With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

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World's Most Admired Companies

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

Just as it dominates our economy, Big Tech now dominates Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

After a year in which humanity leaned more heavily than ever on tech giants, see which companies topped Fortune's ranking of corporate reputation.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

American Tower operates simultaneously as a real estate investment trust and an operator of communications networks. The company leases out space on wireless and broadcast towers at more than 43,000 properties in the U.S. and Canada. The company has benefited in recent years from efforts by telecom companies to upgrade their networks to the 5G transmission standard; American Tower's revenue grew 6% in 2020.

For an astounding 13th straight year, Apple claims the top spot in Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation, based on a survey of almost 3,800 executives, directors, and analysts.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-414-American-Tower

An operator of wireless and broadcast communications towers, American Tower expanded further into emerging markets in 2019.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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American Tower is a global real estate investment trust that owns, operates, and develops communications real estate. The company provides the infrastructure that enables wireless carriers and broadcasters to transmit signals, supporting mobile and broadband networks. The company utilizes a “vertical office building” model for its clients by leasing space on its towers to multiple tenants.

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American Tower (AMT): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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American Tower

american tower

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Tower Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Adam Smith, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and FP and A.

Good morning, and thank you for joining American Tower's fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings conference call. We have posted a presentation, which we will refer to throughout our prepared remarks under the Investor Relations tab of our website, www.americantower.com. I'm joined on the call today by Steve Ondren, our President and CEO and Rod Smith, our Executive Vice President, CFO and Treasurer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I'll remind you that our comments will contain forward looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties.

Examples of these statements include our expectations regarding future growth, including our 2025 outlook, capital allocation and future operating performance and any other statements regarding matters that are not historical facts. You should be aware that certain factors may affect us in the future and could cause actual results to differ materially from from those expressed in these forward looking statements. Such factors include the risk factors set forth in this morning's earnings press release, those that will be set forth in our upcoming Form 10 K for the year ended 12/31/2024, and in other filings we make with the SEC. We urge you to consider these factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information contained in this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.

Thanks, Adam. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. When I stepped into the CEO role about a year ago, I expressed my excitement about leading American Tower through its next era of growth and evolution. We have an exceptional portfolio of assets, unmatched operating capabilities, and we're in what I believe to be one of the most durable businesses catalyzed by ever increasing mobile network demand. Over the past year, activity across our platform has highlighted the criticality of our communications assets in meeting growing demand.

As carriers in our U. S. And European markets deployed mid band spectrum assets, emerging market players densified four gs networks and began rolling out five gs and our CoreSite data center business delivered yet another record year of new leasing. My original perspective of the five gs cycle requiring continued network investments necessary to support coverage has been realized and bolstered with incremental optimism through the next phase of AI driven demand, which I think will benefit our towers and data centers and unlock synergistic value between the two at the edge. Last year, I also laid out a set of strategic priorities center on balance sheet strength, efficiency, portfolio quality and capital allocation discipline, all meant to further enhance our customer value proposition and strengthen the durability and quality of earnings for our shareholders over the long term.

Certain headwinds in 2024 underscore the importance of these initiatives, which better prepare us to weather challenges like care consolidation and FX and interest rate volatility. And although these global risks persist, thanks to significant efforts undertaken by the talented members of our global team, we're entering 2025 in a stronger position and we'll remain focused on pursuing these strategies to to prioritize higher quality earnings and sustained growth. We're currently on track to maintain our five times leverage target on a recurring basis this year, which is an acceleration from our initial deleveraging plan following our CoreSite acquisition at the end of twenty twenty one. In addition to managing our debt and capital structure, our net leverage profile was further supported by margin expansion, which we've largely driven through systematic reduction of recurring SG and A costs. Cash SG and A excluding bad debt reduced by approximately $35,000,000 in 2024 as compared to 2023, supported by various efficiency initiatives, including the thoughtful globalization of company wide functions like finance, IT and HR.

Most recently, we appointed Budd Hill as our Chief Operating Officer, a role that will advance our efforts in driving efficiency and margin expansion by ensuring that we effectively leverage global operating expertise and apply the best of our processes, tools and capabilities across all of our regions. At the same time, we were happy to further leverage our exceptional bench strength and announce Rich Rossi, who spent over twenty years with American Tower to lead The US and Canada business. Importantly, with these changes, we aim to further elevate the quality of business functions of customer service and anticipate further enhancing our already attractive margin profile along the way. We'll use the next several months to diligently assess the optimal global operating structure and at a time we'll communicate long term efficiency targets. We've already made significant progress and we have a long runway of opportunities still ahead.

