5 Reasons Equinix Stock Could Be a Solid Portfolio Pick Now
Equinix EQIX is benefiting from growing demand for hybrid multicloud and AI infrastructure, as enterprises increasingly require distributed, low-latency and sovereign connectivity. Its broad ecosystem, global footprint and expanding capacity position it to capture this ongoing demand.
Analysts seem bullish on this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock. The estimate revision trend for 2026 funds from operations (FFO) per share indicates a favorable outlook for the company, with estimates moving north over the past two months.
Over the past three months, shares of Equinix have gained 1%, against the industry’s decline of 5.9%. Given its solid fundamentals and positive estimate revisions, the stock is likely to keep performing well in the quarters ahead.
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What Makes Equinix a Solid Choice?
AI Demand Fuels Growth: Equinix is benefiting from rising demand for distributed AI infrastructure, with most of its largest second-quarter 2026 deals driven by AI workloads. Enterprises are also upgrading legacy infrastructure, supporting sustained demand for Equinix’s low-latency connectivity and data center services. This supports a multi-year demand opportunity rather than exposure to a single technology cycle.
Expanding AI Ecosystem: Equinix’s large customer and interconnection base strengthens its AI ecosystem, with more than 10,500 customers, 230 cloud on-ramps and 522,000 interconnections as of second-quarter 2026. Its partnerships with Cisco, NVIDIA and Presidio, along with sovereignty-focused solutions, could help deepen customer relationships as AI deployments become more distributed and complex.
Expanding Capacity and Nordic Reach: Equinix is expanding capacity to meet strong demand, with 52 major projects underway across 33 markets and more than 7,000 cabinets accelerated into fourth-quarter 2026. The company also raised 2026 capital spending to $5-$6 billion. Its $4 billion acquisition of atNorth further expands its Nordic data center footprint, supporting AI, cloud and HPC demand.
Financial Flexibility: Equinix continues to balance expansion with access to diversified funding sources. As of June 30, 2026, available liquidity was about $7.7 billion, while net leverage was 3.6X annualized adjusted EBITDA. The company had about $22 billion of gross debt, a 3% blended borrowing rate and investment-grade ratings of Baa1/BBB+/BBB+.
Dividend Profile: Equinix has focused on maintaining decent shareholder returns. With fourth-quarter 2025 results, it raised the quarterly dividend by 10% to $5.16 per share, marking the 11th consecutive year of dividend growth. Equinix has increased its dividend five times in the last five years, and its five-year annualized dividend growth rate is 14.26%. Management expects 2026 cash dividends of about $2.039 billion.
Other Stocks to Consider
Some other top-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are Extra Space Storage EXR and OUTFRONT Media OUT, each carrying a Zacks Rank of 2 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for EXR’s 2026 FFO per share is pegged at $8.32, which indicates year-over-year growth of 3.4%.
The consensus estimate for OUT’s 2026 FFO per share has moved 3.6% upward over the past month to $2.32, calling for a rise of 16.6% year over year.
Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (FFO), a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
