American Tower Corp Earnings - Q2 2026 Analysis & Highlights
American Tower Corporation reported strong second quarter 2026 results driven by robust global tower leasing demand and record CoreSite data center performance, with management raising full-year guidance for the second time and highlighting four major catalysts—5G densification, new spectrum deployment, 6G transition, and AI applications—that position the company for sustained infrastructure investment over the next decade.
Key Financial Results
Consolidated property revenue grew over 5% year-over-year when excluding non-cash straight-line revenue and foreign exchange impacts.
Normalized for one-time DISH churn, property revenue grew over 7% on a cash foreign exchange neutral basis.
Adjusted EBITDA grew over 3% when excluding net straight-line and foreign exchange impacts.
Normalized for DISH churn, adjusted EBITDA grew over 6% on a cash foreign exchange neutral basis.
Cash adjusted EBITDA margins declined approximately 40 basis points year-over-year, primarily due to DISH-related churn and SG&A timing.
Excluding DISH-related churn, cash adjusted EBITDA margins expanded approximately 30 basis points.
Attributable AFFO per share grew approximately 1% when excluding foreign exchange impacts and normalized for DISH churn.
Attributable AFFO per share grew over 5% on a foreign exchange neutral basis.
Business Segment Results
US and Canada organic growth was nearly 1% and approximately 5% when excluding DISH churn, consistent with expectations for durable mid-single-digit growth.
Africa and APAC organic growth was nearly 11%, with churn expected to be back-half weighted.
Europe organic growth was approximately 4%.
Latin America organic growth declined over 2%, primarily driven by elevated churn in Brazil.
Data center property revenue growth was approximately 12% when excluding non-cash straight-line revenue.
CoreSite delivered another record quarter of new leasing revenue, adding more new business in Q2 than for the entire year of 2021.
CoreSite achieved double-digit revenue growth for the fifth consecutive quarter.
Nine of the top 10 AI companies and three of the top five neoclouds are deployed within CoreSite facilities.
Capital Allocation
Dividend expected to equal approximately $3.3 billion and represent roughly 5% growth, with the company aiming to dividend out 100% of REIT taxable income each year.
Capital program outlook for 2026 is nearly $1.9 billion, with nearly 85% allocated towards developed markets.
Over $700 million expected to develop more capacity in the data center portfolio, approximately $370 million to construct new towers globally, and approximately $210 million to purchase land beneath towers.
Year-to-date allocation of over $230 million to acquisitions of towers and data center land and over $200 million to share repurchases.
Share repurchase program of $2 billion approved by board, with approximately $600 million spent to date, leaving approximately $1.4 billion remaining.
$200 million allocated towards share buybacks in 2026 year-to-date.
Leverage ended the quarter at 4.9x, within the targeted range of 3x to 5x.
Completed divestiture of Philippines and Bangladesh portfolios in mid to late June, marking exit from APAC region.
Industry Trends and Dynamics
Mobile data consumption continues to grow at an extraordinary pace globally.
Cloud adoption remains resilient, AI-driven workloads are accelerating, and network architectures are becoming increasingly complex.
Industry analysts estimate that mobile network capacity will need to at least double over the next five years to meet projected traffic demand in the US.
AI-enabled applications are already contributing to uplink traffic growth rates that in many cases exceed downlink traffic growth by more than 50%.
Approximately 800 megahertz of new mobile spectrum expected to become available over the next few years, starting with the upper C-band in 2027.
Carriers are transitioning from 5G coverage phase to capacity phase, with new colocations increasing in the application pipeline.
Demand at CoreSite remains broad-based, spanning hyperscale cloud providers, enterprises, network operators, AI innovators, and cloud-to-cloud connectivity deployments.
Strong trends in mark-to-market and significant inflection in interconnection activity observed at CoreSite.
Competitive Landscape
American Tower maintains one of the strongest credit profiles in the peer group.
American Tower has industry-leading US tower assets, faster-growing international tower assets, and a differentiated data center platform.
CoreSite differentiates itself as a premier digital infrastructure platform at the convergence of network connectivity, cloud ecosystems, enterprise workloads, and AI-driven demand.
CoreSite's strategic position at the center of AI and cloud ecosystems enhances both competitive advantage and long-term returns.
European portfolio is differentiated compared to other portfolios in Europe, with steady mid-single-digit to better growth and very limited churn.
