Item 1. Business.

Business Overview

We help organizations around the world protect their information, reduce storage costs, comply with regulations, facilitate corporate disaster recovery, and better use their information and IT infrastructure for business advantages, regardless of its format, location or life cycle stage. We do this by storing physical records and data backup media, offering information management solutions, and providing data center space for enterprise-class colocation and hyperscale deployments. We offer comprehensive records and information management services and data management services, along with the expertise and experience to address complex storage and information management challenges such as rising storage rental costs, legal and regulatory compliance, and disaster recovery requirements. We provide secure and reliable data center facilities to protect digital information and ensure the continued operation of our customers’ IT infrastructure, with reliable and flexible deployment options.

Founded in an underground facility near Hudson, New York in 1951, Iron Mountain Incorporated, a Delaware corporation, has more than 225,000 customers in a variety of industries in approximately 50 countries around the world, as of December 31, 2019. We currently serve customers across an array of market verticals - commercial, legal, financial, healthcare, insurance, life sciences, energy, business services, entertainment and government organizations, including approximately 96% of the Fortune 1000. As of December 31, 2019, we employed more than 25,000 people. We are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") and are a constituent of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the MSCI REIT index. As of December 31, 2019, we were number 605 on the Fortune 1000.

We have been organized and have operated as a REIT beginning with our taxable year ended December 31, 2014.

Business Strategy

Overview

Our company has been a market leader in the physical ecosystem supporting information storage and retrieval, as most businesses have relied on paper documents or computer tapes to store their valuable information. Over time, customers are increasing their digital information, with the new information storage ecosystem being a hybrid of physical and digital mediums. We offer a suite of "mission-critical" storage and related services to help customers with this transformation, and utilize the strategy outlined below to grow our business.

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Pursuing Volume Opportunities in Records and Information Management Globally with a Focus on Faster-Growing Geographies and Verticals - We are establishing and enhancing leadership positions in higher-growth markets such as central and eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, through both organic expansion and acquisitions where GDP growth is faster and outsourcing information management is at an earlier stage. We are also focused on increasing revenues in more established markets such as the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, primarily through targeted sales and marketing efforts to attract new customers or to gain incremental volumes from existing customers. We believe much of the opportunity for new customers is from existing verticals that do not already outsource some or all of their storage and information management needs to us or another third party vendor. We expect to continue to invest in attractive acquisitions of customer relationships and storage and information management services businesses, designed to optimize the utilization of our existing assets and to expand our presence and better serve our customers.

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Driving Revenue Growth and Margin Expansion Through Revenue Management and Continuous Improvement - We expect to continue to drive revenue growth and margin expansion through further deployment of our revenue management program. Further, we expect continuous improvement initiatives will generate additional margin expansion opportunities, primarily in our established markets. In our higher-growth markets, we expect profits will grow with increased scale, and we will look to reinvest a portion of the cash flows generated to support expansion in these markets.

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Continued Expansion of Data Center Business - We have made significant progress through acquisitions and organic growth in scaling our data center business, with 14 operating data centers across 13 global markets. As of December 31, 2019, approximately 86% of our capacity is leased, with total potential capacity of 357 megawatts in land and buildings currently owned or operated by Iron Mountain making us among the largest global data center operators.

•	Investing in Faster-Growing Businesses - We continue to identify, acquire, incubate and scale complementary businesses and products to support our long-term growth objectives and drive solid returns on invested capital. These opportunities include our Entertainment Services, Fine Arts and Consumer Storage (each as defined below) businesses and digital services.

Our strategy is underpinned by our persistent focus on customer experience, as we continue to seek innovative solutions to help our customers navigate the journey from physical storage to a digital ecosystem.

Project Summit

In October 2019, we announced our global program designed to better position us for future growth and achievement of our strategic objectives ("Project Summit"). Project Summit focuses on simplifying our global structure by combining our core records and information management operations under one global leader and rebalancing our resources, streamlining managerial structures and leveraging our global and regional customer facing resources. We are also implementing systems and process changes designed to make our organization more agile and dynamic, streamline our organization and reallocate our resources to better align with our strategic goals as part of Project Summit. As a result of the program, we expect to reduce the number of positions at vice president and above by approximately 45%. The total program is expected to have reduced our total managerial and administrative workforce by approximately 700 positions by the end of 2021.