Over the past year, we continue to actively manage our global portfolio and forward looking capital deployment priorities to right size geographic risk and ensure a strong synergistic fit between our strategy, core competencies and assets. Most notably, as we discussed on the third quarter call, we exited our India business and has since sold our modest land interest in Australia and New Zealand. We also recently signed an agreement to divest our South Africa fiber business and plan to close that transaction this quarter. We believe the quality of our earnings and growth profile is at a material premium we always stood only a few years ago. In 2025, we expect our developed markets, which consists of our U.

S, Canadian and European operations along with CoreSite to contribute about 75% towards our unlevered AFFO. And we expect to further expand this portion through continued prioritization of capital to these developed segments. We've also increased the proportion of global tower cash flows to our top operators in each market. Combined with reduced emerging market exposure, this should translate to a more attractive and predictable return profile moving forward. Our strong portfolio and focused capital allocation plan paired with our best in class global operating capabilities and alignment with market leaders better enables us to benefit from positive industry trends.

Global demand for mobile data continues to climb. The roughly 35% of mobile data traffic that runs over five gs networks today is expected to increase to 80% by 02/1930, prompting carriers to enhance and expand their increasingly stressed networks. Currently with five gs upgrades, it improves spectral efficiency and subsequently with incremental cell sites that will densify their footprints in areas identified as needing additional capacity. In our U. S.

Tower business, we've observed four quarters of sequential acceleration application activity over the course of 2024, exiting the year with our big three customers having upgraded an average of 65% of their sites within our portfolio with mid band spectrum, up from just over 50% a year ago. Carriers have begun to highlight the commercial benefits associated with our five gs investments, translated to enhanced network quality, customer retention and stronger ARPUs with commentary suggesting another active year of network investment in 2025. In fact, although we're between the two peaks of the five gs investment cycle, coverage and capacity, the 2025 outlook for wireless CapEx spend is expected to return to higher levels again, totaling approximately $35,000,000,000 which is roughly $5,000,000,000 above the average annual spend during four gs. Now as what I'll speak about in a moment, although we anticipate the positive momentum in U. S.

Activity to continue to 2025 with the solid pipeline supporting it, our outlook for organic tenant billings growth in The U. S. And Canada steps down modestly compared to 2024. This is a function of the cadence of our contracted use fees and also the commencement timing associated with non contracted new business such as new co locations outside of our MLAs or a customer that may not be under a comprehensive agreement, not a softening in demand. So far, the five gs investment cycle is largely in line with our expectations with recent care commentary, dialogue and activity further reinforcing our conviction in sustained higher CapEx needs moving forward.

Over the next five years, underwritten by projected total mobile network traffic growth of over 15% annually given the existing service turns, we expect the required network capacity to more than double with more connected devices, data intensive applications and growing upwind transmission requirements for placing significant strain on the networks. Today, we'd expect roughly half of this incremental capacity need to be solved through current spectrum holdings and real life spectral efficiency. That leaves a sizable capacity gap that can only be resolved through densification, additional spectrum coming to market or a combination of both. In addition, mainstream use of new applications such as multimodal AI could further exacerbate capacity shortages and prompt even more activity. Taken altogether, we see an attractive addressable market that our portfolio is well equipped to accommodate with equipment upgrades, colocations and selective new site development over the next several years and beyond.

Similar trends generally hold true internationally where true five gs mid band coverage continues to progress each year and stands at roughly 45% in Europe, 15 Percent in Latin America and 10% in Africa. Data consumption has grown at a CAGR of around mid teens relative to 20% across these regions since 2020. And we've seen a corresponding increase in cell site density that complements existing site upgrade efforts. Importantly, these mid band coverage stats illustrate the need for continued investment over the next several years. As we anticipate similar annual data growth across the same geographies, carriers will continue to utilize the most cost effective ways to bolster their network capacity and coverage, which will include a mix of macro towers, rooftop sites, small cells and in remote areas where terrestrial networks are not economically efficient, satellites.

