What happened?
Specialty real estate investment trust Digital Realty Trust (DLR +1.83%) is making its shareholders incrementally richer with a boost to its quarterly dividend. The REIT will pay $0.88 per share, 4% higher than the previous distribution.
As a REIT, Digital Realty Trust is obligated to hand out the bulk of its profits in the form of a dividend. Since the company's IPO in late 2004, this payout has risen from just over $0.15 per share to the present level. The REIT tends to enact its dividend raises near the beginning of every calendar year.
Digital Realty Trust's new payout will be dispensed on March 31 to stockholders of record as of March 15. At the current share price, it yields 4.3%.
Does it matter?
Investors will certainly like the extra few cents being added to the dividend, although Q4 and fiscal 2015 results will probably have more of an impact on the stock. There's still some breath-holding in that regard, as we have to wait until next Thursday for both sets of figures to be unveiled.
Based on its most recently reported quarter, Digital Realty Trust is continuing to do well. Dunds from operations (a key profitability metric for REITs) were $178 million, 5% higher on a year-over-year basis. This was on the back of revenue that improved by 6% to $436 million.
We can expect continued growth. Organically, the REIT should do better because demand for its services -- the provision of space in data centers -- is only going to grow in this increasingly connected world. Also adding heft to its results will be Telx, a peer company it bought for nearly $2 billion in a deal that closed late last year.
So we shouldn't anticipate much impact to the stock from the dividend hike. Let's see if the story's different when those results come down the wire.
