Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to the Iron Mountain First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mark Rupe, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining us today are Bill Meaney, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Barry Hytinen, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the lines for Q&A.

Today's call will include forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of the major risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ from these statements, please refer to today's earnings materials, including the safe harbor language on Slide 2 of the earnings presentation and our annual and quarterly reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q. Each of these items as well as reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures referenced during this call can be found on our Investor Relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.

Thank you, Mark, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our first quarter results. As you saw in this morning's release, we are off to an incredibly strong start to 2026. Our first quarter results were exceptional, above our expectations with 22% year-over-year growth for revenue, adjusted EBITDA and AFFO. Our team's execution of our growth plans and consistent delivery of value to our customers continues to drive the record performance across our business. First quarter organic growth of 17% is the highest rate we've achieved in more than 25 years.

The outstanding results were driven by our growth business of data, data center, ALM and digital, which grew more than 50% in the quarter and now exceed more than 30% of our total revenue. Moreover, our highly recurring physical records storage business delivered its best quarterly growth in years and is well on track to deliver its 38th consecutive year of organic storage rental growth. I'm also impressed with our commercial team's progress in accelerating cross-selling efforts in ALM and digital. We had a very strong quarter of bookings across the business, which sets us up well for the balance of the year.

Following this strong performance and continuing the momentum into the second quarter, we are pleased to increase our full year financial outlook. Let me now share some of the highlights from the quarter and the confidence this provides as we look to sustain industry-leading revenue and earnings growth in 2026 and beyond. Data center revenue increased 47% in the first quarter. Industry demand remains very strong with hyperscalers continue to build out inference and cloud capacity.

This has led to significant customer engagement across our portfolio given our 400 megawatts of available to lease capacity energized over the next 24 months. We leased approximately 22 megawatts in the first quarter and another 10 megawatts in April, positioning us at 32 megawatts leased year-to-date. We drove substantial growth in our asset lifecycle management business in the first quarter with a 92% increase in revenue. This was fueled by a strong showing in both our enterprise and decommissioning businesses the latter of which was mainly pricing.

Beyond the favorable component price environment, the underlying strength of our business is being driven by our compelling and differentiated customer value proposition, which continues to yield new customer wins and deeper expansion within our existing base. Our digital solutions business achieved record first quarter revenue, growing greater than 20% year-over-year. We continue to win traditional projects and new contracts across industry verticals for DXP, our AI-powered digital solutions platform. Additionally, we won another Google Partner of the Year this month for media and entertainment, adding to the 2018 Google Partner of the Year Award for AI and machine learning.

And we also executed very well operationally. We drove expanded profitability across the business with adjusted EBITDA increasing 22%. We are still in the early phases of our long-term growth journey, and our opportunity has never been more clear and tangible. We operate in large and growing markets with a $170 billion total addressable market, and we continue to invest and execute growth strategies to fully capitalize on our opportunity.

Now let me share some recent wins that illustrate the strength of our synergistic business model and commercial momentum. I want to start with providing an update on our government business. From the outset, we firmly believe that Iron Mountain was positioned to be a major beneficiary of efficiency and productivity efforts for governments across the world. Building on last year's important award from the Department of Treasury, I am pleased to share that first quarter bookings in the public sector were our second best in our company's history.

We are significantly expanding our government business across the world and especially here in the U.S. Let me highlight two of these wins. For 1 agency, we will provide advanced digitization solutions to process millions of records, and we will also securely manage over 29,000 cubic feet of physical documents. And for another agency, we are providing services for pathology operations, including storage and tracking claims folders.

We are just getting started and the outlook for additional government wins is promising. Our positive trajectory is supported by the federal certification for our digital services suite through the achievement of FedRAMP high authorization for InSight. This will fundamentally shift our competitive stance for digital services within the U.S. public sector, allowing us to pursue high-value, mission-critical workloads across the federal landscape. To be sure, our commercial momentum in recent wins extend far beyond the government sector.