In our CoreSite business, the team delivered a tremendous quarter results to round out another exceptional year. These results reinforce the strength of the demand and pricing durability for interconnection centric retail oriented colocation. And while we continue to evaluate hyperscale, we remain convinced of our core business model and the tangible demand catalyst we see today, including AI related demand. This allows us to stay disciplined in our lease up approach to ensure a high quality customer mix at the right economics and supports our continued long term expectation of mid teens or higher stabilized yields. To build on this momentum in 2025 and beyond and continue to meet the growing needs of our customers across our global platform, we'll maintain the following priorities.

First, we continue to evolve our value proposition to our customers and our investment opportunity to our shareholders. I firmly believe that we're the best operator of towers and distributed real estate in the world, which allows us to pass along certain benefits and efficiencies to our customers, including powers of service, security and monitoring, data and asset quality, customer service delivery, speed of deployment, and a suite of services capabilities. Additionally, I recognize that investor attraction to American Tower as an equity option requires that we operate the highest quality portfolio with strategic fit among our geographies, demonstrate trustworthy stewardship of shareholder capital through disciplined investments and leverage an operating structure that yields outsized efficiency, margins and returns. We have an incredibly talented team that lets us do that and further globalizing our organization will drive additional economies of scale, civilization and global automation, raw savings across multiple business functions ensuring that we're able to continue demonstrating synergistic value creation across our 20 plus markets at an exciting time in global connectivity. Next, and as Ron will discuss in more detail, we'll continue to actively manage our capital to prioritize funding of opportunities that yield the most attractive risk adjusted rates of return over the long term.

We'll continue to direct most discretionary capital towards our developed market platforms, including over $600,000,000 for data center development on existing campuses, underwritten at mid teens stabilized yields with some optionality to pursue small tuck in inorganic opportunities where appropriate, and also the construction of six of our tower sites in Europe, where we anticipate low double digit day one yields. At the same time, we're reducing emerging market discretionary CapEx to just over $300,000,000 in 2025, a reduction of over 60% from 2021 and over 15% compared to 2024. Spend across our Latin American, African Apex segments will be primarily focused on the construction of about sixteen fifty previously committed tower sites for strategic customers underwritten at mid teens day one NOI yields. We expect this number to come down over time as we satisfy those commitments and redirect new discretionary capital to develop regions. In conclusion, macroeconomic uncertainty persists across the global landscape, but consumer demand for connectivity and bandwidth intensive applications and the associated network requirements remain resilient.

The macro tower remains the most cost effective manner to deliver a gigabyte of mobile data and our global portfolio of assets and leading capabilities exceptionally equips us to support our customers' multi year investment needs. Further, we've taken appropriate steps to ensure a higher degree of durable growth and returns generated by our leading business. I'm confident that our focus in operating and actively managing the highest quality global portfolio of assets, offering best in class customer service and delivery through our experienced global teams, and leveraging our investment grade balance sheet, positions American Tower to profit from attractive long term secular demand trends across the wireless and technology industries that drive sustained quality growth and returns for our shareholders over the long term. Now, I'll turn it over to Rod to discuss full year 2024 results and our 2025 outlook. Rod?

Thanks, Steve, and thank you all for joining the call. We had a strong close to 2024 supported by the execution of our strategic priorities as Steve highlighted in his remarks. Before I review our 2024 performance, which was in line with prior outlook and expectations for 2025, I'll touch on several highlights from the quarter. First, demand for our assets remains solid. In The U.

S, while fixed use fees in our comprehensive master lease agreements mean that new business growth is somewhat independent of actual carrier activity levels, we were encouraged to see the sequential acceleration in applications continue through Q4. We view this as critical evidence of the importance of mid band spectrum in our customers' commitment to achieving portfolio coverage. In fact, Q4 volumes more than doubled year over year, reinforcing our conviction that our customers will continue to deploy five gs on their existing sites and densify their networks over the next several years to meet surging data demands. Internationally, consistent organic new business contributions were complemented by the construction of nearly 1,000 sites with strategic anchor tenants, which includes record volumes in Europe. In our U.

S. Data center business, demand for our interconnection campuses and associated new leasing remained elevated, resulting in fourth quarter revenue growth of nearly 10%. Next, consistent with past quarters, conversion of consolidated cash top line growth was bolstered by vigilant cost management, supporting year over year cash adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of over 200 basis points. As I'll touch on in a moment, our focus on driving cost efficiencies across our global business remains a critical priority and evident in our 2025 outlook. Finally, we continue to strengthen our investment grade balance sheet.

