Here's Why Digital Realty Trust Will Be a Dividend Aristocrat 1 Day
In order to join the Dividend Aristocrats, a stock must be a member of the S&P 500 index and increase its dividend for at least 25 consecutive years, and as you might imagine, this is a pretty exclusive club.
Data center real estate investment trust (REIT) Digital Realty Trust (NYSE: DLR) is not a Dividend Aristocrat. It has only increased its payout for 17 years in a row, but that's because it has only been a publicly traded company since 2004. Digital Realty has an excellent history of growing its cash flow and delivering shareholder returns and will likely become a Dividend Aristocrat as soon as it's old enough.
If you aren't familiar with data centers, think of them as the physical homes of the internet. Every time you upload photos to social media, access a cloud-based software program, or visit a website, all of that information has to physically live somewhere. And that's where data centers come in. Data centers provide a secure and reliable place for companies to house their servers and other networking equipment.
Source Fool.com
