American Tower Q4 2025 Earnings Analysis

**Beta Finch Podcast Script: American Tower Q4 2025 Earnings**

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**ALEX:** Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. I'm Alex, and I'm here with my co-host Jordan to dive into American Tower's Q4 2025 results. This podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

**JORDAN:** Thanks Alex. American Tower just wrapped up what they're calling "a great year and excellent fourth quarter," but there's definitely some complexity beneath the surface. The big headline number looks solid - they delivered 8% growth in attributable AFFO per share for the full year, with an impressive 13% growth in Q4 alone.

**ALEX:** Right, and that 8% growth sits right in their long-term target range of mid-to-high single digits. But Jordan, there's an elephant in the room here that's affecting their 2026 outlook - can you walk us through the DISH situation?

**JORDAN:** Absolutely. So DISH has defaulted on their payment obligations to American Tower, and management has completely removed DISH from their 2026 guidance. To put this in perspective, DISH represented about 2% of consolidated property revenue and 4% of U.S. and Canada property revenue in 2025. We're talking roughly $200 million annually through 2035-2036.

**ALEX:** That's a significant hit. How is this affecting their 2026 outlook?

**JORDAN:** Well, it's pretty dramatic. Their consolidated organic tenant billings growth is expected to be only about 1% in 2026. But here's the key - if you exclude the DISH churn, that number jumps to 4%. So the underlying business is still performing well, but this one-time event is masking that growth.

**ALEX:** I noticed they're being pretty aggressive about pursuing legal action against DISH. What's the company saying about potential recovery?

**JORDAN:** CEO Steven Vondran was clear that they plan to "fight in the litigation" and think their contract is enforceable. But they're not counting on any recovery in their guidance - anything they collect would be upside. Smart approach from a conservative forecasting standpoint.

**ALEX:** Let's talk about the regional performance because there's quite a bit of variation. What stood out to you?

**JORDAN:** The regional story is really interesting. In Africa and Asia-Pacific, they're expecting 8.5% organic tenant billings growth - that's actually accelerating from 2025 levels. Europe is steady at 4%. But Latin America is the real challenge, with organic tenant billings expected to decline 3% due to elevated churn in Brazil from carrier consolidation.

**ALEX:** That Latin America situation sounds concerning. How is management framing that?

**JORDAN:** Actually, they're surprisingly optimistic. They're saying the churn is happening faster than expected, which means the market repair in Brazil should happen sooner - they now expect growth to accelerate in 2027 instead of 2028. It's one of those "short-term pain, long-term gain" situations.

**ALEX:** Now, one area that's been a real bright spot is their data center business through CoreSite. What are the numbers there?

**JORDAN:** CoreSite is absolutely crushing it. They're expecting 13% growth in their U.S. data center business in 2026, and this is their fourth consecutive year of record sales growth. What's really exciting is the AI component - demand for AI-related use cases like inferencing and machine learning is becoming their fastest-growing segment.

**ALEX:** I caught in the Q&A that they actually have more demand for inferencing than they can currently meet. That seems like a good problem to have.

**JORDAN:** Exactly! Vondran mentioned they're being selective about their customer mix, only choosing "the best names in the space." They're investing over $700 million in their data center portfolio in 2026, primarily to replenish capa

This episode includes AI-generated content.