In Q4, we opportunistically addressed a portion of our 2025 debt refinancing needs, successfully issuing $1,200,000,000 in senior unsecured notes at an average coupon of 5.2% and average tenor of seven point five years. Furthermore, our 2025 plan is in line with our net leverage target. And we began the year with a strong liquidity position and reduced floating rate debt exposure, providing flexibility and optionality as we address 20 20 five maturities. Also in January, we amended and extended our bank facilities with a leading banking syndicate, which improved our applicable margin pricing by 12.5 basis points on drawn debt to 100 basis points, further optimizing our cost of capital. Moving to Slide six, I'll first remind you that property revenue and adjusted EBITDA exclude discontinued operations associated with our India sale in both the current and prior year periods.

Property revenue growth for the year was nearly 13% on an FX neutral basis. Performance was supported by organic tenant billings growth of over 5%, the construction of nearly 2,400 sites and U. S. Data center growth of over 10%, partially offset by a 2% negative headwind associated with a reduction in non cash straight line revenue. Adjusted EBITDA growth was approximately 2% and over 4% on an FX neutral basis.

Growth was negatively impacted by 3.5% associated with a reduction in non cash straight line. As we have communicated throughout the year, focus on cost management supported a reduction in cash SG and A excluding bad debt of approximately $35,000,000 as compared to 2023, contributing to cash margin expansion of 140 basis points to 66.8% demonstrating our commitment to driving efficiency throughout our global organization. Finally, attributable AFFO per share of $10.54 represented nearly 7% growth year over year and over 9% on an FX neutral basis. I'll now summarize a few key points and themes to contextualize our 2025 outlook. First, the drivers supporting our plan are generally consistent with the preliminary indications we provided on our Q3 twenty twenty four earnings call.

As you'll see on Slide seven, solid reoccurring revenue growth with elevated conversion rates to AFFO through strategic global cost management initiatives spanning operating expenses, SG and A maintenance CapEx and cash taxes fundamentally position our 2025 plan in line with our long term growth algorithm, partially offset by FX devaluation and interest costs associated with refinancing needs. Although FX and interest rates have proven to be volatile and unique considerations could move results above or below our mid to high single digit growth rate target in any given year, we believe our business is positioned to deliver solid, durable reoccurring AFFO per share growth and attractive returns and we're committed to actively managing the portfolio to ensure that expectation is achieved. Next, as Steve mentioned, we recently signed an agreement to sell our fiber assets in South Africa, which we assume to close on March 1 in our outlook, highlighting another step towards enhancing our portfolio quality and focus. Annualized contributions from the South Africa fiber business were approximately $25,000,000 and $20,000,000 in property revenue and adjusted EBITDA respectively. Turning to Slide eight, our 2025 outlook reflects total company organic tenant billings growth of approximately 5% and around 5.5% absent the impacts of the final tranche of Sprint churn.

Organic tenant billings growth in The U. S. And Canada is expected to be greater than or equal to 4.3% and greater than or equal to 5.3% excluding the impacts of Sprint churn. A modest reduction compared to 2024 as contracted use fees step down and contributions from non contracted leasing, which is sensitive to commencement timing, begin to accelerate. Growth includes contributions from organic new business in the mid 3% range and a 3% escalator, partially offset by non Sprint related churn and other adjustments of roughly 1%.

It's important to note that our guide assumes the first three quarters of twenty twenty five will be impacted by approximately 140 basis points of Sprint churn, likely keeping growth below 4% during that time period before recovering to over 5.5% in Q4, which will not have any negative growth impacts from Sprint churn. Growth in Africa and APAC of approximately 12% includes roughly seven percent in escalators, 6% in organic new business as ongoing four gs densification and initial five gs upgrades continue and less than 1% in other billings adjustments, partially offset by approximately 2% in churn, which is a notable improvement from prior years. Growth in Europe of approximately 5% includes 2% in escalators and steady organic new business contributions of around 4%, partially offset by churn of approximately 1%. In Latin America, growth of approximately 2% includes contributions from escalators of around 5% and organic new business of over 2%. Gross growth is partially offset by another year of carrier consolidation driven churn, which we expect to persist through 2027, resulting in elevated churn of approximately 5% in 2025 and other billing adjustments of less than 1%.

