Matt Mercier
Chief Financial Officer at Digital Realty Trust
Thank you, Andy. Let me jump right into our first quarter results. We signed a record $252 million of new leases in the first quarter, led by $175 million of greater than a megawatt leasing in the Americas and another $53 million of 0 to one megawatt plus interconnection leasing, with interconnection bookings remaining firm at $13 million. Turning to our backlog. Given the record leasing, the backlog of signed but not yet commenced leases swelled to a new record of $541 million at quarter end, with new leasing outstripping a record $156 million of commencements during the quarter. Looking ahead, more than half of the record backlog is slated to commence during the remainder of 2024, indicating that commencements are likely to remain elevated. During the first quarter, we signed a record $248 million of renewal leases at a record increase of 11.8% on a cash basis.
Re-leasing spreads were once again positive across products and regions, with particular strength in the Americas. Re-leasing spreads have been increasing steadily for well over a year now, and while we expect that they will remain very healthy, they're likely to moderate in this quarter's record given the significant weighting of lease expirations in the 0 to 1-megawatt segment for the remainder of the year. In addition, we think it is important to consider a normalized view of the headline renewal spreads as two separate items skew our reported spreads higher in the first quarter. First, there was a notable outlier in the other category that should not be considered recurring or repeatable and removing this transaction would reduce our overall reported spreads by 250 basis points to 9.3% for the quarter.
Second, there was a significant early renewal transaction in our greater than one megawatt segment that was part of a large package deal as we work to support this customer's broader data center capacity needs in one of our tightest markets. While this transaction enabled us to opportunistically pull forward some of our below-market expirations from the outer years, our forward year lease expiration schedule remains dominated by our 0 to one megawatt segment, which tends to experience spreads in the low to mid-single digits, akin to what we saw in the first quarter. Excluding both the outlier transaction and the packaged deal renewal, re-leasing spreads in the quarter would have been up 3.4% on a cash basis.
We feel that this is a more predictable aspect of our portfolio, that we will continue to see opportunities and may periodically be able to capture the growing mark-to-market opportunity in our greater than one megawatt portfolio. In terms of earnings growth, we reported first quarter core FFO of $1.67 per share, reflecting strong organic operating results, partly balanced by dilution associated with the stabilized asset sales and JV contributions completed early in the year and the ongoing deleveraging of our balance sheet. And normalizing for the sale or JV of $3 billion of stabilized assets completed since the beginning of last year, total revenue growth was 7% year-over-year in the first quarter due to the benefit of improved leasing spreads, along with favorable new leasing.
Revenue growth in the quarter was tempered by the decline in utility expense reimbursements as electricity rates fell sharply in EMEA year-over-year. Normalized adjusted EBITDA increased 9% year-over-year, reflecting the strong revenue growth and modest increase in operating expenses. As Andy noted earlier, stabilized same-capital operating performance saw continued strength in the first quarter, with year-over-year cash NOI up 4.7% driven by 4% growth in rental plus interconnection revenues and further supported by expense control. Moving on to our investment activity. We spent $550 million on consolidated development for the first quarter, plus another $23 million for our share of managed unconsolidated JV spending while delivering 32 megawatts of new capacity across the globe for our customers.
It's worth mentioning, the approximate $300 million of sequential decline in our development spending this quarter which highlights the effects of the contributions of our three development JVs. However, seasonal and other timing-related factors also contributed to less capex spending in the first quarter. Turning to the balance sheet. We continue to strengthen our balance sheet in the first quarter with the closing of previously disclosed transactions, including the Cyxtera transaction, the first phase of the Blackstone hyperscale development JV and the sale of an additional 50% share of the two stabilized hyperscale assets in our Chicago JV to GI Partners. During the quarter, we also completed a hyperscale development JV with Mitsubishi for two assets in the Dallas Metro.
In terms of new news, we also sold a piece of land in Sydney, Australia for $65 million, and we provided an easement to Dominion Energy to build the Mars substation on our Digital Dulles campus for $92 million, which all contributed to a reduction in our reported leverage to 6.1 times at the end of the first quarter versus 6.2 times at the end of 2023. Then in April, we continue to recycle capital by selling 75% of CH2, the third and final stabilized hyperscale facility on our Elk Grove campus at a 6.5 cap rate to GI Partners, raising nearly $400 million. And we sold to Digital Core REIT, an additional 24.9% interest in our Frankfurt site where Digital Core REIT previously owned 25%, raising another $129 million. In addition, we used some of our cash on hand to pay off the $600 million of maturing euro notes.
After adjusting for these transactions, along with the anticipated closing of Phase two of the Blackstone transaction later this year, pro forma leverage is 5.8 times. We continue to keep significant cash on the balance sheet with approximately $1.2 billion on hand and over $3 billion of total liquidity at March 31 to support ongoing investment opportunities. Moving on to our debt profile. Our weighted average debt maturity is over four years, and our weighted average interest rate is 2.9%. Approximately 85% of our debt is non-U.S. dollar denominated, reflecting the growth of our global platform and our FX hedging strategy. Approximately 86% of our net debt is fixed rate and 97% of our debt is unsecured, providing ample flexibility for capital recycling. Finally, after paying off the earnouts in April, we have $316 million of debt maturing through year-end 2024.
Beyond that, our maturities remained well levered through 2032. I'll finish with guidance. We are maintaining our core FFO guidance range for the full year 2024 of between $6.60 and $6.75 per share, reflecting the continued improvement we are seeing in our core business. Positive underlying operating trends are partly balanced by potential acceleration in development spending and additional capital recycling, as we move our leverage down towards the long-term target and position the company for the accelerating opportunity in front of us. We are maintaining our total revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges for 2024, so we are notching up our cash and GAAP re-leasing spreads along with our same capital cash NOI growth expectations, reflecting better-than-expected execution on the leasing front in the first quarter, and the strength in fundamental conditions that we continue to see across our portfolio.
Specifically, cash re-leasing spreads are now expected to increase 5% to 7% in 2024, up 100 basis points at the midpoint from the prior 4% to 6% range. And same-capital cash NOI is now expected to increase by 2.5% to 3.5%, up 50 basis points from the 2% to 3% range we provided in February. Highlighted in our investor presentations, excluding the nearly 200 basis points of power margin headwinds that we have previously discussed, our same-capital cash NOI growth for 2024 would be 4.5% to 5.5%. While these improvements and stronger core FFO per share realized in the first quarter bode well for the balance of the year, there are a few mitigating factors to consider as you're refining your models. First, we will see a modest drag on the $500-plus million of capital recycling completed in April.
Second, we are only 1/3 of the way into the year, and there is still significant potential for both development spend and asset sales guidance to reach the high end of their guidance ranges. In addition, it is worth pointing out that the interest rate outlook and curve have changed considerably since we provided guidance and remains another source of uncertainty for the balance of this year. Just one final reminder and update. Over the course of 2024 and 2025, we expect that our $6 billion development pipeline will become increasingly accretive as higher-yielding projects are completed and stabilized. The expected yield on our stabilized pipeline ticked up another 20 basis points sequentially, reflecting the addition of higher-yielding projects and the completion or contribution to joint ventures of lower-yielding projects.
To help provide increased transparency around this important and evolving aspect of our company, we have enhanced our development life cycle schedule on page 25 of our supplemental to: one, reflect our proportionate share of total data center development, including our unconsolidated joint ventures; and two, to provide increased disclosure around our available developable capacity in terms of IQ logo. We hope you find this helpful. This concludes our prepared remarks.
And now we will be pleased to take your questions. Operator, could you please begin the Q& A session?