SEC Filings

Digital Realty Paid $690.1 Million For Columbia Capital, Almost All In Stock And An Earnout

Only $17.1 million of the August deal was cash, and the purchase created $499.1 million of goodwill.

Digital Realty, which owns data centers and rents space in them to cloud, network and enterprise customers, bought the investment manager Columbia Capital for about $690.1 million, and only $17.1 million of that was cash, its 10-Q filed Friday shows. The rest was $453.0 million in stock plus a $220.0 million earnout payable in more shares.

Stock, an earnout and $499.1 million of goodwill

Digital Realty completed the purchase on August 18. The target manages money for communications, technology and digital infrastructure investors.

The price was 2.3 million Digital Realty shares valued at $453.0 million, $17.1 million in cash and contingent consideration valued at $220.0 million. The earnout depends on future management fee targets and carries a maximum payout of 1.5 million shares.

Goodwill from the deal came to $499.1 million, and the company recorded about $194.3 million of intangibles, including $150.0 million tied to existing investment management contracts. Currency moves cut $160,533 thousand, leaving total goodwill at $10,050,563 thousand versus $9,711,953 thousand at the end of 2025.

The company incurred about $23 million of acquisition costs and called the deal not material to its financial position or results. The purchase price allocation is preliminary and expected to be finalized within a year of the closing.

A landlord adds an asset manager

The deal gives Digital Realty an investment management platform, customer relationships and management contracts, which the company said should help it expand ties with institutional capital partners. That fits a business already running outside capital: the 10-Q describes a Digital Realty fund that has raised more than $3 billion of equity commitments, into which it contributed two development assets in May.

The prior quarter's 10-Q carried no asset-manager purchase.

Cash fell as debt came in October

Cash stood at $802.9 million on September 30, down from $3,451.6 million at year-end. Open construction commitments were about $4.1 billion.

The company sold about 15.9 million shares through its at-the-market program in the first nine months, for net proceeds of about $2.9 billion. Another $5.9 billion remains available under that program.

After quarter-end it sold Swiss franc notes in October with net proceeds of CHF 508.4 million (about $611 million), then euro notes with net proceeds of about €985.8 million (about $1.1 billion).

The earnout shares, up to 1.5 million, are payable only if Columbia Capital hits its management fee targets, and the final purchase allocation is due within a year of the August 18 closing.