Let me share some other wins across our business. In records management, our insurance team signed a new deal with a Canadian insurance company to deploy our Smart Reveal solution where we will process more than 1 million files currently stored with us. We also signed a new multiyear agreement with a global law firm to deploy our Smart Sort solution across 6 U.S. locations. We will process more than 2 million files and onboard an additional 60,000 cubic feet of physical storage, ensuring the customer effectively manages its complex compliance and fiduciary requirements.

In digital solutions, we won an important new multiyear agreement with a leading Brazilian clinical diagnostics firm. Iron Mountain's DXP platform, leveraging AI capabilities will process over 20 million medical records. DXP will be fully integrated with the customer systems to reduce manual efforts, eliminate errors and ensure compliance for time-sensitive clinical results. And we won a new contract with a U.S. health care center to improve patient data visibility.

The win cuts across multiple lines of our services, including Smart Sort, for more than 600,000 medical records in digital solutions for nearly 12 million images. In our data center business, we cross sold to an existing ALM decommissioning customer and lease to them our entire 16-megawatt Miami site as part of a 10-year contract to support expansion of its cloud platform. We also leased approximately 6 megawatts to enterprise customers in Q1. And in April, we are pleased to have leased 10 megawatts in Amsterdam to a major global cloud player, who is new to our portfolio and with whom we are having encouraging discussions regarding interest across our data center footprint.

Turning to asset lifecycle management business. We are uniquely positioned as the industry leader with strong competitive advantages, including our full-service capabilities, unmatched global scale, reputation for security and ability to deliver exceptional value to our customers. This is translating into growth in the number and size of deals we are winning across our enterprise and our data center decommissioning business. Let me highlight some of our wins.

A new multiyear agreement with a global advertising company that consolidated its highly fragmented vendor base and selected Iron Mountain as its sole enterprise-wide ALM services partner. As part of the deal, we will manage and secure decommissioning and remarketing of IT assets across more than 30 countries. We cross-sold to 1 of our existing data center customers working to recycle and reuse 75,000 IT hardware items across the U.S., Europe and APAC. And we signed a multiyear agreement with a global technology leader to securely decommission, sanitize and remarket 60,000 drives.

In conclusion, our team is delivering exceptional results. We are still in the early phases of our tremendous long-term growth opportunity. Our set of services delivering differentiated value to our customers gives us high confidence in continued double-digit consolidated top and bottom line growth across cycles. I would like to express my gratitude to my global colleagues for their unwavering commitment to our customers.

I especially want to thank our colleagues in the Middle East, who demonstrate the best of the Mountaineer culture as they navigate a challenging time in keeping themselves and families safe whilst continuing to serve our customers in the region. The exceptional stewardship provided by our Mountaineers to more than 240,000 customers remains a cornerstone of our ongoing success. With that, I'll turn the call over to Barry.

Thanks, Bill, and thank you all for joining us to discuss our results. As you've heard this morning, we are off to a strong start to the year. Our team delivered record first quarter performance across all of our key financial metrics, underscoring the significant momentum we have in the business. In terms of the first quarter, revenue of $1.94 billion was up $344 million year-on-year.

This was well ahead of the projection we provided on our last call, driven by continued strength across our business. As compared to last year, revenue increased 22% on a reported basis, 19% on a constant currency basis and 17% on an organic basis. While the change in FX rates contributed approximately $40 million in revenue year-on-year, I would like to note that this was slightly below what we had assumed in our outlook as the dollar strengthened following our last call. Looking at the $80 million revenue upside in the quarter, this was driven by outperformance in our ALM, records management and data center businesses.

Total storage revenue was $1.1 billion, up $146 million or 15% year-on-year. Total service revenue was $841 million, up $197 million or 31% from last year. Adjusted EBITDA of $708 million increased $128 million or 22% year-over-year. This exceeded the projection we provided on our last call by $23 million driven by the revenue upside and operational efficiency across the business.

