition of a Brazil-based data center company that made the stock go down a little bit, so I think it's a pretty good time to take a look at it.
They are a great play on the need for data storage and -- it goes along with what we've been talking about -- everything migrating to digital and rising connected devices all over the world. There should be no shortage of demand for data centers going forward.
Digital Realty pays about 4% per year as a dividend and has done an excellent job of increasing that at a double-digit rate over its roughly 15-year history. I really don't see that changing anytime soon. After this little pullback when they announced their acquisition, I think it's a really good time to take another look at the company.
Moser: What's the ticker for Digital Realty?
Frankel: It is DLR.
Moser: I'm gonna actually go with PayPal this week. Really, it was just because I saw at the end of last week the news that they were cutting off Infowars from their network. I tell you, when it rains, it pours. Infowars can't seem to catch a break here, but I think that's probably for a good reason. You're going to have people taking both sides of the coin on this one. Freedom of speech vs. generally just being a good person. I mean, I think Infowars has dug their own grave here. I think it's worth noting, it's free speech, not free speech without consequence. Otherwise, there'd be no libel or slander or any type of litigation in regard to that stuff.
I think at the end of the day, PayPal is not going to be affected by something like this. A lot of people like to think maybe they will be. I'd put my money against that. Just as folks thought Nike's Colin Kaepernick ad was going to cause big problems, these are businesses that do a lot of thinking about these types of decisions before they make them. I think with PayPal, this is ultimately going to be something that ends up a non-issue for them. Certainly, creates a little bit of a headline in the short run, but not anything I think investors need to worry about. At the end of the day, hey, listen, just be a good person, be a nice person. If you do that, everything else seems to work out alright. It's pretty easy to do.
