American Tower at Global Communications Conference: Strategic Growth Insights

On Tuesday, 16 September 2025, American Tower (NYSE:AMT) presented at the Global Communications Infrastructure Conference, outlining its strategic direction amidst both opportunities and challenges. The company emphasized its commitment to organic growth, operational efficiency, and a robust balance sheet, while also addressing potential impacts from industry shifts and technological advancements.

Key Takeaways

• American Tower updated its organic tenant billings growth guidance to 4.3% for 2025, driven by 5G deployments and future AI demand.
• The company is prioritizing investments in developed markets, reducing capital in emerging regions.
• CoreSite data centers are performing strongly, with double-digit growth and a focus on interconnection.
• American Tower’s credit rating was upgraded to BBB+, reflecting disciplined financial management.
• The company views satellite technology as complementary, not competitive, to its tower infrastructure.

Financial Results

• Organic Tenant Billings Growth:

- Updated to approximately 4.3% for the year in the U.S., with potential growth expected in 2026 as Sprint churn effects diminish.

• SG&A Costs:

- Successfully reduced during 2023 and 2024, even amidst high inflation, aiding margin expansion.

• Revenue from DISH Network:

- Accounts for about 2% of global revenue and 4% of U.S. revenue.

• CoreSite Data Center Business:

- Experiencing double-digit economic growth, with interconnection revenues growing annually between 15% and 20%.

Operational Updates

• 5G Deployments:

- Wireless carriers are targeting an 80% to 90% deployment range across the U.S.

• Application Increase:

- Applications surged by 50% in the first half of 2025 compared to 2024.

• Capital Allocation:

- Increased investments in the U.S. and Europe, focusing on CoreSite data centers, while decreasing in Africa and Latin America.

• Balance Sheet:

- Achieved a credit rating upgrade to BBB+, proactively managing refinancing and reducing floating-rate exposure.

• European Operations:

- Concentrating on France, Germany, and Spain, driving mid-single-digit organic revenue growth.

Future Outlook

• Organic Growth:

- Anticipates increased tenant billings growth from 2025 into 2026, with Sprint churn no longer affecting results.

• AI Impact:

- AI-driven mobile applications expected to boost demand for data and infrastructure.

• Satellite Technology:

- Seen as complementary, enhancing rural coverage without competing with tower networks.

• Network Convergence:

- Envisions a blend of wireless and fiber networks, with CoreSite data centers enhancing the digital edge.

Q&A Highlights

• DISH Spectrum Sale:

- Outlook includes only minimum contracted payments, minimizing potential impact.

• Spectrum Availability:

- More spectrum for carriers is beneficial, leading to increased equipment deployment.

• SpaceX Purchase of Spectrum:

- Satellite technology viewed as complementary, especially for rural areas.

• 2026 Growth:

- While specific guidance is premature, an increase in growth rate is anticipated.

• Data Center Strategy:

- Focus remains on differentiated, well-connected data centers with cloud on-ramps, avoiding hyperscale facilities.

In conclusion, American Tower remains optimistic about its long-term growth prospects, driven by strategic capital allocation and emerging technology trends. For more details, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Global Communications Infrastructure Conference:

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: Welcome, everybody, to the first session of the first day of the 2025 edition of our Global Communications Infrastructure Conference. My name is John Atkins. I’m with RBC, and you’ll see a lot of me on stage driving a lot of the fireside chats and one of the panels. Very pleased to welcome Rod Smith, who’s been the CFO of American Tower for quite some time. Welcome and appreciate your being here with us.

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, great. Thank you, John. It’s great to be here.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: To maybe just set the stage, if you want to recap kind of your top-level guidance that you’ve provided around some of the key metrics: organic tenant billings growth, AFFO per share growth, and then we’ll dive into some strategic and operational and balance sheet topics.