Adjusted EBITDA margin was 36.6%, an increase of 20 basis points from last year. Our margin performance was particularly impressive, especially when considering the substantial growth in our services revenue, which naturally drives a mix headwind. AFFO was $426 million, up $78 million, this represented an increase of 22% as compared to last year. And AFFO on a per share basis was $1.43 and up 22% to last year and was $0.04 ahead of the projection we provided on our last call.

Now turning to segment performance. In our Global RIM business, first quarter revenue of $1.4 billion was a quarterly record and grew $148 million as compared to last year. Reported growth of 12% year-on-year was supported by 8% organic growth. This success was driven by strong performances in both our storage and services businesses.

Sequential growth in Global RIM revenue was in excess of $30 million as compared to the fourth quarter. Performance was driven by revenue management, consistent positive volume trends and sustained strength in our service business, where the team successfully completed some project work that carried over from late last year. Storage revenue growth was up 9% on a reported basis and up 6% on an organic basis. Global RIM service revenue grew over 16%, and the team delivered a strong organic growth in excess of 12%.

This was driven by the continued strength of our core services and our fast-growing digital business. And as you heard from Bill, we are significantly expanding our government business across the world and especially here in the U.S. As it relates to the multiyear Department of Treasury contract, we recognized approximately $9 million of revenue in the first quarter. We continue to expect $45 million revenue in 2026 and in excess of $100 million annually in 2027 and beyond.

From a profitability perspective, Global RIM adjusted EBITDA increased $61 million to $618 million. This was an increase of 11% year-on-year with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 44%. Turning to our Global Data Center business. We achieved revenue of $255 million in the first quarter, an increase of $82 million or 47% year-on-year.

Growth was driven by lease commencements, positive pricing trends and customers ramping power faster than we expected. In the first quarter, we signed 22 megawatts of new leases, commenced 24 megawatts and renewed 193 leases totaling 7 megawatts. I am also pleased to note that we have increased our future development capacity in Northern Virginia by 20% to 195 megawatts. Pricing remains strong with renewal pricing spreads of 12% and 14% on a cash and GAAP basis, respectively.

First quarter data center adjusted EBITDA was $133 million, up $42 million year-on-year, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin of 52.1%, 30 basis points below last year. As our clients continue to experience very strong growth in cloud and AI deployments, we are seeing their usage ramp faster. As we've discussed before, Power is a pass-through item, and correcting for that, our data center margin was up 120 basis points year-over-year. Turning to asset lifecycle management.

Total ALM revenue was $232 million, an increase of $111 million or 92% year-over-year. On an organic basis, our team grew revenue $93 million or 77%, this was driven by greater than 100% organic growth in our data center decommissioning business and more than 45% organic growth in the enterprise channel. As it relates to our recent acquisitions, Premier Surplus and ACT Logistics continue to perform well, contributing $17 million of revenue in the quarter. And from a profitability perspective, our team's execution led to significant ALM margin improvement year-over-year.

I know there is a lot of interest in the price environment for memory, so I want to provide some context. As we've discussed on prior calls, memory prices continued to trend higher in the quarter. In late March and early April, we saw prices moderate, and over the last few weeks, they have stabilized. At current levels, pricing is in line with our original guidance and meaningfully above last year.

With that said, we are increasing our full year outlook for ALM revenue to $950 million. This is $100 million higher than our prior expectation with $40 million of ALM revenue upside delivered in the first quarter. The additional $60 million will be driven over the balance of the year by volume and data center decommissioning and growth in enterprise. I will note that the majority of that is reflected in our guidance for the second quarter.

Now turning to cash flow on a consolidated basis. First quarter operating cash flow was $339 million, up $141 million from last year. This marks the best first quarter operating cash flow the company has ever achieved. As we have discussed before, we expect retained cash flow to continue to expand meaningfully over the next several years.

And with our strong start to the year, we are raising our projection for retained cash flow to be at least $300 million ahead of last year. Turning to capital allocation. Our focus remains on growing our dividend and investing in high-return opportunities that drive double-digit growth while maintaining our strong balance sheet. Our Board of Directors declared our quarterly dividend of $0.864 per share to be paid in early July.

