Iron Mountain published its second-quarter report on 5 August 2026. We are writing about it today, 6 August.
And this is a company worth getting to know again, because what it was and what it is becoming are no longer the same thing.
What was reported
| Quarter | Year ago | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $2.0bn | +18.5% | |
| Organic growth | +16.8% | ||
| Net income | 106 | (43) | loss to profit |
| Adjusted EBITDA | 727 | 628 | +15.7% |
| AFFO | 433 | +17% | |
| AFFO per share | $1.44 | +17% |
In millions of dollars unless stated otherwise
Excluding foreign exchange, revenue rose 17.6%.
What the company was, and what it is becoming
Iron Mountain was known for decades as a document storage company - physical archives, boxes in underground floors, more than 240,000 customers.
And that is still the base. But it is no longer what drives the growth.
The growth businesses grew more than 50%
In the report's words: the growth businesses - data center, digital, and asset lifecycle management (ALM) - collectively grew more than 50% year over year in the second quarter.
And what is ALM? Asset lifecycle management - receiving decommissioned computing equipment, securely wiping its data, and reselling or recycling the hardware.
And it is a business growing precisely because of the AI build-out: every data center upgrading servers produces a mountain of old equipment that must be handled, and that cannot simply be discarded because of the data on it.
And the number of the quarter
Data center capacity leasing: 110 megawatts year to date.
Of which:
- 13 megawatts in the second quarter
- 75 megawatts in July alone
So in a single month, after quarter end, the company leased almost six times what it leased in the whole second quarter.
That is a sharp acceleration, and it appears in the report as a post-balance-sheet event - meaning it is not yet inside the reported numbers. It will show up in the third quarter.
CEO William Meaney: "we are accelerating data center leasing, with 110 megawatts year to date."
And the place in the wider picture
Iron Mountain is another point on the same chain we have covered all week:
Caterpillar sells the generator, TeraWulf and Cipher build the structure, Tower makes the optical component, Arista the network - and Iron Mountain provides digital real estate and handles the equipment leaving service at the other end.
It is also the only one in the group that was already a profitable, stable business before this thesis began - and that changes the risk profile.
My Angle
A personal opinion of Ilan Abramov - not advice, not a recommendation
What interests me about Iron Mountain is that it enters this portfolio from a completely different direction.
Most of what we covered this week are companies built around AI or that pivoted into it. Iron Mountain is a decades-old business with steady cash flow from physical storage, that simply found itself sitting on assets which became valuable.
And that gives it something Cipher and TeraWulf do not have: a profitable base funding the build. It does not need to raise $5 billion of debt to enter the market.
And the number I take from the report is July's 75 megawatts. After only 13 in the second quarter. That is not growth - it is a jump, and it happened after quarter end. Meaning the third quarter will look entirely different.
And what I put a question mark on: AFFO per share rose 17%, exactly like total AFFO. That means the share count barely grew - which is good, but it also means the build was financed from cash flow and debt rather than equity issuance. In a REIT expanding capacity quickly, leverage is worth watching.
