Equinix CEO on Explosive Stock, Serving Customers Like Google and Microsoft

Shares of Internet infrastructure company Equinix (EQIX) are on fire and its CEO Steve Smith couldn’t be more bullish. ‘We’re very fortunate that the purpose of our business is to help companies get in the middle of the greatest trends in the history of technology,’ he said. ‘We’re in the middle of the cloud computing paradigm shift and we’re assisting companies moving towards this Internet of things shift,’ referring to the growing trend of connecting physical objects to the Internet. The stock is up about 17 percent since the start of the year, outpacing the 1.6 percent rise in the tech heavy Nasdaq. Equinix works with some of the biggest telecom and technology names. ‘We deal with the Verizons (VZ) and AT&Ts (T) of the world, along with the British telecoms and the Deutsche telecoms,’ he said. ‘We deal with all of the biggest tech companies like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).’ Smith said the next few years will focus on helping enterprises unlock value in the cloud computing space. ‘We’re talking about big pharmaceutical companies, health care companies, big travel and transportation companies, plus oil and gas,’ he added. ‘We call these enterprise companies.’ In 17 years, the company has accumulated an impressive base of over 6,000 customers, but growth could soon soar. TheStreet’s Scott Gamm reports from New York.