If you’re a property owner with an American Tower cell tower lease, there’s a good chance you’ve already received an offer to buy it out. American Tower’s own earnings data explains why. The company spent $40M acquiring ground leases in Q1 2026 alone, with a full-year forecast of $200M–$220M, signaling an aggressive and ongoing push to own the land beneath its towers. JW Tower & Telecom Consulting works exclusively with property owners to navigate these situations whether you’re evaluating a lease amendment or a buyout offer.
In Q1 – 2026, American Tower’s core tower business is holding steady, forecasting ~4% organic tenant billings growth globally while directing 85% of discretionary capital toward developed markets. This included ~$40M in ground lease purchases in Q1 alone. CoreSite remains one of its greatest success stories, delivering 17% year-over-year cash revenue growth with over $700M in data center investments planned for 2026. The DISH/EchoStar litigation is ongoing with no updates, and management declined to comment on any potential SBA Communications transaction. On the emerging tech front, edge computing discussions and experimentation are picking up across the industry, though nothing concrete has materialized yet. Overall, AMT’s strategy is clear that a double down on developed markets and data centers while staying disciplined in its core capital investments.
Overall Highlights:
- 4% organic tenant billings growth forecast across global tower portfolio
- Litigation against DISH / EchoStar continues
- CoreSite expansion and growth continues to be a great driver for the organization
- 17% year over year cash revenue growth
- More than $700M in data center investments planned for 2026
- Edge discussion and experimentation is taking place within the industry
- No comment on SBA Communications rumored transaction
- 85% of discretionary capital dedicated to developed markets
- Ground lease purchases totaled approximately $40M in Q1, forecast for $200M – $220M in 2026
Source: 8K
Source: 10Q
Quotable: re: Update on DISH Network and their contractual default to property owners and tower owners
“Yes, Rick, this is Steve. We really can’t comment on ongoing litigation or anything that’s kind of going on in that space today. So we don’t really have any updates for you guys on DISH. I’ll just reiterate, we believe our contract is enforceable. We’re continuing to defend it and core — the litigation public. And you guys have access to that docket to see what’s happening on that front. And we’ve completely de-risked our earnings and our guidance by taking DISH out of our numbers. So anything that happened in that space is incremental upside to the guidance we’ve put out there. So at this time, there’s really not much more we can say about that.”
Steven O. Vondran | CEO, American Tower
Quotable: re: Private Equity and their overall valuation of the wireless infrastructure space
“And we really think the reason that they value them at 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. They see that mobile data growth is going to double over the next 5 years in the U.S., 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 that’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 6 to 7 gigahertz range, which means much more [ DISH ] networks are going to be required.”
Steven O. Vondran | CEO, American Tower
Quotable: re: American Tower New Tower Builds and Capital Discipline
“I mean I would say, Rick, from a return hurdle perspective, I don’t want to get into the details here, but certainly, being above our weighted average cost of capital by a couple of hundred basis points over a reasonable amount of time, and I’m not going to get into the details in terms of the terms, that really is what we would expect based on just the fundamentals of the market and the investment that we’re making. But with that said, longer term, can it be well above that? Absolutely very similar to what we see in the U.S., where we will build an asset – we don’t build a lot at the moment. We have in the past.
You may start out at or even slightly below your weighted average cost of capital. In the near term, you get up to that weighted average cost of capital and get above that, which might be in the upper single-digit growth rate. But over time, with compounding results on the escalator and the new business you can get up into the teens in the U.S., we would expect certainly that direction for Europe new builds over the long term.”
Rod Smith | CFO, American Tower
“Yes. Just to be clear, Rick, I didn’t build stuff in bad economics previously. We’re not going to start doing that. We’re going to build things that make sense over time.”
Steven O. Vondran | CEO, American Tower
Quotable: re: American Tower Investment in core activites
“In 2026, our growth capital plan remains consistent with our prior outlook. We continue to expect to spend approximately 85% of our discretionary capital within our developed markets platforms, including over $700 million in success-based investments in our data center portfolio to replenish elevated levels of capacity, purchases of land beneath our tower sites and continued acceleration in European new builds, with over 700 new sites planned.”
Rod Smith | CFO, American Tower
Quotable: re: Edge Computing
“Yes, thanks for the question. We’re really encouraged to hear other people talking about the Edge. It’s something that we believe partially in for a period of time now. And we do continue to have projects ongoing. We launched our data center in Raleigh as a little bit of a playground for people to come in and experiment with Edge. We are looking at incremental opportunities in that space to continue to work with ecosystem partners to develop the Edge. And what I’m most excited about is our wireless carriers are now talking about the Edge. They’re engaging in discussions with chip makers and some of the cloud companies.
So Edge is absolutely something that we think is going to continue to grow. We think it’s going to be a material opportunity for us in the future. Timing, I’m not going to predict timing again because I was a little bit off my first time predicting it. But we do see a lot of momentum taking shape in that space. So we’re very excited about the opportunities.”
Steven O. Vondran | CEO, American Tower
Quotable: re: SBA Communications and American Tower feedback on any potential transaction
“On the SBA question, we’re not going to comment on the rumors that are out there and any of the valuations that may be rumored to be out there. That’s going to be what it’s going to be. And we don’t run our business based on what other people are doing with their business. When we think about our business and how we create the most long-term shareholder value, we’re always looking at portfolio optimization. And the dislocation between public and private multiples is not something that’s new. It’s something that’s been out there before. And you’ve seen us take decisive action when we think that we can create more value by selling something than by holding it.”
Steven O. Vondran | CEO, American Tower
Quotable: re: Satellites replacing cell towers
“In terms of the satellite piece of it – and look, we’ve answered this question a bunch of times and I’ll just repeat, we have a front row seat to this space. We have a Board seat with AST. That’s why we made the investment that we made in AST. Satellites are complementary to terrestrial networks. We said it, other tower companies have said it, the carriers have said it, most of the satellite companies themselves have said it. We don’t see anything that changes that. Now in the very ultra rural areas, it may be a better solution. But we don’t have towers. We have a tiny, tiny number of towers in those areas.
And quite frankly, they’re not the top-performing towers in the portfolio. So if it does disintermediate a handful of towers, you’re not even going to notice it. So from our business perspective, I don’t lose a second fleet worried about satellites. I’m actually encouraged by satellite. It’s going to provide ubiquitous coverage. It will enable some of the capabilities that they’re talking about for 6G, which is going to continue to give new use cases to our customers, things that you can’t do when you have a network that has holes in it. So I think the satellite story is going to play out over time. It’s going to be a big positive for our carrier customers.”
Steven O. Vondran | CEO, American Tower
Information for property owners with cell tower leases is available through JW Tower & Telecom Consulting at jwttc.com