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, when it comes to organic tenant billings growth in the U.S., which is really the primary metric a lot of people look at, we’ve updated our guidance to approximately 4.3% for the year. That really represents a pretty robust, pretty stable demand backdrop in the U.S. We are continuing to see the wireless carriers roll out their 5G deployments across the country, all striving to move the amount of 5G deployment up into the 80% to 90% range. Some are there, some are not there, and they’re continuing to move up. We benefit from that. We’ve seen a very strong beginning of the year in terms of a level of applications. We increased our applications by about 50% first half of 2025 versus 2024. We saw 2024 kind of ramp up.

That ramp up in applications continued into 2025, and that’s been a really good, you know, a good thing to see the carriers continue to spend money on the networks, continue to kind of keep their networks in the right condition when it comes to coverage, quality, and capacity. We are, I think, in the beginning stages of seeing a reflection where AI-driven use cases will increasingly hit mobile devices, which could have another leg up in terms of demand, mobile data consumption on wireless networks, which could continue to drive growth, certainly for the tower industry for a long time. I would say the one factor that we really look to, above all others, in terms of driving sustainable long-term growth on the tower sites, is the growth in mobile data that we have seen, that we’re seeing, and that we expect to continue to see going forward.

In terms of the key priorities, which we’ve talked about, American Tower, we are really focused on the fundamentals, driving organic growth in the U.S. and around the globe, making sure we drive as much value as we can, not only for our shareholders, but also for our customers. Having those sites available for our customers in the U.S. and around the globe is critical. Making it easy and efficient for them to use them, to get onto them, to contract around them is also critical. We spend a considerable amount of time on operational efficiencies, making sure we have the right cost structure. That is all of our direct costs, things like operations and maintenance, capital investments around the sites, the expenses that we have around land and other things, as well as SG&A and the expenses that we see there.

We’ve had a couple of years, 2023 and 2024, where we saw SG&A costs come down. That was purposefully driven, us being proactive in bending that, not only bending the curve down, but actually reducing the aggregate amount of SG&A at a time when inflation was fairly high. We continue to drive those costs down to help expand margins. We also complement the existing assets we have by building towers in select places where we see the value proposition for our shareholders and places where our customers need it. With that said, we are prioritizing developed markets. We’ve increased capital investments in the U.S. We’ve increased investments in Europe, as well as with our CoreSite data center business, which is in the U.S. We’ve decreased capital investments in emerging markets, particularly Africa and across Latin America.

You can see our actions, our capital investments, our capital allocation is following those priorities. Being efficient is critical. The last point that I would make, which we focus on a lot, is balance sheet quality. You know, ensuring that we have the right balance sheet that can weather any kind of economic backdrop, that can support us, our customers, and shareholders in good times and bad times. You’ve seen us get upgraded with S&P. We’re now a BBB+ rated organization. We’re proactively reducing the refinancing headwinds that we have, getting out ahead of that. We have no more refinancings this year. That’s all done. We have now the next, you know, end of this year, the second half of 2025, to be working on planning and dealing with refinancings for next year. We’re well ahead of that curve.

That puts us in a position where we can be, you know, truly opportunistic when it comes to balance sheet management. We’ve reduced our floating-rate exposure. That again reduces uncertainty around interest rates and interest rate headwinds. We’re in really good shape there.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: Great. I’m going to have a chance to circle back on some of the topics that you just elucidated, but maybe just hitting some recent headlines. We’ve got the DISH Spectrum sale to AT&T. How do you view the impact to your business, given that some of AT&T’s capacity needs can be met through software, but in other cases, maybe in the low band, 600 megahertz, they might need to deploy new equipment? How do you look at the puts and takes around that as it pertains to tower companies?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, I would say that it’s probably too early to assess the longer-term impact of that transaction. A couple of things I would highlight in general. Number one is in our outlook, not only for 2025, but longer term, when it comes to DISH, we have built into our outlook only the minimum contracted payments that DISH has made in their MLA with us. We haven’t assumed or expected anything above the minimum commitments that they’ve made. That contract is still in place. We expect to get paid for that, not only in 2025, but over the long term. From that perspective, the contract and the obligations that DISH has financially to meet that contract is pretty well buttoned up. We expect to get that revenue over time. That means in 2025, that transaction shouldn’t have any effect on our outlook, nor should it over the next couple of years.