On a trailing 4-quarter basis, our payout ratio is now 61%, in line with our target ratio of low 60s percent. In terms of capital investments, in the first quarter, we invested $492 million of growth CapEx and $35 million of recurring CapEx. We continue to plan for full year CapEx to be slightly down from last year. Turning to the balance sheet.

With strong EBITDA performance, we ended the quarter with net lease adjusted leverage down slightly from last quarter to 4.8x. This is the best performance we've had on this metric since prior to the company's REIT conversion in 2014. Now turning to our outlook for full year 2026. With the trajectory we are on, we have increased our financial guidance for the year. We now expect total revenue to be within the range of $7.825 billion to $7.925 billion, which represents year-on-year growth of 14% at the midpoint. Relative to our prior guidance, we are raising revenue by $175 million at the midpoint with $80 million of the beat in the first quarter and $95 million driven by the improved outlook across our business for the balance of the year.

I'd like to provide a little more context for the revenue increase. As I noted a moment ago, $100 million of that is driven by our ALM business. The remaining $75 million is driven by upside in records management, digital solutions and data center, of which $40 million occurred in the first quarter. And to be clear, we are using the same FX rates as we had in our prior guidance.

So none of this increase is FX driven. We now expect adjusted EBITDA to be within the range of $2.925 billion to $2.965 billion, which represents year-on-year growth of 14% at the midpoint. Relative to our prior guidance, this is an increase of $45 million at the midpoint. We expect AFFO to be within the range of $1.735 billion to $1.755 billion or $5.79 to $5.86 on a per share basis.

At the midpoint, this represents 13% growth and is an increase of $25 million for AFFO and $0.09 per AFFO per share relative to our prior guidance. And now turning to the second quarter, we expect revenue of approximately $1.965 billion, an increase of 15% to last year, adjusted EBITDA of approximately $715 million, an increase of 14% last year. We expect AFFO of approximately $418 million or $1.40 and per share. This represents an increase of 13% to last year.

With that, I would like to thank all of our Mountaineers for delivering another quarter of outstanding performance. Our growth opportunity remains substantial and our ability to capitalize on it is becoming more and more evident with each passing quarter. And with that, operator, would you please open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And today's first question comes from Andrew Steinerman at JPMorgan.

If you could just go over if there's any change of where you're spending your CapEx for the year? And do you feel like your data center growth in any way is constrained in terms of your current CapEx plan?

Andrew, let me start with the growth on the data center side, and then I'll let Barry talk about what the implications are for CapEx. But I would say that we don't have any constraint on capital in terms of the growth of the data center side. First, we're really pleased that as we're now coming into that window with 400 megawatts being energized, the data center capacity, in the next 2 years is that we're really starting to see an uptick in leasing activity, but also the advanced discussions that we're having with a number of customers across our portfolio. So you would have seen the 32 megawatts year-to-date now at the end of April.

But if I add that to the advanced discussions that we're having with a number of customers across that 400 megawatts portfolio, is we expect to be meaningfully above the 100-megawatt guidance that we gave for the year. But I'll let Barry talk about it from a capital -- but again, it was kind of part of our plan. So we don't see any major pitch there.

Andrew, Bill kind of has covered it. I'll just reiterate that, the CapEx expectation we're using continues to be slightly down from last year, and that's just -- as you know, we're really not a speculative builder. The vast majority of what we're constructing is already pre-leased to fantastic high credit quality tenants with long-duration leases. And our -- I'll reiterate something else I said last time, which is that the guidance we have for total capital is -- would predicate on leasing more than we guided to for the full year in terms of new leases.

And with the amount of runway we have with respect to megawatts energizing over the next couple of years, we feel really, really well positioned as it relates to data center leasing going forward.

And our next question today comes from Eric Luebchow with Wells Fargo.