Turning to Slide nine, you'll see organic tenant billings is supporting property revenue growth of over 0.5% or approximately 3% on an FX neutral basis, which is impacted by a year over year FX neutral reduction of $217,000,000 in straight line revenue and over 2% negative headwind to reported growth. Complementing organic tower growth, net of a reduction due to the non recurrence of certain one time revenue benefits in 2024 is a continuation of solid performance in our U. S. Data center business growing at nearly 12% at the midpoint. Moving to Slide 10, cash property revenue growth is converting at a high rate to adjusted EBITDA representing year over year growth of approximately 1% and over 3% on an FX neutral basis, which includes an approximately 3% negative headwind associated with non cash straight line.

Complementing property contributions, we anticipate the positive momentum we saw in our U. S. Services segment in 2024 to continue into 2025, resulting in an increase to services gross margin of nearly $30,000,000 The operating leverage inherent in our business model is expected to be amplified by prudent cost controls and lower bad debt expense, including another year of cash SG and A declines of approximately $20,000,000 Turning to Slide eleven, 2025 attributable AFFO per share of $10.4 represents growth of over 4% relative to 2024 attributable AFFO per share as adjusted of $9.96 and growth of approximately 7% on an FX neutral basis. Performance is supported by a strong conversion of cash adjusted EBITDA growth through tightly managed cash taxes and maintenance CapEx, partially offset by net interest headwinds of $80,000,000 a roughly 1.7% negative impact to growth. On Slide 12, I'll review our capital allocation plans for 2025.

We expect to resume dividend growth in the mid single digit range subject to board approval, which corresponds to an approximately $3,200,000,000 distribution to our shareholders. Next, we're planning for $1,700,000,000 in capital deployments, of which $1,500,000,000 is discretionary in nature and includes the construction of 2,250 sites at the midpoint. Approximately 80% of our discretionary spend is centered on our developed market platforms, including over $600,000,000 in success based investments towards our data center campuses to replenish the record level of capacity sold over the past several years. Increased spend in The U. S.

Primarily towards land buyouts under our tower sites and continued acceleration in European new tower construction with 600 new sites planned. While overall capital spend is moderately increasing year to year as we execute on attractive development opportunities across The U. S, Europe and CoreSite, we continue to reduce spend across our emerging markets. In 2025, investments in Latin America, Africa and APAC will primarily consist of augmenting sites to accommodate incremental tenants in meeting multi year agreement obligations with leading carriers primarily through newbuilds. Execution of our strategic balance sheet priority since closing the CoreSite acquisition has us well positioned to deliver more sustained and durable earnings growth, partially mitigate market risk and volatility and provide financial flexibility to execute on opportunistic and strategic growth opportunities at an attractive cost of capital.

Our liquidity position of $12,000,000,000 including $10,000,000,000 of bank facility capacity along with our low floating debt exposure provides optionality to manage the $3,700,000,000 of fixed note maturities in 2025. Our plan continues to target maintaining floating rate debt exposure below 10%, which we believe is a reasonable target for the foreseeable future. Moving to Slide 13 and in summary, our fundamental business proved resilient throughout a volatile macroeconomic backdrop in 2024 as carriers continue to invest in their networks across our global footprint to address growing mobile data demand, although market volatility continues to persist, including interest rate and FX uncertainty, the quality of our assets, people, counterparties and contract terms combined with the strategic steps we executed over the course of 2024 to strengthen our balance sheet and enhance earnings quality have us well positioned to deliver stronger growth in returns for our shareholders over the long term. With that operator, we can open the line for questions.

Thank Your first question comes from the line of Michael Rollins from Citi. Please go ahead.

Thanks and good morning. First, can you give us some additional details on what you're seeing in the domestic leasing environment, including the mix of colo versus amendments? And is that mix affecting kind of the book to bill for the OTPG metrics over the course of 2025? And then just maybe second and to the point about domestic leasing opportunities, can you give us an update on the multi year growth opportunity? And do you still see annual growth in the mid single digit range going through 2027?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Mike. Yes, we're not changing our long term guidance in terms of what we believe the average to be from that 2023 through 2027 time period. When we look at this year's OTBG in particular, there is a little bit of a mix, but I'll it's a little bit more nuanced than just colo's versus amendments. We do have a sequential step down in our contracted use right fee under our comprehensive agreements.

As we told you guys when we laid out the guidance, we had more visibility early in that process. It gets a little bit less each year. And so our organic tenant billings growth is a factor of those use fees plus the incremental amendments and new leases that are outside of those contracted use fees. So we do still have one customer that's not on a comprehensive agreement with respect to amendments and then we also have co locations that are outside of the contracted use fees with some other customers as well. And so what we're seeing from an activity level is a robust pipeline from all of our carriers.