Again, it’s too early to really assess exactly what the transaction means, whether or not it’s going to get approved and those sorts of things. The other thing I would say is getting more spectrum in the hands of the carriers is a good thing for the industry. It’s certainly a good thing for them, and it’s a good thing for the tower companies as well, because more spectrum means more deployment. When they deploy spectrum, they put equipment on towers, new antennas, cables, lines, the whole thing. It also is evidence of the need for more spectrum because the growth in mobile data continues to go up. The networks have to continue to increase the capacity, also augment the coverage and the quality.

Based on the type of data consumption that’s going through the networks, depending on which frequency it goes through, they may need to densify the networks also to get that higher band spectrum, the C-band spectrum and others, to be able to cover more areas, to use that higher band spectrum, which gives you more capacity, gives you faster throughput speeds. To use it in more places, they may have to densify the networks. They can do that with bringing in more spectrum. If they don’t have that additional spectrum, they can do it by reusing the spectrum they have more frequently, which means more transmission points for RF, which means more colocation on tower assets over time. That brings me back to the fundamental piece to look at for tower companies, which is the growth in mobile data consumption. That drives everything in this industry.

We are here with our towers and our infrastructure, which is well positioned to support the wireless carriers as they continue to invest in the network and increase coverage, capacity, and quality, particularly at a time when 5G applications are just coming to the handsets, and AI is beginning to also make its way onto the handsets, which could be, again, that next leg of demand drivers for the long term in the tower space.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: You mentioned just real quick, by way of follow-up, before I hit the next set of topics, you get paid for those DISH leases over time. What sort of initial lease term are we looking at? Five years, ten years, longer?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: You know, we don’t disclose specific terms. I think we have talked about it being a long-term lease with certain revenue step-ups. They today represent about 2% of our global revenue and about 4% of our U.S. revenues. The contract is a long-term contract, more than a decade.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: SpaceX purchase of spectrum, even a more recent announcement, and thoughts on impacts to the tower industry?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, I mean, we view the satellites as very complementary to the tower industry, as well as the terrestrial wireless networks. I think it’s an important element of providing that coverage to rural places in a very efficient way. That’s really what it is being designed to provide, not only in the U.S., but around the globe. It is ideal for efficiently and cost-effectively extending the wireless coverage into rural places, even hard-to-build places, so that you can extend that wireless network. It is not meant to, or is likely not to be, a significant contributor to mobile coverage in denser areas, urban centers, even suburban areas, travel corridors on highways. The amount of bandwidth that is used there and the amount of subscribers is just not conducive to being materially impacted by satellites.

Satellites are meant to, based on their capacity constraints and their increased latency, you know, the slower speeds of the satellite network, it’s really ideal for when you get out into the very rural areas to extend that coverage. We don’t see it as a competitor to wireless networks, terrestrial networks, and we don’t see it having an impact on the tower space, other than it may reduce the need for expanding the tower networks out into the real rural areas. As the government looks to extend wireless coverage into some hard-to-cover areas, it may not have to be covered by towers or terrestrial networks. The satellites will do a good job picking that up, and it would be complementary, not a negative to our business over the long term.

We have an investment in AST Mobile, so we’re deep into the satellite space, and we have a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience with it, and we think it’s a great technology, but very complementary.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: Last couple of tower questions, and then maybe we’ll hit on data centers, but a lot of folks are kind of thinking for 2026, 5% organic growth, given what’s happening with U.S. Cellular, which we won’t ask you to answer directly, but you know, everything we just talked about, Latin America, you know, AT&T Mexico, how much pressure should we be thinking about mid-single-digit growth over the medium term?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, it’s a great question. As you would probably expect, I don’t want to get into too much specifics when it comes to 2026. We will do that in February of 2026 when we lay out our guidance. With that said, we expect to hit around 4.3% this year. That still has three quarters of Sprint churn coming off of the billing roll, so it’s impacted by over 100 basis points just from that Sprint churn. That Sprint churn is non-recurring when you get into 2026. We do see this year as an inflection point where organic tenant billings growth is very likely to go up from next year, even if nothing else changes, just the absence of that Sprint churn. We do see the demand backdrop as being very robust. With that said, we do have a few challenges around the globe.