I'm curious, Bill, on your comments around the new federal opportunities in your pipeline, you seem to really highlight this quarter. Maybe you could give some quantification about how these new awards could impact either near-term or longer-term outlook, whether it's in digital solutions or in your records business? And secondarily, maybe just provide an update on the treasury contract. I think, I know you're in ramp mode this year.

I just wanted to confirm you're still expecting, I believe, $45 million this year and ramping into next year.

Okay. Eric, I appreciate the question. Yes. So as I said, we're really pleased.

It's the second highest bookings that we've had in the quarter with the -- on the government segment since I've been in the company, and we've been seeing this as a big opportunity. As you can expect, the nature of that business, not just this quarter, but in general, and I think I highlighted that in the couple of wins that we have, it's usually a blend, but more and more because it's efficiency driven, it's led with digital. So it really is about transforming government operations. And there is some exhaust sometimes, and I highlighted that in one of the wins is that we picked up some storage, which is also great.

But the fundamental thrust or movement, if you will, is to actually drive more efficiency in government services and better service to their citizens. So it's really much more of a digitally led. And that's why we're really happy to have the FedRAMP high classification, because it opens up the possibilities of where we can transform the government across the board. I think in terms of the -- Barry said it in his remarks, but in terms of the IRS is $9 million in this quarter, which was in line with a little bit higher than what our expectation is.

And we still see that $100 million next year, $45 million for this year. And the ramp is partly driven by also onboarding people because we have to kind of go through that with the IRS. And it's a very measured and I would say, well-structured program in terms of ramping the movement of some of this processing from the IRS into Iron Mountain and of course, driving efficiency along the way.

And our next question today comes from Tobey Sommer at Truist.

I was wondering if you could give some perspective on ALM and your footprint. Have you reached sufficient scale and breadth such that we're at a tipping point for you to be able to capture more significant wallet share?

So Tobey, I'll start with kind of the footprint. And then maybe, Barry, you can talk about a little bit the wallet share that we're seeing across some of our customers because as I noted in my remarks, we are seeing both broader and deeper on that aspect. I think we -- look, we're always trying to make sure that we can cover the globe with our 61 countries because we have customers in those 61 countries. And we are continuing to build that out very nicely.

I mean there's still a few countries that we can't serve. But the win that I talked about, the advertising company, where they were highly fragmented across the globe. And we won that partly because we could serve them in 30 countries for all their enterprise devices, and with one person with a counterpart that they actually trusted to do it in both a proper and efficient way. So we are seeing that the footprint that we have is driving considerable business now, but we're not in 61 countries.

So there's still a little bit more. But Barry, you might want to talk about the depth that we're seeing in terms of some of the customers once we bring them into the portfolio.

Yes, Tobey, as we've discussed before, the enterprise business, we think, is a business that can build on itself for literally years. And we are seeing that continue to happen. Part of the guide up is that we've won some additional business, and we're seeing continued ramping in the existing client base. And I think we added something about, let's call it, 2 dozen Fortune 1000 clients to our list in the ALM category as we continue to cross-sell and penetrate new accounts and new accounts on the ALM side that are cross-sold from the records business.

And we got a long trajectory on that. I will tell you, we're still very, very underpenetrated with all of our clients. So we tend to get a region or a specific flow in country from a client and then start building from there. And that, I think, is a really, really powerful way for the business to continue to develop over time because it's growth to growth to growth and strength to strength.

So we are feeling quite good about the enterprise business and see it as a really long-term opportunity.

And our next question today comes from Brendan Lynch with Barclays.

In terms of your price increases that you typically roll out at the beginning of the year, can you just give us some color on how that process went this year, especially given in February and March, it was a time of kind of higher inflation expectations and if that rolled through into the increases that you pushed out?