Macroeconomic Environment
Foreign exchange provided approximately $35 million of tailwinds to property revenue outlook.
Foreign exchange provided approximately $20 million of tailwinds to adjusted EBITDA outlook.
Higher interest rates now expected to create approximately 150 basis point headwind to attributable AFFO per share growth in 2026, up from approximately 100 basis points in prior outlook.
Company has proactively reduced floating-rate debt exposure to mitigate interest rate impacts.
Growth Opportunities and Strategies
Four major catalysts identified to support network investment well into the next decade: 5G densification phase, new spectrum deployment cycle, 6G transition, and AI applications emergence.
5G investment cycle entering next phase focused on capacity, with meaningful network densification creating additional opportunities across portfolio.
6G transition expected to bring meaningful infrastructure investment cycle leveraging higher frequency spectrum, greater intelligence at network edge, and more distributed deployments.
AI applications have potential to fundamentally reshape how people, enterprises, and machines interact with wireless networks, with future traffic patterns expected to be more persistent, data-intensive, and bidirectional.
CoreSite remains fastest-growing segment of business with potential for another record year in 2026.
CoreSite development pipeline provides clear path to nearly triple capacity from current levels.
Company continues to evaluate opportunities to expand CoreSite development pipeline even further to accelerate value creation.
Operational excellence expanded tower cash EBITDA margins by more than 300 basis points over past three years.
Company remains on track to deliver additional 200 to 300 basis points of tower cash EBITDA margin expansion by 2030.
Exploring ways to leverage AI and automation to enhance productivity across the organization.
Strategic focus on investing capital in domestic and developed market towers and data centers.
Build-to-suit opportunities in Europe provide good day-one yields and growth prospects.
CoreSite underwriting mid-teens or better stabilized yields on all incremental new investments.
Raleigh edge deployment serving as test bed for innovation, with strong interest and demand for capacity observed.
Positioned well for edge computing evolution due to combination of power, connectivity, and highly interconnected ecosystem.
Financial Guidance and Outlook
Property revenue outlook raised by $110 million at midpoint, representing 1% increase to prior outlook.
Revised property revenue outlook implies nearly 4% year-over-year growth when excluding non-cash straight-line revenue and foreign exchange impacts.
Normalized for DISH churn, property revenue outlook implies approximately 6% growth on a cash foreign exchange neutral basis.
Organic tenant billings growth expected at approximately 1% or approximately 4% when excluding DISH churn.
Data center growth expected at approximately 15% year-over-year, representing significant acceleration versus prior outlook of 13% growth.
Adjusted EBITDA outlook raised by $45 million at midpoint, representing approximately 1% increase to prior outlook.
Revised adjusted EBITDA outlook implies over 2% growth year-over-year excluding non-cash net straight-line and foreign exchange impacts.
Normalized for DISH churn, adjusted EBITDA outlook implies approximately 5% growth on a cash foreign exchange neutral basis.
Attributable AFFO outlook raised by $0.09 per share, representing 1% increase to prior outlook.
Revised AFFO outlook implies growth of approximately 3% year-over-year.
Normalized for DISH churn and excluding refinancing costs, AFFO per share growth implies nearly 6% on a foreign exchange neutral basis.
Services business growth expected to represent approximately 100 basis point headwind to attributable AFFO per share growth in 2026.
2026 represents a trough for attributable AFFO per share growth as headwinds ease heading into 2027.
Company confident it can deliver meaningful inflection in growth and return to long-term expectation of AFFO per share growth in mid to high single-digit range.
Normalized for non-recurring headwinds including DISH churn, refinancing costs, and services step-down, underlying AFFO per share growth would be around 7% on a foreign exchange neutral basis.
Company expects to be on track to deliver mid-single-digit to upper-single-digit AFFO per share growth going forward on average over time.
Strategic Positioning and Long-Term Vision
American Tower has one of the highest quality growth profiles in the digital infrastructure sector.
Portfolio of towers and data centers uniquely positioned to benefit from growing mobile data consumption, expanding cloud adoption, and accelerating AI-driven workloads.
Terrestrial wireless networks will unquestionably remain the foundation of future connectivity requirements.
Global portfolio of communications infrastructure exceptionally well positioned to support next era of wireless innovation and investment.
