Iron Mountain (IRM 1.72%), a real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on document management that is assertively pushing its data center business, was an outperformer in September.
Investors cheered news from the company on the financing front, not to mention a pair of bullish analyst takes. Across the month, Iron Mountain's share price rose by more than 10%.
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An ironclad investment
Early in the month, Iron Mountain announced that it was floating a new issue of senior notes.
The initial aggregate principal amount of the flotation was 750 million euros ($880 million). The company's proceeds from the notes, which mature in 2034, are to be used to retire an older set of senior notes. These securities, which bear an interest rate of just under 3.9% and are denominated in British pounds, mature this year.
The following day, Iron Mountain priced the issue. In the process, it also upsized it considerably -- typically an encouraging sign that key investors have enough confidence to buy into a larger debt pile.
The issue ballooned to an aggregate principal amount of 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion), with Iron Mountain placing a nearly 4.8% interest rate on the notes. The 2034 maturity was left intact, as were the company's planned use of the proceeds.
The fattened offering will bring a flood of cash into a company that's been pivoting in a direction many investors like. With the heavy demand for secure and reliable digital infrastructure to help support the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, data center is a very appealing segment just now, and Iron Mountain has leaned hard into it.
Bearing that firmly in mind, in mid-September, Stifel analyst Shlomo Rosenbaum felt compelled to reiterate his buy recommendation and $140 price target on the stock in a new research note.
According to reports, Rosenbaum's update was based on meetings with the company's CFO Barry Hytinen.
The two men discussed the data center business in some detail; the analyst's takeaway is that the company's recent weakness in leasing such facilities is about to experience a turnaround. He speculated that 2026 should better reflect the current strong demand for such facilities. This recovery should be reflected in the fundamentals.
A new bull joins the herd
Several days after Rosenbaum's new Iron Mountain take, Jefferies initiated coverage of the stock. Analyst Jonathan Petersen launched his tracking of the REIT with a confident buy recommendation, and price target of $120 per share.
Peterson sees excellent opportunities in Iron Mountain's legacy business, according to reports. He feels that its immense customer base (of around 240,000 customers, per his research) is ripe for cross-selling opportunities across the company's numerous activities. On top of that, in his view the legacy storage business is stable and steady, providing a solid foundation for the REIT.