Brendan, first, I guess I would say is that, we focus our revenue management based on value, not what's going on in like CPI or PPI or anything of that sort. And as we continue to deliver increasing levels of value to customer, we think they -- that's how we manage the revenue management program. So we've clearly been offering them services that they can't get from any competitor, whether it be our Smart Reveal, Smart Sort, the sorts of the Clean Start, the various programs we have and together with cross-selling ALM. We can bring a solution to the clients that I think their vote is kind of what it is that they are continuing to choose us.

And so -- and we got to continue to win business every day and continue to satisfy our customers and delight them to justify revenue management, but we're doing that. And we see a long runway for additional revenue management actions over time of the mid-single plus kind of level that we've been talking about for some time. In the first quarter, we did implement revenue management actions kind of in the late January time frame. So the vast majority of them were in place for the first quarter.

I will note, and you'll recall that last year, our revenue management actions were a little bit more shifted such that the full benefit was in the second quarter. So when you think about the comps year-to-year, there's a little bit of a harder comp in the second quarter for us on revenue management specifically. But we also have likely some revenue management cohort actions, not a huge amount, but some that will be coming in the second half, which will give us another incremental modest lift. So we generally focus on the full year in terms of revenue management targets, and you should be fully expecting it to be of the same order that we were achieving last year.

I will also note that we -- in light of some of the service offerings we've had and just the cadence of historic revenue management actions and the value we're delivering, we've leaned into a little bit more revenue management actions on some of the service lines, which is obviously helping the growth and likely will be an incremental leg for us on the service side for some time.

And our next question today comes from George Tong at Goldman Sachs.

In your data center business, you're targeting at least 100 megawatts of leasing in 2026. What portion of that is in active late-stage negotiations today? And what's a reasonable quarterly cadence?

George, thanks for the question. I think the -- as I said, we do expect, based on the advanced discussions we're having with folks on top of the 32 megawatts we've done year-to-date to be meaningfully ahead of our original guide for 100 megawatts. As you can imagine that these are hyperscale customers, which are lumpy. So trying to predict where it's going to land in a specific quarter.

If you say to me for the rest of the year, I feel really good to be meaningful above the 100. But to give you kind of a quarterly guide or cadence, these typically are larger contracts. But based on the discussions we're having, and it's not in one site. As you can imagine, it's really across the globe from India all the way to Virginia, we're engaged in fairly advanced conversations. And you can imagine also that given these are large contracts, if you -- these things go on for months, so advanced conversations as we're getting pretty close.

George, the only thing I would add is that we continue to see pricing in all those markets be very strong and returns are looking quite good on those contracts that Bill is speaking to. And if you look at the price that we just generated on new leases as compared to, I think, the last couple of quarters, it's up nicely, I think like double digits. So we're pleased with the mix as well as the pricing.

And our next question today comes from Jonathan Atkin at RBC Capital Markets.

I was wondering if there is any kind of an update on India and Web Werks and how that's kind of going. And then I wanted to also ask about just the growth path. You hit on that in the earlier Q&A, but in terms of further inorganic opportunities as well as opportunities for ALM in, say, the large enterprise or even hyperscale category going forward?

Jon, thanks for the question. I'll start with the Indian piece, and then maybe Barry can talk a little bit about the ALM, including how that's rolling out and also M&A on that. But the -- on the India side, the Web Werks, it's fully integrated. As you know, that we actually now own 100% of it.

We are really pleased with the team that we now have in place that we hired from a competitor in the Indian market. So -- and then if you look at the portfolio that we have, I think you follow that market pretty closely. You can imagine that that's a market that we are in advanced discussions on a number of our assets in India. So we feel really well, really good about how we're positioned in the Indian market.

And we're really pleased with how that acquisition has turned out now that it's fully under the umbrella of Iron Mountain now for just over a year now. It's about 13 months that we've owned 100% of that. And with the new team that we've brought in place, who came with a lot of connections into the market and understanding of how to operate in India, I think we're feeling pretty good about it.