I think you mentioned, Jonathan, the Mexico issue. That is an issue that could have an impact on our numbers. It really shouldn’t have an impact on our numbers, but it may, and you may ask other questions, and we can talk about that a little bit more. It’s much too early for me to say that it will or won’t have an impact in 2026.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: Turning to Europe, you talked about developed markets. Any kind of highlights to point out around your particular geographic exposure within Europe? How do you see the growth prospects between organic growth around maybe some of the 5G buildouts versus inorganic growth opportunities?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, Europe is an interesting market to us. We did a transaction a few years ago. We bought the tower assets from Telefonica. That was a great transaction. We have a great partnership with Telefonica, as well as the other carriers in Europe. We are centered in France, Germany, and Spain. We’re driving mid-single-digit growth rates there on organic revenue. We should be able to do a little bit better than that when you drop that down to EBITDA and AFFO. It’s a solid mid-single-digit environment, high-quality economies, robust economies, high-quality counterparties. We were driving slightly higher than mid-single-digit growth for the last couple of years. We’re well ahead of our investment thesis that we originally put forward in making that acquisition. The market looks very constructive. Now, with that said, it is a small contributor to AFFO and AFFO per share for us in and around the mid-single digits.

The market there, and our assets in particular, we like a lot. We think we have the scale to compete well in that footprint and in that market. If we find compelling opportunities to inorganically invest and expand things, we will, but only if we see a direct line to value creation limited or risks that we are able to effectively mitigate. If we don’t, we won’t expand in Europe. We don’t feel a need to just get bigger in Europe for the sake of getting bigger in Europe. Today, it is a small contributor to our AFFO per share growth, although it’s performing very well, well ahead of our business case.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: You mentioned what you like, what you see in terms of mobile data growth. There’s mobile data growth, and there’s growth on terrestrial towers, which would include FWA. I assume you’re excluding FWA when you’re talking about mobile data growth?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, not necessarily. I mean, in our world, the data growth is the data growth. When I say mobile data consumption, it’s the data that is going through the wireless networks and fixed wireless, you know, fixed wireless going through those towers. It’s just data going through the pipe. We don’t, certainly in our position as a tower company, see exactly the end case of what that data is doing and whether it’s fixed wireless or if it’s truly mobile. We just see that it goes through our antennas, it goes through the radios that are on our towers, and it is propagated from our tower locations.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: You have a technology team just north of Boston. What are they kind of thinking and seeing as they look at your customers’ behavior and also end users? Is it FWA or is it AI applications? Which of the two, or is there a third or fourth category that you would get excited about over the medium term around traffic growth?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, I would say from exactly what the carriers are deploying their equipment to do, we don’t have insight to that. We see the equipment that they’re putting up. What we get excited about is the consistent growth in mobile data consumption. The fact that more of the handsets out there are converting and being upgraded to 5G handsets, and the 5G applications that will hit those mobile devices have really yet to be seen in a material way. That is continuing to be developed, and it will come. AI, I think, is a very exciting development and one that will also drive growth and activity on the mobile networks. Towers will be a critical aspect of helping the carriers keep up with that demand. That is certainly critical. Fixed wireless access over the mobile devices, I think that’s really exciting.

I mean, we are seeing a convergence of the networks. You see a lot of the carriers investing in fiber. They’re continuing to invest in their mobile networks. They’re putting that together. I really do think the industry is focused on delivering bandwidth and looking for the most effective way to do that. It will be a combination of wireless assets, wireless networks now and, you know, for a long time into the future. Also, fiber networks will pick up some of that. You’ll see more competition between wireless carriers and landline carriers competing for those broadband subscribers that are fixed and not mobile. I think that’s an exciting development for everyone, in particular for the tower company. The backdrop, the demand drivers, I think, is just really exciting for this industry. This is a long-term industry, and the investments are long-term investments. That’s how we view it.

