Large San Francisco-based data center provider and developer Digital Realty Trust finished 2009 with higher revenue and income, hundreds of millions of new capital and a substantially larger portfolio.

Demand for data center space in the US has been growing at a higher rate than the rate of new space coming online and many in the industry attribute this dynamic to the difficulty of obtaining capital for such capital-intensive projects as data center construction.

The real estate investment trust has been one of the few companies that were able to raise capital and continue expanding through both build-out and acquisitions.

Digital Realty CEO Michael Foust said the company observed that a slight relief to the strained supply was provided by a lot of un-retrofitted shell space currently on the market. "We're seeing shell space being marketed as data center space where they have transformer power to the buildings," he said.

Developers that market such space are usually looking for a tenant to commit to leasing the future data center before financing the project and building it. "There's somewhat more space like that available."

Digital Realty raised substantial amounts of capital recently, in a capital market that has largely been frozen. In 2009, the company raised a total of $620 million from different sources and retired $151 million of debt, Digital Realty CFO William Stein said.

This year, the company has already raised an additional $670.5 million as of Feb. 25, 2010.

Digital Realty expanded its footprint substantially during the fourth quarter of 2009 quarter, buying two Santa Clara, Calif., properties totaling 185,000 square feet in October and another two in Sterling and Ashburn, Va., totaling about 330,000 square feet. As part of the second transaction, the company also purchased a greenfield site in Ashburn, capable of supporting up to 140,000 square feet of data center space.

The company spent $52.8 million on the Santa Clara acquisition's and $63.3 million in the Virginia deal.

During the quarter, Digital Realty increased its revenue and earnings. The company's total revenue for the quarter was $169.8 million, a 15.4 percent jump year-over-year.

Digital Realty's net income for the fourth quarter was $24.9 million, an increase from the third quarter's $23.9 million and from the final quarter of 2008, when the company reported an income of $25.1 million.