Jon, I'll add that from an inorganic standpoint, we are continuing to certainly look. And as we've said before, the ALM market is a very large TAM, and it is highly fragmented, and we're continuing to evaluate opportunities that could further our capabilities and increase our geographic reach. We are looking for tuck-ins here and there, and I expect that we will have some, but we never forecast deals as I think is the prudent way to handle things. We got a long list in the pipeline.

We are working with quite a few very good operators as it relates to potential deals over time. And sometimes those take a little while, but we've managed to find some fantastic deals and partner up with some great teams that are helping us propel this kind of growth. And I highlighted a couple of those on today's prepared remarks. I'll also note that we continue to see pricing for deals in the mid- to upper single multiples of EBITDA.

That's pre-synergy and all of the deals we've done over the last couple of years have synergized down rapidly to like sub 5x. We feel very good about the platform and the opportunity to continue to build. And I would say you asked about how hyperscale might continue to flow. Look, obviously, the hyperscale business grew even faster than the enterprise business, which, I mean, the enterprise business, just to reiterate, grew 45% on an organic basis.

So very strong growth coming out of both sides of the business. We do expect the hyperscale business to be a little bit higher as a percentage of the total ALM business this year just in light of the trajectory we're seeing. And I think we've been prudent about how we're forecasting the pricing in light of what's been going on, specifically in memory. I'll just note, we also do -- tend to do some project-oriented work, as I've said before, in the ALM hyperscale side, and that can be somewhat lumpy.

We did some of that work a couple of the quarters last year, including in the first quarter, there was a good-sized project-oriented business, piece of business. This year, we really haven't had a large project item, and I'm not forecasting any, but there are clients that are looking for things with a quick turn, and we have the ability to do that. So the business is flowing really well, and we feel very good about the long-term opportunity at ALM, Jon.

And our next question comes from Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel.

This is Adam on for Shlomo. Meta recently announced they'll be extending the use of life of non-AI servers in some cases to 7 years due to server supply availability. How would a move like that in the industry impact the ALM business in your view?

Thanks for the question. I'll start, and I'll also ask Barry to add further color on it. But the -- I think -- first of all, we've seen this trend with not just Meta, but a number of customers pushing out their renewal cycles over the last couple of quarters as the shortage of memory, which we've all witnessed and we've seen that reflected in our results has come through. So it's not so much about any other reason other than just the supply chain in terms of getting equipment.

I would say, though, that, that has also seen a benefit for us is because we've seen more and more OEMs now asking for us to sell used memory that we're harvesting from other customers, which they're reintroducing into their new product supply chain as long as it has the right specification, the right performance because as we all know, electronics typically fails at the beginning of its life, not in the middle of its life. So we're really pleased by that trend that we're seeing more and more of our -- the products that we're harvesting or helping recycle is getting reintroduced in the new supply chain through the OEMs.

The other thing I would say is we also have seen an uptick in some of the servicing, Barry alluded to kind of some of the projects we do. Well, some of the projects we do, you can call it a project as we have customers who say, for help us to harvest some of the components out of their old servers and return those to them so that they can actually build out their new servers and new cloud infrastructure. So it's a trend that we've seen over the last couple of quarters. I think we'll continue to see that trend stay pretty steady as the shortage of memory is expected to last a couple of years.

But it's turning out to be giving us some opportunities for our other service lines and also where we sell our recycled products. I don't know, Barry, if you have anything you want to add?

I guess the only thing I would add is that if you look at the amount of infrastructure that the key clients in that part of our business have been deploying over the last 5 to 10 years and the ramp that you've seen in growth of data center, the infrastructure and higher-value gear. There's a tremendous amount of growth year-to-year over the next several. And I think modest changes with respect to use of life. We've seen that flex up and down over the last several years as we've been operating this business for quite some time now.

And I don't think that, that kind of change is likely to slow down the growth. There's a lot of infrastructure over the next few years that needs to continue to be refreshed. And the clients that we operate with, they got a lot of year coming as well in terms of new. So we're feeling very good about the hyperscale side of the business.

Thank you. That concludes our question-and-answer session and the Iron Mountain First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. We thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.