Iron Mountain Inc at Stifel Cross Sector Insight Conference Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : So we're going to start this off. I have plenty of questions to ask, Barry. Barry, who's known me for a little while, knows that I don't run out of these so quickly. But I'm going to stop in the middle and pull if anyone has any questions. I am going to encourage you to just lift your hand up and let me know, and we're happy to take questions from the audience. So with that, Barry, I just thought maybe just take a minute and just describe Iron Mountain today, because I would say that the company looks a little bit different than what people who used to look at it maybe five years ago, called me up, start kicking the tires and say, what happened over here? The stock went from 30 to 70 to 80. And what has changed in the business? And maybe just give us a quick one to two minutes of where you look at the company now.

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Sounds good. Now one of the key aspects of the story is that revenue management in the core RIM business. And can you talk a little bit about it? If you went back years ago, we didn't see much of it. We saw a certain amount, we're seeing more. A common question that I get from clients is it's been an inflationary environment. So you've been able to take that pricing. As the inflationary environment subsides, what kind of revenue management can we expect out of that core business?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : And has there been -- you talked about you're not really seeing elasticity there. Is that across the base for when -- is there -- is the pricing going on within a specific segment? Or is it really has been tested and it is moving through the entire piece of the RIM business?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And then could you talk about it -- just want to spend a little bit more time just clarifying on the RIM business because this is really the kind of cash cow business that you have. Just the revenue trends because several years ago, I used to see the revenue going down. It was more like flat to down 1%. And now we're talking about it being flat to up a little bit. And what is changing over there? Has the trend -- what do the trends look like in developed markets versus not developed markets? And is it something to do with the art storage? Maybe you could just elaborate it. What are the trends being (multiple speakers)?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Volume.

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : So when you think about it, so I should think of like India and some of those kind of markets are offsetting US, UK and Canada. Is that the way to think about it?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay, great. I want to shift a little to the data centers. The growth has been very strong in data centers. It looks like that the growth is picking up actually and -- can you talk about just what you're seeing on the pricing side and what the yields look like? They're getting more attractive. And how is that shaping up? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. JUNE 04, 2024 / 2:55PM, IRM.N - Iron Mountain Inc at Stifel Cross Sector Insight Conference

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Can you talk about the financing to build out? You have a lot of build coming, and likely more land purchases coming, I would assume. And so right now, it seems like it's really coming through on debt borrowing. Would you be looking to increase the amount of like JVs or type of equity debt and participation? And at some point in time, with the stock being up, would it make sense for you to do another -- data center operators do, which is issue equity in order to go ahead and fund the buildup?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Got it. I want to switch a little to ALM, asset lifecycle management. So it seems to be finally recovering. That was a kind of an issue for the last like six quarters or so. Can you talk about what's driving this improvement? And is the gen AI investment cycle benefiting these component prices? How does that play into what we're seeing?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Very good. And can you talk a little bit about the growth we should expect from the dividends? So the ratio right now and the payout is at the kind of the lower end of 60% to 65% range. Last year in the third quarter, you raised it. Should we think about the dividend increasing on pace with the AFFO per share? Is the third quarter going to be kind of a normal quarter to expect the dividend raise? How should investors be thinking about this?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay. So concert, we should think about as roughly that AFFO per share is the way that we should think about the growth of dividends?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc. - Analyst : Okay, great. I think I went over my time without taking any questions. I apologize. But I want to thank all of you for being here and thank Barry for participating in this fireside chat with me. And if anyone has any questions, I'm sure they can grab Barry on his way out over here. Thank you so much, everyone.