American Tower reported a strong start to 2026, leading to raised full-year guidance driven by favorable FX and straight-line dynamics. Management emphasized secular tailwinds from mobile data growth, AI, and 6G, positioning the company for sustained long-term growth. They also highlighted accelerating momentum at CoreSite, including an inflection in interconnection activity. Raised full-year 2026 revenue and AFFO per share guidance by ~$145M and $0.12, respectively, primarily due to FX tailwinds.
American Tower reported a strong start to 2026, leading to raised full-year guidance driven by favorable FX and straight-line dynamics. Management emphasized secular tailwinds from mobile data growth, AI, and 6G, positioning the company for sustained long-term growth. They also highlighted accelerating momentum at CoreSite, including an inflection in interconnection activity. Raised full-year 2026 revenue and AFFO per share guidance by ~$145M and $0.12, respectively, primarily due to FX tailwinds.
Management expressed strong conviction in strategic positioning, highlighted raised guidance, and emphasized long-term tailwinds from data growth and AI, while downplaying risks like satellite disruption and DISH litigation.
Management highlighted that AI-driven workloads, including inferencing, are accelerating demand at CoreSite, and they expect AI to place greater demands on wireless networks, supporting tower growth. They also see AI as an opportunity to drive operational efficiency gains…
CoreSite interconnection activity inflected upward this quarter. Management expressed strong conviction in strategic positioning, highlighted raised guidance, and emphasized long-term tailwinds from data growth and AI, while downplaying risks like satellite disruption and DISH…
Guidance · revenue to $11.445B
Management highlighted that AI-driven workloads, including inferencing, are accelerating demand at CoreSite, and they expect AI to place greater demands on wireless networks, supporting tower growth. They also see AI as an opportunity to drive operational efficiency gains across the organization, representing meaningful upside in future years.
CoreSite interconnection activity inflected upward this quarter. Management expressed strong conviction in strategic positioning, highlighted raised guidance, and emphasized long-term tailwinds from data growth and AI, while downplaying risks like satellite disruption and DISH litigation.
The company is ramping up growth capital in developed markets, including over $700 million in success-based investments in data centers to replenish capacity, purchases of land beneath towers, and continued acceleration in European new builds with over 700 new sites planned. They are also securing additional power and land to expand data center capacity.
Management expressed strong conviction in strategic positioning, highlighted raised guidance, and emphasized long-term tailwinds from data growth and AI, while downplaying risks like satellite disruption and DISH litigation.
“Importantly, this quarter marked a clear inflection in interconnection activity, enhancing both the profitability of the platform and the long-term durability of customer relationships.”
“Last year, we had about 287, 280 megawatts of development held for development, and we've increased that by 200 megawatts. So that's where we're negotiating with power companies, securing that power in certain places...”
“I think what it does reflect is that there's a disconnect, and there has been for years, in the multiples that private players will value towers out versus the public markets. And we really think the reason that They value them in a higher…”
| Metric | Period | Range | Midpoint | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | FY2026 | $10.87–$11.11 | $10.99 | RAISED |
| Revenue | FY2026 | $11.345B–$11.545B | $11.445B | RAISED |
CoreSite is seeing an 'inflection in interconnection activity', which management believes marks the beginning of a durable trend that compounds its competitive moat and captures a high-margin revenue stream. — This signals potential for CoreSite to gain share in the interconnection market, possibly at the expense of peers like Equinix, as demand for AI-driven workloads accelerates.
… Over the long term, we continue to expect our international markets, and our emerging markets in particular, to grow faster than the U.S. These same secular tailwinds are translating into accelerating momentum at core sites. Demand is scaling rapidly on top of an already strong foundation, with sustained growth in hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, and even sharper ramp in AI-driven workloads, including inferencing. Importantly, this quarter marked a clear inflection in interconnection activity, enhancing both the profitability of the platform and the long-term durability of customer relationships. CoreSight continues to stand apart as a uniquely differentiated digital infrastructure platform, positioning its convergence of network connectivity, cloud on-ramps, and enterprise ecosystems, CoreSight drives resilient leasing demand while capturing a high-margin interconnection revenue stream. This powerful combination delivers structurally higher returns and positions the business to outperform traditional single-tenant hyperscale data center models, especially as demand for interconnected AI-enabled infrastructure continues to grow. After more than four years leading …
The US tower market is seeing a 'disconnect' between private and public market valuations, with private players valuing towers higher, which may reflect a long-term view of secular growth drivers like 6G and AI. — This suggests that private market participants see sustained, multi-year growth in tower demand, which could indicate that public market valuations for tower REITs like SBA and Crown Castle are undervalued.
“I think what it does reflect is that there's a disconnect, and there has been for years, in the multiples that private players will value towers out versus the public markets. And we really think the reason that They value them in a higher”
Hey, guys. I just wanted to build on the prior M&A question here with a slightly different angle. Obviously not going to ask you to comment on any of the specifics, but how do you think about private and or sort of consolidated portfolios in the U.S. shifting any competitive dynamics, if at all?
I don't think it actually changes the competitive dynamic. There have been a number of privately held, scaled power portfolios in the U.S. for years. And so we haven't seen that affected the competitive dynamic at all in the tower space. It doesn't change the way we operate, hasn't changed our results or our ability to compete. So we don't think that having more private tower companies affects that. I think what it does reflect is that there's a disconnect, and there has been for years, in the multiples that private players will value towers out versus the public markets. And we really think the reason that They value them in a higher multiple and have for a period of time is they're taking a long term view. They see past some of the short term noise that's out there, and they see these long term demand drivers that encourage us about our business. You know, they see that mobile data growth is going to double over the next five years in the US, and that's going to require more network investment, which translates into new business for towers. They realize that AI is an incremental use case. It's not even factored into those projections. that could be a catalyst for even more growth and could be pretty substantial growth, depending on how that evolves over time. They're looking at the fact that 6G is just around the corner and that the 6G frequencies are likely to be in the six to seven gigahertz range, which means much more dense networks are going to be required. So when I look at kind of what's swirling around out there in the ether about tower companies in that private world, it's encouraging to me to see that people are seeing the true value of towers And the fact that this is a growing long-term business that will be the backbone of digital infrastructure going forward. And so when I hear the rumors and see what's out there, to me, that just shows that the business model is still the best business model out there. It's still a place to create a lot of long-term value for our shareholders. It's the right place for us to be.