Equinix raised its full-year 2026 guidance and its long-term financial outlook after posting second-quarter revenue of $2.625 billion, up 16% year over year, according to a July 29 press release from the company. Net income climbed 30% to $479 million, or $4.83 per diluted share, up 29%, while adjusted EBITDA rose 24% to $1.396 billion, a record 53% margin.
“We delivered an exceptionally strong Q2,” said Adaire Fox-Martin, Equinix’s CEO and president. “Monthly recurring revenue grew double digits for the third straight quarter, new interconnections on our platform hit a record level, and disciplined execution drove robust profit growth. Our revised 2026 guidance and long-term financial outlook reflect momentum across the business.”
Monthly recurring revenue grew 11% year over year on a normalized, constant-currency basis, marking a third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. Annualized gross bookings totaled $424 million, up 23% year over year and the second-highest quarterly volume in company history. The company added a record 9,700 net interconnections in the quarter, a measure of how many direct digital links customers are establishing across its data center platform.
Equinix raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of $10.205 billion to $10.285 billion, up $100 million from its prior outlook. Adjusted EBITDA guidance rose $62 million to $5.21 billion-$5.27 billion, and adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) guidance increased $50 million to $4.24 billion-$4.30 billion, or $42.69 to $43.29 per share. For the third quarter, the company guided to revenue of $2.525 billion-$2.575 billion.
The bigger signal came in Equinix’s long-term outlook. The company now expects 10% to 13% annual revenue growth from 2027 through 2029, up from a prior 7% to 10% range, with adjusted EBITDA margins reaching 53% or higher by 2029, up from a prior 52%-plus target. AFFO-per-share growth guidance rose to 9% to 12% annually from 5% to 9%. To support that growth, Equinix nearly doubled its annual capital expenditure guidance to a range of $5 billion to $7 billion, up from $3 billion to $4 billion previously, covering both its core data center business and its xScale joint-venture platform for hyperscale capacity.
The company said it has 52 capacity expansion projects underway across 33 markets worldwide, with nine new projects added since April. Equinix also pointed to expanded collaboration with Cisco and Nvidia on standardized AI factory data center architectures, building on a partnership RealtyWire covered earlier this year, and announced a new product, Fabric Geo Zones, which it described as the industry’s first network-level data sovereignty solution, letting customers control where their data traffic is routed and processed.
Equinix’s results echo a broader pattern among publicly traded data center operators, most of which have cited AI-driven leasing demand as a growth driver this earnings season. Digital Realty Trust likewise posted Q2 2026 revenue growth and raised full-year guidance, citing strong leasing tied to AI and hyperscale customers, in results reported the prior week.
Equinix expects to pay approximately $2.039 billion in cash dividends in 2026, up $2 million from its prior guidance, with long-term dividend growth tied to its AFFO-per-share growth targets. The company’s total headcount stood at 13,931 as of June 30, split roughly evenly among the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions.
What it means: Equinix’s raised guidance and nearly doubled long-term capex plan are the company’s own verified projections, not independently confirmed outcomes. The scale of the capex increase signals that Equinix, like its data center REIT peers, is betting heavily that AI-driven demand for interconnection and colocation capacity will persist through the end of the decade — a forward-looking bet the company is making with its own capital, not a guaranteed market outcome.
