One-glance verdict
Overvalued
$95.60 our estimate vs market $176.39
Wall Street consensus: $215.70 (125.6% higher than our fair-value estimate)
85% above our estimate, beyond the bull case
Fundamentals snapshot
American Tower Corporation
AMT · NYQ · Real Estate · REIT - Specialty
Current price
$176.39
52-week range
$160.06 - $197.41
Market cap
$82.19B
Balance sheet
Distressed
3.63x Stretched
Net debt $43.22B. Interest coverage shows how many times profit covers the interest bill.
What stands out
3 Rewards
2 Risks
3 rewards · 2 risks
- Reward Revenue grew 2.8% last year.
- Reward Returns 33.9% on equity, ahead of 66% of its peers.
- Risk Forward P/E (25.2x) is higher than trailing (24.3x) - earnings are expected to drop.
- Risk Insider ownership is only 0.1% (peer median: 0.3%).
What this company does
American Tower Corporation
American Tower acts like a landlord for the digital world, owning the physical cell towers that wireless companies like Verizon and AT&T need for their networks to function. The company makes money by leasing space on its thousands of towers, often to several phone companies at once, which provides a steady and predictable income. As our use of mobile data for streaming and browsing continues to grow, so does the demand for the essential tower space that American Tower rents out.
How the company got here
American Tower was started in 1995 as part of a radio company and became its own separate company in 1998. It grew by buying up thousands of existing communication towers, including old AT&T microwave towers, and repurposing them for cell phone and other wireless services. A key decision came in 2012 when it became a Real Estate Investment Trust, or REIT (a company that owns and often operates income-producing real estate), which changed its tax structure and helped it grow. Over the years, it expanded across the globe and in 2021, it bought a company called CoreSite to get into the data center business.
What it actually does
Think of American Tower as a landlord for the equipment that makes your phone work. The company owns and operates the physical towers and other structures that wireless carriers (like Verizon or T-Mobile), radio stations, and TV stations need to place their antennas on. Instead of each carrier building its own tower everywhere, they can rent space on an American Tower site, which is cheaper and faster for them. More recently, the company also provides space and power in special buildings called data centers for companies that need to house powerful computers and connect to the internet.
Property
This is the company's main business and makes up the vast majority of its revenue. It involves leasing space on its communications towers and other properties to a variety of tenants, including wireless carriers, and broadcast companies. These customers sign long-term leases, which provides a steady and predictable stream of income for American Tower. The company makes money by collecting rent, and it can become very profitable when it adds a second or third tenant to an existing tower, as the costs to operate the tower are already covered.
Data Centers
A newer but growing part of the business, this segment operates under the name CoreSite. These are secure buildings that provide the space, power, and cooling for other companies to run their computer servers and network equipment. Customers like cloud providers and large businesses pay American Tower to house their critical computer systems and to easily connect to internet networks. This segment is becoming more important as demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) grows.
Services
This is a much smaller part of the company's business. It offers services that help its tower customers, such as helping them find new sites for antennas, getting the necessary permits, and providing engineering and construction support. While this doesn't bring in as much money as leasing space, it supports the main tower business by making it easier and faster for customers to get their networks expanded.
What management is betting on now
The company's leadership is focused on a few key areas for future growth. They are working to keep leasing space on their existing towers as wireless companies upgrade to 5G technology, which requires more antennas. They are also looking for growth in international markets where wireless networks are still expanding. A major priority is growing their Data Center business to meet the rising demand from artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Finally, they are focused on improving how they run the business to increase their margins (the profit they make on each dollar of sales).
Price history
How the share price has moved
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Earnings history
Last 8 quarters — what happened
Click any quarter to read the call summary and what the numbers say.