It's kind of broad based across the three national carriers and that is still a healthy mix of amendments and co locations. We are seeing a rise in new co locations across the portfolio. That's a combination of continuing to expand the reach of the network, so going into some more rural areas, but also some early stage densification that we're seeing. So we are seeing that mix change a little bit. When you look at the 2025 guide, because less of that revenue is part of the comprehensive use fees, we are more subject to timing on that.

And we do see a little bit more of a delay in kind of the signing and commencing of those. Those use freight fees tend to be kind of front end loaded in the year and these others will come kind of throughout the year. And that OTPG metric is so sensitive to kind of the in year revenue piece that even a thirty, sixty, ninety day delay in commencements can make a difference there. So that's why it's a little bit we're not giving us flat out number. We're giving it greater than or equal to 4.3 because we'll see what the commencement timing is on that.

But that is a combination of the amendments from the customer that are outside of the agreement and the co locations. And that does extend the kind of a book to bill timeline out just a little bit.

Hey, Michael, maybe I'll just add a point here that roughly $4,300,000 that Steve talked about in terms of organic tenant billings growth for The U. S, that's in line with our prior expectation and does fit in and support our full year outlook for 2024 as well as that longer term multi year guide that we had provided earlier, which was roughly 5% organic tenant billings growth in The U. S. On average from 2017 out 2024. So we are pretty well on track with that.

The other thing I would highlight is within that, equal to or greater than 4.3% includes two percentage points contributed from churn. Roughly half of that is from Sprint churn, which will not be reoccurring next year. So that will be an inflection point where that number certainly is expected to be higher going into next year.

Yes. Just to clarify, that guide was 2023 to 2027.

Your next question comes from the line of Simon Flannery from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you very much. Good morning. Steve, if I could come back to the data center business, great to see the strong performance there. Just want to get a sense of how the original concept of the integration of the data center connectivity, the towers, AI inference and so forth, how are you thinking about that today?

And I guess one of the concerns is we've got this massive multiple gap between data centers and towers. And are you getting full recognition for the assets that you hold given the predominance of the tower business? So I'd love to get your thoughts about is it worth owning this versus separating that? And then I think there was a reference, Rod, maybe to more money on U. S.

Land purchases. Can you just give us a sense of what's driving that? How are you thinking about the economics now that's leading you to lean into that this year? Thanks.

Yes. Thanks for the question, Simon. So we're very happy with the performance of CoreSite and how it's doing as a kind of a standalone business. As you mentioned, the original reason we bought CoreSite strategically was number one, we knew it was a good business and number two, we thought it would give us an advantage when the industry does move to edge compute. We still believe there will be a convergence of kind of the wireless edge as well as the wireline edge and we still have strong conviction that that will happen.

In the meantime, we're focused on maximizing the value of CoreSite. So when we think about whether we're the right owner of that asset, as long as we're maximizing the value of that asset, we think it makes sense for us to hold it and to continue to grow it because we do believe that that long term strategy will play out. Now for some reason, it looks like that doesn't play out or it's not a strategic fit. We'll reassess that when the time comes. But at this point, everything that we're seeing leads us to believe that you will continue to see an evolution of the edge and we believe having that interconnection ecosystem.

And to be clear, it's not just having a data center company, but it's having a highly interconnected ecosystem with multi cloud environments is what's going to be essential for Edge to work. And that's also what we're already seeing play out in terms of AI, those multi cloud environments are also the ideal places for inferencing for AI. So as this whole ecosystem evolves over time, we think we're well placed to capture that demand as it evolves. And so we believe that we are the right owner for that asset as we continue to maximize its value and evolve that kind of future offering out there. But like I said, we'll continue to assess it.

And if at any point, we think that somebody else can create more value than we can, we'll make that assessment at that time.

Hey, Simon, good morning. I think the second question you had was around land purchases under our towers in The U. S. Yes. You can see in the numbers that we put out for the guide for 'twenty five, we're driving that up to about 200,000,000 two hundred million dollars invested in 'twenty four, that was about $144,000,000 so a nice inflection point there and a higher level of investment.

The key there is a couple of things that I would highlight. One is, we're very selective in terms of which parcels of land we purchase and we look to purchase land under our very best towers to secure the revenue over the long term to either extend. We certainly look to extend those leases out twenty, thirty years and also buy them or get perpetual easements when and where we can. So one of the metrics that you've heard us talk about in the past is the percentage of land or percentage of towers where we have long term security on the land. And we've got that up to north of up in the high 70s at this point.