The activities associated with Project Summit began in the fourth quarter of 2019 and are expected to be substantially complete by the end of 2021. We estimate that Project Summit will improve annual Adjusted EBITDA (as defined in Note 9 to Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Annual Report) by approximately $200 million as program benefits are realized, with the total program benefits associated with Project Summit expected to be fully realized by the end of 2022. We estimate that the implementation of Project Summit will result in total costs of approximately $240 million.

As we simplify our global structure and combine our core records and information management operations under one global leader, we have reassessed the composition of our business segments. Our previous North American Records and Information Management Business, North American Data Management Business, Western European Business and Other International Business segments have been combined into one Global Records and Information Management ("Global RIM") Business segment with certain product lines now captured in our Corporate and Other Business segment.

Business Segments

The amount of revenues derived from our business segments and other relevant data, including financial information about geographic areas and product and service lines, for the years ended December 31, 2019, 2018 and 2017, are set forth in Note 9 to Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Annual Report.

•	Global RIM Business: Our Global RIM Business segment includes five distinct offerings.

Records Management, stores physical records, including media such as microfilm and microfiche, film, X-rays and blueprints, and provides healthcare information services, vital records services, service and courier operations, and the collection, handling and disposal of sensitive documents (collectively, "Records Management") for customers in approximately 50 countries around the globe. As of December 31, 2019, Iron Mountain stored approximately 700 million cubic feet of hardcopy records.

Data Management, provides storage and rotation of backup computer media as part of corporate disaster recovery plans, including service and courier operations (“Data Protection & Recovery”); server and computer backup services; and related services offerings, (collectively, "Data Management").

Information Governance and Digital Solutions ("IGDS"), develops, implements and supports comprehensive storage and information management solutions for the complete lifecycle of our customers' information, including the management of physical records, conversion of documents to digital formats and digital storage, primarily in the United States and Canada.

Secure Shredding, which includes the scheduled pick-up of office records that customers accumulate in specially designed secure containers we provide. Secure shredding, which involves the shredding of sensitive documents for customers that, in many cases, store their records with us, is a natural extension of our hard copy records management operations and completes the lifecycle of a record. Complementary to our shredding operations is the sale of the resultant waste paper to third-party recyclers. Through a combination of shredding facilities and mobile shredding units consisting of custom built trucks, we are able to offer secure shredding services to our customers throughout the United States, Canada and South Africa.

Consumer Storage provides on-demand, valet storage for consumers (“Consumer Storage”) across 24 markets in North America through a strategic partnership (the "MakeSpace JV") with MakeSpace Labs, Inc. (“MakeSpace”) formed in March 2019. The MakeSpace JV is intended to utilize data analytics and machine learning to provide effective customer acquisition and a convenient and seamless consumer experience.

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Global Data Center Business: Our Global Data Center Business segment provides enterprise-class data center facilities to protect mission-critical assets and ensure the continued operation of our customers’ IT infrastructure, with secure, reliable and flexible data center options. The world’s most heavily regulated organizations have trusted us with their data centers for over 15 years, and as of December 31, 2019, five of the top 10 global cloud providers were Iron Mountain Data Center customers.

As of December 31, 2019, our Global Data Center Business footprint spanned nine markets in the United States: Denver, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; Boston, Massachusetts; Boyers, Pennsylvania; Manassas, Virginia; Edison, New Jersey; Columbus, Ohio; and Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona and four international markets: Amsterdam, London, and Singapore, with land held for development in Frankfurt.

•	Corporate and Other Business: Our Corporate and Other Business segment consists primarily of Adjacent Businesses and other corporate items.

Adjacent Businesses is comprised of (i) entertainment and media which helps industry clients store, safeguard and deliver physical media of all types, and provides digital content repository systems that house, distribute, and archive key media assets, throughout the United States, Canada, France, China - Hong Kong S.A.R., the Netherlands and the United Kingdom ("Entertainment Services") and (ii) technical expertise in the handling, installation and storing of art in the United States, Canada and Europe ("Fine Arts").

Our Corporate and Other Business segment also includes costs related to executive and staff functions, including finance, human resources and IT, which benefit the enterprise as a whole, and stock-based employee compensation expense associated with all stock options, restricted stock units, performance units and shares of stock issued under our employee stock purchase plan. Additionally, our Corporate and Other Business segment includes our technology escrow services business in the United States.

