American Tower Corporation (REIT)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Tower first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Adam Smith, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and FP&A. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and thank you for joining American Tower's first quarter earnings conference call. We have posted a presentation, which we referred to throughout our prepared remarks, under the Investor Relations tab of our website, www.americantower.com. I'm joined on the call today by Steve Vondran, our President and CEO, and Rod Smith, our Executive Vice President, CFO, and Treasurer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I'll remind you that our comments will contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Examples of these statements include our expectations regarding future growth, including our 2025 outlook, capital allocation, and future operating performance, and any other statements that regard matters that are not historical facts. You should be aware that certain factors may affect us in the future and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Such factors include the risk factors set forth in this morning's earnings press release, those set forth in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and in other filings we make with the SEC. We urge you to consider these factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information contained in this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.

Thanks, Adam. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. As you saw in this morning's report, we're off to a strong start to the year. exceeding our initial expectations across property revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and attributable AFFO per share for the quarter, with demand persisting across our global portfolio against a challenging economic backdrop. I'll briefly share a few updates and trends from the quarter before Rob discusses more detailed financial results and our full-year revised expectations. I'll start with leasing trends and carrier activity. The durability and quality of our cash flows, combined with ongoing resilience and network investments to meet growth in the mobile data demand, continues to offer our investors a compelling option in the American dollar. The large U.S. carriers have publicly stated aggressive goals to substantially complete 5G equipment upgrades across nearly all of their networks by the end of 2026, and are driving broad-based amendment activity complemented by the early signs of capacity-oriented new site demand. In fact, Q1 represented our fifth consecutive quarter of sequential increases in both application volumes and services revenues, which grew roughly 60% and over 140% year-over-year, respectively. Meanwhile, in Europe, we continue to see steady demand across our ground-based and rooftop sites, highlighting a March sport elevating the roughly 45% current mid-band population coverage and meeting 2030 coverage targets. We're seeing similar resilience across our emerging markets. In Nigeria, improved consumer pricing dynamics are facilitating enhanced cash flows for the carriers and, in turn, accelerating new business. In Brazil, the benefits of a stronger three-player backdrop are beginning to emerge, with carriers steadily upgrading their networks to similarly realize the spectral efficiency benefits we've highlighted in the U.S., meet regulatory coverage requirements, and begin to fill in their networks. While we're encouraged by the demand across our emerging markets footprint, we're going to closely monitor the global economic backdrop and any potential implications of that, including on FX, where certain emerging markets could be more susceptible. along with various customer events and collections in select markets. Our core site business posted yet another set of impressive results in the quarter, fueled by strong leasing and continued processing favorability, while bringing the first phase of our NY3 center and the second phase of our CH2 center online, collectively adding 11 megawatts of capacity with a high degree of day one leasing. The team's consistent approach to underwriting with a focus on curating high-quality, interconnection-rich ecosystems across a diverse set of cloud, network, and enterprise customers in leading markets yields best-in-class returns while insulating against broader market shifts. Overall, CoreSight performance, supported by accelerated demand and a right to win through market positioning and service quality, continues to exceed our initial expectations and merit the elevated levels of capital that we've allocated in our 2025 plan. Next, I'll touch on capital allocation and portfolio management. We continue to actively assess and manage our portfolios following our grow, harvest, and resolve methodology to reduce risk and drive higher quality, more predictable earnings. We've previously highlighted discretionary capital prioritization to our developed markets, where we have a right to win. Consistent with this approach, we purchased our DE1 data center in Denver, an existing facility where CoreSight had maintained a partial lease. Direct ownership of this building, which serves as the primary point of interconnection in the Rocky Mountain region, would enable CoreSight to control the area's only four cloud on-rads, and one of the top network and peering ecosystems. Furthermore, on the resolve into the equation, we successfully closed our previously announced sale of our South African fiber business in early March, marking a key step in the continued reduction of our international fiber footprint. These activities reflect productive steps in our continual aim to hone our global portfolio mix by emphasizing core markets and products that drive synergistic value and durable cash flows that we expect to translate into attractive returns for our shareholders over the long term. Finally, I'll touch on our global operations and our value proposition. We have a great core business anchored in high-quality, high-margin assets that we maximize with strong terms and conditions, strategic counterparties, and world-class operational execution. We already have a track record of building on this strong foundation by leveraging our scale, core competencies, and financial flexibility in a way that drives both customer and shareholder value. This includes U.S. innovations like our instant co-location engine, our fleet of drones and digital twin technology, our suite of site and construction services, our backup power solutions, and our programmatic approach to land buyouts, not to mention our holistic contract structures. Internationally, our best-in-class African power program, which we've optimized through a creative sustainable energy investment and the use of comprehensive data analytics, predictive monitoring leveraging AI, Our enhanced European book-to-bill processing and many other developments provide meaningful advantages. As we globalize more intentionally, there's significant opportunity to evaluate cross-border applicability of these regional offerings to drive efficiency and unlock incremental value. Now, we're still in the early days of mapping our globalization plan, but we've already had an active start to the year as our team looks to evaluate opportunities to streamline our operations and enhance synergies across our markets and products. We're excited to build on the momentum we've established and further leverage our scale, core competencies, and balance sheet to enhance our market-leading position. I look forward to sharing more specifics in time. In closing, growth in mobile data has proven resilient across various economic cycles over my two-plus decades with American Tower. As I mentioned at the onset, I'm encouraged by the durability and leasing demand for our global portfolio of assets, I simultaneously exercise a degree of caution in anticipation of persisting forward-looking volatility and uncertainty. I firmly believe that American Tower's approach to enhancing our organization and customer value proposition through the means that are within our control, including our globalization initiatives, portfolio mix, and quality of earnings and balance sheet, provides an additional degree of strength and differentiation moving forward. Similar times of volatility and uncertainty during my tenure have historically presented incremental opportunity for us. And I'm optimistic that the steps we're taking today will have us well positioned to capitalize on any environment. Now I'll hand the call over to Rod to discuss our first quarter financial performance.