That's partly through the execution of extending leases, but also purchasing these leases. And not only does the purchase of the land under the towers secure the future revenue and cash flow of the tower, It's also a great use of capital in terms of the outright returns. We get returns that fall above our hurdle rates in The U. S. And again, we can be pretty selective in terms of which towers and where the returns are.

So all in all, it's a great use of capital. It helps drive growth, secure revenue and it gives Us returns.

Your next question comes from the line of Batya Levi from UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. A couple of follow ups on the domestic activity. I think you mentioned 65% of towers in The U. S.

Have been upgraded. What does that metric look like for the carriers that are outside of the comprehensive deal? And maybe in terms of the pacing, new leasing pacing for the year, I think you mentioned mid-three, so about $170,000,000 versus the $180,000,000 we saw last year. How should we think about the cadence through the year? And one final question, if I could.

On capital allocation, with leverage inside your target now and dividend growth potentially starting, how do you think about buybacks? Thank you.

Okay. I'll take the first one. And so when you think about the carrier activity, I don't want to get too specific because my customers get mad at me about that. But I'll just kind of reiterate that we have one customer that's upgraded mid band five gs on over 80%, one customer that's about sixty five percent and one that's still a little bit under half. And I think with some of their public statements, you guys can probably figure out who those are.

In terms of the timings for the new business throughout the year, I think was your second question. As we think about that cadence, the impact of the Sprint churn is probably the biggest factor that will change the cadence on that. So the last tranche of Sprint churn hit in October of twenty twenty four. So that will weigh on that OTBG metric for the first three quarters. So you should expect those three quarters to have a little bit lower growth because it's weighed down by that churn coming out to a higher growth rate on the back end of that.

In terms of the activity cadence, we are exiting 2024, at quarters of sequential growth. We expect 2025 to be roughly the same volume of applications on our sites. And, I think we think it may be a little bit more front end loaded this time, but it's really hard to tell exactly what cadence that's going to be in terms of when the applications come in because the carriers are still finalizing their plans. So we'll see how that works out. But the early indications is last year it ramped up from the first half of the back.

There might be a slight ramp down this year, but it's too early to know for sure how that's going to pan out.

Yes. And Bhakti, maybe I would just add a couple of things. One is in that in The U. S, of course, we do have Sprint churn. The timing of that is it will impact the organic tenant billings numbers over the first three quarters and then it will be absent in Q4.

So the churn numbers, the raw numbers, we're looking at about $98,000,000 1 hundred million dollars of churned revenue in 2025. We're going to start off the year at roughly a run rate of about $30,000,000 a quarter of churn, and that includes Sprint churn. Sprint churn is a little more than half, but it's about 140 basis points over those first three quarters. And then that churn number in Q3 will reduce down to about $10,000,000 or so.

And then on the new business piece, you're right, we had about $180,000,000 of new business in $2,024,000,000 dollars that's going down to about $165,000,000 in that range, 170,000,000 right in that range. So and we do see although we do see a dip as Steve talks about from the end of last year going into Q1 and Q2, we do think there's an acceleration, modest acceleration that could be seen at the end of the year. When it comes to buybacks, we are at about 5.1 times leverage at the end of twenty twenty four. Our view is that we will be at or below five times early in 2025. That certainly returns us to full financial flexibility.

So leverage would not be a kind of an overweight consideration as we move forward. Now with that said, we have to continue to look at interest rates that continues to be uncertainty in the macroeconomic backdrop and with rates with the rate environment. So depending on where rates go and what the outlook is, we'll make decisions on capital allocation. We could certainly delever further if we think that is in the best interest of our shareholders because of uncertainty around rates. But otherwise, we see very constructive ways to deploy growth capital in the developed markets, clearing the hurdle rates, getting very good long term growth and value creation.

We also will be looking at other ways to supplement that and that could be through M and A or buybacks. We'll look at both. We'll be very disciplined and the measure there will be driving shareholder value over the long term. So I would say we're definitely open to share buybacks. We're open to allocating capital over the next several years.

We will have capital generation in the business that we will have the ability to deploy. And we will be using all the tools available to us to create maximum value for shareholders over the long term.

Your next question comes from the line of Ric Prentiss from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

questions for you. Hey, first follow on my friend, Simon, who's we're going to miss you, man. But following Simon's questions on the data center side, what kind of yields are you getting on the over $600,000,000 on the data centers? And then when, if, when, how does AI affect towers? We're all trying to figure out how that might play out and then I'll have one more.