The long-term outlook for towers and tower companies, I think, is really strong when you think about these demand drivers. Again, I would just highlight the AI is beginning to make its way to mobile devices, and that will continue. We think that our data center assets, high-quality, you know, differentiated interconnection facilities with cloud on-ramps will play a role in the convergence of these networks and potentially tie into towers and create a digital edge or a data center edge where you have cloud on-ramps, compute power, content caching, much closer to the end users, much closer to the base radios. We have the cloud on-ramps, the interconnection, we have the towers, the relationship with the wireless carriers, relationship with cloud players, as well as landline networking companies.

That all comes to us from a combination of CoreSite data center assets and our wireless towers that we have in the relationships there. Bringing those together would be another step in that network convergence. We think we have the right assets in the right places to play a big role in that.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: Last question, we’ll go a little bit over, but data centers, the product du jour seems to be, you know, triple digit megawatt or gigawatt plus commitments. That’s not where you play. If you look at your peer group, you’ve got one company in their sub one megawatt category that is seeing a lot of success with enterprise. One of the bigger peers just recently lowered their financial guidance. You’re putting up 13% year-on-year growth in Q2. How do you see your segment of the data center space, which is different than where a lot of the capital seems to be flowing, performing around organic demand drivers and what’s kind of your strategy going forward?

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, when it comes to CoreSite, we’re being very disciplined. We are, each and every day, we reflect on and remember why we bought CoreSite and the value proposition we think that it brings to our customers as well as our investors, which is the unique nature or the differentiated nature of these assets being well distributed across the U.S. and having cloud ramps, multiple cloud ramps in each campus location, some of the highest quality enterprise customers within these facilities, hundreds of network companies within these facilities. We’re seeing interconnection, you know, being between 15% and 20% of our revenues, and that is growing double digits every year. The interconnection nature of these facilities is also critical. That type of an ecosystem is what we see over time naturally migrating out closer to the end users in the wireless network, in the landline network, even to the enterprise customers.

We believe that they will want those cloud on-ramp access points closer to the way they do the compute, whether it’s enterprise, landline, or wireless. That’s why we bought the business. That business is performing exceptionally well. The demand is strong. The result of that is we’ve had a couple of years of record-setting new business. We also are in a position where there is such strong demand that we have pricing leverage, and we’re using that leverage. The access to power is critical. We are in locations, and we have longstanding relationships with the local utilities where we’re getting the power that we need. Not just now, we’re planning power two years out, four years, six years, ten years out. We’re making financial contributions to build substations to ensure the power is there for us.

That is critical when customers come in to these facilities to know that not only can we provide what they need today, but they can build a business within our ecosystem that will be able to support them five, six, eight years down the line. That is critical. That does give us pricing power. It does give us the ability to attract the best enterprises into these facilities to keep that ecosystem strong. We’re seeing double-digit economic growth. We’re seeing very good returns on our investments over time. We expect that to continue. Double-digit growth in our CoreSite business is achievable over the next several years, based on the pipeline that we have, the backlog that we have, the facilities that we’re bringing online today. We see a clear path to that. When we bought CoreSite, we underwrote that transaction between 6% and 8% economic growth.

We’re well above that, and we have been consistently. The fundamentals there, it has been a very good transaction for us, and it’s performing well. The wildcard, the upside is extending out the edge and connecting it with towers could be a really nice addition, not only to CoreSite, but to towers. We don’t want to get distracted from that mission. We’re not pursuing hyperscale facilities at much lower return on invested capital. We’re not building large single-tenant, high-megawatt facilities. That would be, in our view, not the right path for us, even though the opportunity is there. I wouldn’t criticize anyone that’s doing it. It would just take us off of our mission. We think we have a very unique mission and a very clear focus on these high-quality data centers that we have, continuing to expand that platform, which we have been doing.

You’ll continue to see us do that through investments, expanding the facilities we have within geographic regions, maybe expanding into one or two other regions, you know, slowly, cautiously, in a disciplined way. That’s a much different expansion process than jumping into the hyperscale business.

John Atkins, Moderator, RBC: That’s a great overview. Appreciate your taking the time.

Rod Smith, CFO, American Tower: Yeah, thank you.

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