Business Attributes

Our business has the following attributes:

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Large, Diversified, Global Business - The world's most heavily regulated organizations trust us with the storage of their records. Our mission-critical storage offerings and related services generated approximately $4.3 billion in annual revenue in 2019. Our business has a highly diverse customer base of approximately 225,000 customers - with no single customer accounting for more than 1% of revenue during the year ended December 31, 2019 - and operates in approximately 50 countries globally. This presents a significant cross-sell opportunity for our data center and digital services businesses.

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Recurring, Durable Revenue Stream - We generate a majority of our revenues from contracted storage rental fees, via agreements that generally range from one to five years in length. Historically, in our Records Management business, we have seen strong customer retention (of approximately 98%) and solid physical records retention; more than 50% of physical records that entered our facilities 15 years ago, are still with us today. We have also seen strong customer retention in our Global Data Center Business, with low annual customer churn of approximately 4%.

•	Comprehensive Information Management Solution - As an S&P 500 REIT with approximately 1,450 locations globally and with offerings spanning physical storage, digitization services and digital storage, we are positioned to provide a holistic offering to our customers. We are able to cater to our customers' physical and digital needs and to help guide their digital transformation journey.

•	Significant Owner and Operator of Real Estate - We operate approximately 91 million square feet of real estate worldwide. Our owned real estate footprint spans nearly 30 million square feet and is concentrated in major metropolitan statistical areas in North America, Western Europe and Latin America.

•	Limited Revenue Cyclicality - Historically, economic downturns have not significantly affected our storage rental business. Due to the stability in our total global physical records volumes, the success of our revenue management, and the growth of our Global Data Center Business, we believe we can continue to grow storage rental revenue over time.

•	Shifting Revenue Mix - Our growth portfolio, which consists of our business in our higher-growth markets, our Global Data Center Business, and our Adjacent Businesses, comprised 24% of our total revenue in 2019, and grew 4% year over year, on an organic basis. We expect our growth portfolio to comprise an increasingly larger percentage of our overall business in the coming years.

In addition, our data center business has the following attributes:

•	Large Data Center Platform with Significant Expansion Opportunity - With over 3.5 million gross square feet, as of December 31, 2019, we have 120 MW of leasable capacity with an additional 237 MW under construction or held for development.

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Differentiated Compliance and Security - We offer comprehensive compliance support and physical and cyber security. Our multi-layered approach to security includes a combination of technical and human security measures, and experienced senior military and public sector cyber security leaders lead our security. As of December 31, 2019, Iron Mountain data centers meet FISMA high and PCI-DSS compliance standards and are FedRAMP compliant.

•	Efficient Access and Flexibility - We have the ability to provide customers with a range of deployment options from one cabinet to an entire building, leveraging our global portfolio of hyperscale-ready, and underground data centers. We also provide access to numerous carriers, cloud providers and peering exchanges with migration support and IT.

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100% Green Powered Data Centers - As of December 31, 2019, Iron Mountain data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy, with carbon credit assistance and low power usage effectiveness ("PUE"). Iron Mountain is one of the top 25 buyers of renewable energy among the Fortune 1000 and now offers the Green Power Pass, which allows customers to include the power they consume at any Iron Mountain data center as green power in their CDP, RE100, GRI, or other sustainability reporting.

Significant Acquisitions

We have completed many records management acquisitions over the years to achieve scale, expand geographically and broaden our offerings, but most of our records management acquisitions in recent years have been smaller in size given the fragmented nature of the records management industry. With the rapid acceleration of growth in digital data and use of cloud storage, highly regulated companies and public sector organizations are selecting third-party providers such as us to host their data center infrastructure. We have been providing customers with data center space and solutions for more than 15 years, and have significantly expanded our Global Data Center Business in the last few years through acquisitions, the most significant one being that of IO Data Centers, LLC (“IODC”). On January 10, 2018, we completed the acquisition of the United States operations of IODC, a leading data center colocation space and solutions provider based in Phoenix, Arizona, for approximately $1.34 billion (the "IODC Transaction"). See Note 6 to Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Annual Report.

Competition

We compete with thousands of storage and information management services providers around the world as well as storage and information management services managed and operated internally by organizations. We believe that competition for records and information customers is based on price, reputation and reliability, quality and security of storage, quality of service and scope and scale of technology. While the majority of our competitors operate in only one market or region, we believe we provide a differentiated global offering that competes effectively in these areas.