Thanks, Rhett. So all of our development in CoreSite is being underwritten at mid teen stabilized yields. And that's a number that they were able to achieve as a stand alone company, and we have certainly not diminished any of the underwriting standards for that over time as we've owned them. There's potentially opportunity to do better than that if we outperform the business case on those, but everything is being underwritten at that. So again, we think that's a really good place to deploy capital.

When it comes to AI on towers, I think it's hard to predict exactly when you're going to see it. If you look at how AI is developing, the time gap between you do something on your desktop and when you do it on your phone has pretty much disappeared. People like to be able to do things in the mobile world like they can on their desk. So as you see these different activities evolving, the way I think about it is what's going to be bandwidth intensive. If you're interacting with AI on your phone today, it's largely text or still photograph and those are not huge bandwidth hogs.

So it really comes down to video. I'm really encouraged by what I'm seeing kind of evolving in the AI space. OpenAI has launched Sora to a kind of a slow group of people that hasn't been broadly released yet. But when that becomes more mainstream, that'll put bandwidth. Google announced VO2, Adobe announced Firefly.

So you're starting to see these video AI applications being launched. I think as those become more widespreadly use more widespread in a more widespread fashion, that will start making its way to the mobile phone, that will be more bandwidth intensive, that will put stress on the networks. And so I do think that the incremental use case of AI is going to be a factor in requiring more densification on the networks over time. The question is when are we all creating videos on our phones?

Okay. And follow-up on Batya's question go ahead, Rob.

Sorry, Rick. I'll just add a couple of comments here briefly around the data center comments that Steve made. So as you know, we've seen accelerating revenue growth in the data center business. We're up to double digit growth here. Along with that certainly comes some pretty good pricing power on our side.

The demand backdrop is really strong. That is driving our average monthly reoccurring rent per cab up. So that's gone up a couple of hundred dollars in the last couple of years. That's evidence of the strong pricing that we're able to drive. And we're in a position to be very selective in terms of who's coming into the spaces and making sure that they fit into that ecosystem, which is interconnecting, connecting with other enterprise customers, connecting into the cloud, connecting into the networks that we have in there.

The other thing that I would highlight is the modest increases in CapEx you've seen over the last couple of years, we see that directly driving up our backlog. And our backlog now is at an all time high of north of $80,000,000 and that's going to sustain solid revenue growth over the next couple of years. So that business is really well positioned, performing very well and is in line to continue to perform well for the foreseeable future. And the other thing I would say is the increases that you're seeing in the capital in the data center business, we're also increasing capital in Europe. We're also increasing capital in The U.

S. Tower business through the land purchases that Simon asked about. And at the same time, we're decreasing capital investments on the development side across Africa, LATAM and APAC.

Okay. And then on Batya's question, you mentioned that there could be some other M and A that would fit into the mix on stock buybacks or not. Previously, you've been thinking there's not many portfolios out there that were of interest or value creation to you, not putting words in your mouth I don't think there, but anything changing on that dynamic as far as more portfolios coming out? Are they coming from mobile network operators? Are they coming from privates that want to exit?

What are you kind of thinking as far as what might be in that pipeline of potential M and A for tower deals?

Yes, there's nothing else that we're seeing out there right now, Rick. I mean, there's a few portfolios that people are talking about, but nothing at this point looks to us to be something where we can create the type of value that we would need to see. I mean, again, to reiterate, for us to do something M and A, it has to be strategically important to us and one plus one has to equal three. So we've got to think that we can create more value in that portfolio than anybody else. So it's possible we'll find some small portfolios domestically or we think that using our teams and what we know in But at the end of the day, it's got to be better than a stock buyback for us to do M and A.

And so we'll be holding the teams to a pretty high standard before we approve anything in the M and A world. So nothing on the horizon right now that we see that would be compelling. Great. Thanks for that update. Appreciate it.

Your next question comes from the line of Nick Del Deo from MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

a really area of focus for you and you've been quite successful on that front over the past couple of years. I guess in your prepared remarks, you alluded to sharing long term efficiency targets with us in the future. So I don't want you to share anything with us today before you're comfortable doing so. But at a high level, can you expand on that and maybe kind of tell us about the magnitude of savings you think American Tower can potentially achieve on this front over time?

American Tower (AMT) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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