FY2024 Q3
$1.04B
FY2024 Q4
$755.60M
FY2025 Q1
$963.90M
FY2025 Q2
$976.90M
FY2025 Q3
$994.50M
FY2025 Q4
$848.30M
FY2026 Q1
$951.10M
FY2026 Q2
$1.17B
Revenue
$2.75B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
1.86
Operating cash flow
$1.49B
Free cash flow
$1.17B
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Sources
Revenue
$2.74B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
1.84
Operating cash flow
$1.40B
Free cash flow
$951.10M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$2.74B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
1.76
Operating cash flow
$1.43B
Free cash flow
$848.30M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$2.72B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
1.82
Operating cash flow
$1.46B
Free cash flow
$994.50M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$2.63B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
0.78
Operating cash flow
$1.28B
Free cash flow
$976.90M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$2.56B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
1.04
Operating cash flow
$1.29B
Free cash flow
$963.90M
Fetching…
Sources
Revenue
$2.55B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
2.62
Operating cash flow
$1.20B
Free cash flow
$755.60M
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Sources
Revenue
$2.52B
Net income
—
Diluted EPS
-1.69
Operating cash flow
$1.47B
Free cash flow
$1.04B
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Sources
Is it cheap or expensive?
Fair value $95.60 vs current price $176.39
Wall Street consensus is the average analyst price target: $215.70 (125.6% higher than our fair-value estimate).
Our most-likely fair value is $95.60 a share — about 45.8% below today's price of $176.39, so the stock currently looks expensive (overvalued).
Is it drowning in debt?
Distressed
Net debt $43.2B. Interest coverage 3.6x.
Net debt
$43.22B
Interest coverage
3.63x
American Tower Corporation's profit covers its interest bill about 3.6 times over. which is stronger than most peers shown here.
Distressed
Worse cushion
Baseline
Better cushion
AMT
BASELINE
American Tower Corporation
Total debt $44.98B Interest coverage 3.63x This is the baseline the peer rows are being compared against.
Total debt $23.40B Interest coverage 2.22x -39% vs AMT Carries about 1.6x less debt cushion than AMT.
Total debt $15.21B Interest coverage 3.26x -10% vs AMT Has roughly the same debt cushion as AMT.
Total debt $23.36B Interest coverage 3.73x +3% vs AMT Has roughly the same debt cushion as AMT.
Total debt $20.07B Interest coverage 2.11x -42% vs AMT Carries about 1.7x less debt cushion than AMT.
Total debt $19.95B Interest coverage 1.66x -54% vs AMT Carries about 2.2x less debt cushion than AMT.
What you should know
The case for and against AMT
3 Rewards
2 Risks
Rewards
-
Revenue grew 2.8% last year.
-
Returns 33.9% on equity, ahead of 66% of its peers.
-
Free cash flow was positive in 10/10 years.
Risks
-
Forward P/E (25.2x) is higher than trailing (24.3x) - earnings are expected to drop.
-
Insider ownership is only 0.1% (peer median: 0.3%).
The numbers
All the key metrics, grouped by purpose
Tap any ? icon to learn what it means.
Valuation
How expensive the stock looks
P/E (TTM)
24.26x
Forward P/E
25.16x
P/B
22.10x
P/S
7.51x
EV/EBITDA
18.73x
PEG ratio
1.67x
Profitability
How much profit each dollar creates
Gross margin
73.8%
Operating margin
45.4%
Net margin
31.1%
ROE
33.9%
ROA
4.9%
Health
Liquidity and balance-sheet strength
Debt / equity
4.39x
Current ratio
0.35x
Quick ratio
0.30x
Total debt
$44.98B
Total cash
$1.76B
Growth
How the business has been compounding
Revenue TTM
$10.94B
Revenue 5Y CAGR
3.3%
EPS TTM
7.27
EPS 5Y CAGR
12.2%
Cash flow
How much cash the business throws off
Operating CF TTM
$5.77B
Free CF TTM
$3.78B
FCF margin
34.6%
Dividend
Shareholder payout
Yield
3.9%
Payout ratio
96.0%
Last ex-div date
2026-06-12