Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX) executives highlighted accelerating demand, record bookings and an upbeat 2026 outlook during the company’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call, pointing to AI-driven workloads, stronger sales execution and ongoing capacity expansion as key drivers.
Record bookings and improving recurring revenue trends
CEO and President Adaire Fox-Martin said 2025 performance, and especially fourth-quarter results, reflected “dramatically” accelerating bookings and improving recurring revenue growth, alongside disciplined spending. On a normalized and constant currency basis, the company reported monthly recurring revenue (MRR) growth of 10% in the fourth quarter and 8% for the full year.
Chief Financial Officer Keith Taylor characterized the quarter as the company’s “best quarter ever,” citing both the volume of deals and the breadth of customer activity, with over 3,400 customers involved in fourth-quarter transactions.
AI workloads increasingly shaping large deals
Management repeatedly tied demand trends to AI adoption. Fox-Martin said approximately 60% of Equinix’s largest deals in the fourth quarter were driven by AI workloads, up from roughly 50% earlier in the year. In response to analyst questions, she added that nearly half of those AI-related large deals were deployed by “non-cloud and IT companies,” including firms in retail, e-commerce, manufacturing, financial services and content.
Fox-Martin also noted 11 liquid-cooled deployments in the fourth quarter, including five in New York City facilities, which she said supported financial services customers with use cases such as algorithm training. She described AI-related transactions as denser than traditional deployments, citing a 33% increase in density versus non-AI deals, averaging about 10 kVA per cabinet.
Executives also discussed a shift toward AI inference workloads showing up earlier than expected. Fox-Martin said Equinix is seeing an enterprise tailwind “perhaps emerging earlier” than management anticipated when it presented at its summer 2025 investor event, framing the trend as supportive of broader adoption of AI-enabled applications.
Fourth-quarter financial results and operating metrics
Taylor reported fourth-quarter revenue of $2.4 billion, up 7% year-over-year, driven by MRR strength. He noted an $8 million currency headwind in revenue versus prior guidance rates when accounting for FX hedges.
Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $1.2 billion, representing about 49% of revenue and up 15% from the prior year, with a $4 million FX headwind versus guidance rates. Fourth-quarter funds from operations (FFO) were $877 million, up 13% year-over-year, with a $2 million FX headwind versus guidance rates; Taylor said results included seasonally higher recurring capital expenditures.
Operationally, Equinix reported:
- Global MRR churn of 2.2% in the fourth quarter, below plan; average quarterly churn for 2025 was 2.4%.
- Net interconnection additions of 7,800 in the quarter (including adjustments), as the company surpassed 500,000 interconnections worldwide.
- Net cabinets billed of 4,300 in the quarter (including cabinets from the MainOne portfolio), with Taylor saying underlying net cabinet billings were the highest in three years.
- MRR per cabinet yield up $65 quarter-over-quarter on a normalized and constant currency basis, driven by pricing, higher power density and interconnection attach rates.
On stabilized assets, Taylor said Equinix’s 187 stabilized sites were 82% utilized and produced a 27% cash-on-cash return on gross PP&E invested on a constant currency basis. Stabilized asset revenue increased 6% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, which he attributed to higher volumes that are “not necessarily cabinet-related,” higher density per cabinet and fourth-quarter price increases that can create quarter-to-quarter variability. He added that the company still generally expects stabilized assets to grow in a 3% to 5% range over time.
Capacity expansion, powered land, and xScale updates
Equinix emphasized its ability to meet rising power and capacity requirements. In 2025, the company delivered 23,250 cabinets in its retail footprint and more than 90 MW in its xScale business, with more than 30% of retail capacity delivered ahead of schedule. In the fourth quarter alone, Fox-Martin said Equinix delivered more than 12,000 retail cabinets across key metros.
Taylor said capital expenditures totaled about $1.4 billion in the fourth quarter, including approximately $140 million of seasonally higher recurring CapEx. The company opened 16 major projects across 14 markets since the prior earnings call and announced 10 new projects to be added over the next few years. Management said there were 52 major projects underway across 35 markets, including nine xScale projects.
Fox-Martin also said Equinix added roughly 1 GW to its powered land under control balance through strategic land acquisitions, positioning it to meet long-term enterprise and hyperscale demand. Responding to an analyst question on power availability, she said the company focuses on “powered land or land that we are close to securing the power on,” and cited increasing customer density requirements.
On xScale, management discussed the Hampton asset and transaction timing. Taylor said fourth-quarter guidance had assumed execution of a large xScale lease for two of four buildings on the Hampton campus, but the transaction is now expected to close in the first quarter of 2026. Fox-Martin said Equinix contributed the Hampton asset to the Americas joint venture in January; the facility is expected to support about 240 MW of IT capacity when fully built out. She said the lease signing for half of the facility is expected in the first quarter and the site is expected to be fully leased later in 2026.
2026 guidance and leadership transition
Management said 2026 expectations are “meaningfully ahead” of what it shared at its June 2025 Analyst Day. On a normalized and constant currency basis, Taylor outlined the company’s 2026 outlook:
- Total revenue growth of 9% to 10%, including a modest 40 basis points attributed to net recurring revenue (NRR) from xScale lease timing.
- MRR growth of 8% to 10%, driven by 2025 bookings and pre-sales momentum.
- Adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 51%, about 200 basis points above 2025, while absorbing “accelerated and increased expansion drag” tied to growth investments.
- AFFO growth of 9% to 11% and AFFO per share growth of 8% to 10% (with Taylor noting xScale lease timing impacts comparisons).
- Capital expenditures of $3.7 billion to $4.2 billion, including about $280 million of recurring CapEx; the company said it did not include on-balance sheet xScale spend due to expected reimbursement as assets are transferred into xScale joint ventures.
- A quarterly cash dividend increase of 10% over 2025 on a per-share basis, implying total 2026 cash dividends of roughly $2 billion.
During Q&A, management said it was “a little premature” to update multi-year targets beyond 2026, while pointing to business momentum and favorable currency as supportive factors.
Fox-Martin also acknowledged Taylor’s retirement announcement, thanking him for his 27 years at the company and noting he will serve as a special advisor over the next year. She said the process for selecting his successor is underway.
About Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX)
Equinix, Inc is a global provider of digital infrastructure and interconnection services, specializing in carrier-neutral data centers and colocation. The company operates a platform that enables enterprises, cloud and network service providers, and content companies to colocate IT infrastructure, interconnect directly with partners and providers, and access cloud on-ramps and network services in a secure, low-latency environment.
Equinix’s offerings include traditional colocation space and power, cross-connects and meet-me rooms, and a suite of connectivity and on-demand services designed for hybrid multicloud architectures.
