Q3 2025 Wireless Tower Earnings Report: Key Takeaways for Investors and Property Owners
Q3 earnings for the major U.S. cell tower companies show steady performance, but the headlines are in the deals and strategic moves. American Tower made waves by pre-emptively suing DISH Wireless to protect rent payments after the AT&T/EchoStar spectrum sale announcement, while SBA Communications struck a new agreement with Verizon. Meanwhile, American Tower continues to lead the pack in buying the land beneath its towers, outpacing SBA and Crown Castle on a per dollar basis. Industry observers also weighed in on satellites, noting they complement terrestrial networks rather than replace them.
American Tower
Raised its 2025 Guidance for AFFO per share to $10.60-$10.72
Filed pre-emptive lawsuit against DISH Wireless to protect rent payments following the recent AT&T/EchoStar announcement.
Continued strength of CoreSite in American Tower’s data center business, with record retail new leasing revenue driven by strong demand for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployments
$46.1M spend in Q3 in securing cell tower ground leases
American Tower will need to have an elevated amount of activity in order to hit their 2025 overall target for ground lease purchases
Presently forecast $200M - $220M for the year, and are $67.4M away from reaching low end of their target
Quotable:
Re: American Tower’s pre-emptive lawsuit against DISH / EchoStar / Boost
“We filed a declaratory judgment action to ask the court to confirm that we own the remainder of the rent under that agreement. And just to remind folks, that agreement goes through 2036. And this represents about 2% of our total property revenue, about 4% of our U.S. and Canada property revenue. And so we're focused on defending our contract and making sure that everyone acknowledges that it's a valid and enforceable contract through 2036. And then we will have whatever discussions make sense that are going to maximize long-term growth. But again, we feel good about our contract.”
-Steve Vondran, President and CEO, American Tower
Re: American Tower investing and purchasing / securing its cell tower leases:
“….Right now, we're really looking at how we can get the efficiencies in the business through things like supply chain, kind of getting a little bit some of the best practices across borders, automation, there's some AI opportunities in there. There's nothing specific in terms of the capital. Now we do spend capital in the U.S. in particular, to buy our land. And that does help manage the land cost on it, and we also get very good returns on the capital. It's possible that we could find some opportunities to do that more aggressively in other geographies, but that's something that would come later down the line. “
-Steve Vondran, President and CEO, American Tower
Re: Satellite based networks replacing terrestrial based cell towers
“We're also paying close attention to developments within satellite-based networks. We have a firsthand view through our board representation at AST SpaceMobile and regularly evaluate satellite capabilities with engineers and technology consultants. Our assessments are deeply rooted in data and firmly endorse the view that satellite-based networks will remain complementary to terrestrial towers due to the capacity and economic constraints inherent to the satellite model. And these challenges are only magnified with considering the evolving nature of wireless communication technology as growth in mobile data consumption compounds.”
-Steve Vondran, President and CEO, American Tower
Crown Castle
Raised 2025 Outlook: +$10M to site rental revenues, +$30M to adjusted EBITDA, +$40M to AFFO
Sprint cancellations: $51M impact on site rental revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and AFFO
Fiber/Small cell transaction is on track to close in 2026
Impact of US cellular / T-Mobile transaction is de minimus to Crown’s revenue
Discretionary CapEx forecast for the year was lowered by $30M
$16M spend in Q3 in purchasing cell tower ground leases from property owners
$50M total spend for 2025 so far, American Tower has spend 2.65X the amount thus far in 2025
Quotable:
Re: Potential of DISH / EchoStar / Boost continuing to pay tower rent
“And so I think as we look forward, you know, we’ll see what happens with DISH EchoStar. We feel really good about our contract. And beyond that, it’s tough to get into too many specifics given the confidentiality with our clients.”
-Sunit Patel, CFO, Crown Castle.
“..And then finally, the EchoStar question you asked, look, we have a good agreement in place. It runs through 2036. And the bottom line is we expect to be paid for the terms of the agreement.
-Chris Hillebrandt, CEO, Crown Castle
SBA Communications
Announced a new long term agreement with Verizon (minimum commitment to collocate on SBA structures for next 10 years)
Reduced debt leverage target to new range of 6.0 - 7.0
Services growth increase 81% year over year
Closed on Millicom acquisition and divestiture of Canadian tower business
$8.9M spend in Q3 in purchasing cell tower ground leases from property owners
Quotable:
Potential of DISH / EchoStar / Boost continuing to pay tower rent
“In the case of DISH, first of all, they are current on their rents with us. And under our agreements with them, we expect them to honor those agreements and to pay their rents going forward. We have had some correspondence between 2 companies back and forth. But I think at this point, it's best for me to keep that to ourselves between us and DISH, and we'll continue to have those conversations. But we feel good about our agreements and expect them to honor them through the balance of the term.”
-Brendan Cavanagh, President and CEO, SBA Communications
Re: Role of Satellites and will they replace cell towers?
“And here's an interesting thing. I think I may have mentioned this on a prior call, but it is an interesting thing I heard from one of our customers a few months back was, "Hey, you know what's great about the satellite offerings in the direct to-sell service is that we're getting to see where there are a lot of pings against the satellite and where it gets very concentrated in a particular area.
What that tells us is that we need a macro -- a traditional macro tower or terrestrial solution in that location. It's actually providing them information about where there's a concentration of usage and it would be better served and more efficiently served by them in a traditional manner. What they're intending to see from the satellites is more of that isolated pinging of the satellite. So I'm actually pretty confident that there's still further expansion to take place into some of these areas, but there will clearly be other areas that just never makes any sense and that's okay
-Brendan Cavanagh, President and CEO, SBA Communications
Re: Verizon agreement, if tower rent was reduced
“I mean this is mostly about future growth. So the existing base wasn't really touched at all other than to ensure some extensions to the length of the terms around those agreements. But in terms of the actual financial terms, they really weren't touched.”
-Brendan Cavanagh, President and CEO, SBA Communications