We also compete with numerous data center developers, owners and operators, many of whom own properties similar to ours in some of the same metropolitan areas where our facilities are located. We believe that competition for data center customers is based on availability of power, security considerations, location, connectivity and rental rates, and we generally believe we compete effectively in each of these areas. Additionally, we believe our strong brand, global footprint and excellent commercial relationships enable us to compete successfully.

Employees

As of December 31, 2019, we employed more than 9,000 employees in the United States and more than 16,000 employees outside of the United States. As of December 31, 2019, approximately 550 employees in California, Georgia and New Jersey and three provinces in Canada were represented by unions in North America and approximately 1,200 employees were represented by unions in Latin America (in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico). All union employees are currently under renewed labor agreements or operating under an extension agreement.

Where applicable, employees are generally eligible to participate in our benefit programs, which may include health and welfare arrangements as well as pension programs. Certain unionized employees in California receive these types of benefits through their unions and are not eligible to participate in our benefit programs. In addition to base compensation and other usual benefits, a significant portion of full-time employees participate in some form of incentive-based compensation program that provides payments based on revenues, profits or attainment of specified objectives for the unit in which they work.

Insurance

For strategic risk transfer purposes, we maintain a comprehensive insurance program with insurers that we believe to be reputable and that have adequate capitalization in amounts that we believe to be appropriate. Property insurance is purchased on a comprehensive basis, including flood and earthquake (including excess coverage), subject to certain policy conditions, sublimits and deductibles. Property is insured based upon the replacement cost of real and personal property, including leasehold improvements, business income loss and extra expense. Other types of insurance that we carry, which are also subject to certain policy conditions, sublimits and deductibles, include medical, workers' compensation, general liability, umbrella, automobile, professional, warehouse legal liability and directors' and officers' liability policies.

Environmental Matters

Some of our current and formerly owned or leased properties were previously used by entities other than us for industrial or other purposes, or were affected by waste generated from nearby properties, that involved the use, storage, generation and/or disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, including petroleum products. In some instances, this prior use involved the operation of underground storage tanks or the presence of asbestos-containing materials. Where we are aware of environmental conditions that require remediation, we undertake appropriate activity, in accordance with all legal requirements. Although we have from time to time conducted limited environmental investigations and remedial activities at some of our former and current facilities, we have not undertaken an environmental review of all of our properties, including those we have acquired. We therefore may be potentially liable for environmental cost and may be unable to sell, rent, mortgage or use contaminated real estate owned or leased by us. Under various federal, state and local environmental laws, we may be liable for environmental compliance and remediation costs to address contamination, if any, located at owned and leased properties as well as damages arising from such contamination, whether or not we know of, or were responsible for, the contamination, or the contamination occurred while we owned or leased the property. Environmental conditions for which we might be liable may also exist at properties that we may acquire in the future. In addition, future regulatory action and environmental laws may impose costs for environmental compliance that do not exist today.

We transfer a portion of our risk of financial loss due to currently undetected environmental matters by purchasing an environmental impairment liability insurance policy, which covers all owned and leased locations. Coverage is provided for both liability and remediation costs.

Corporate Social Responsibility

We are committed to transparent reporting on sustainability and corporate responsibility efforts in accordance with the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative. Our corporate responsibility report highlights our progress against key measures of success for our efforts in the community, our environment, and for our people. We are a member of the FTSE4 Good Index, MSCI World ESG Index, MSCI ACWI ESG Index and MSCI USA IMI ESG Index, each of which include companies that meet globally recognized corporate responsibility standards. A copy of our corporate responsibility report is available on the "About Us" section of our website, www.ironmountain.com, under the heading "Corporate Social Responsibility."

Internet Website

Our Internet address is www.ironmountain.com. Under the "Investors" section on our website, we make available, free of charge, our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, our Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act") as soon as reasonably practicable after such forms are filed with or furnished to the SEC. We are not including the information contained on or available through our website as a part of, or incorporating such information by reference into, this Annual Report. Copies of our corporate governance guidelines, code of ethics and the charters of our audit, compensation, finance, nominating and governance, and risk and safety committees are available on the "Investors" section of our website, www.ironmountain.com, under the heading "Corporate Governance."