American Tower Buys CoreSite Realty Corporation’s 25 Data Centers

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American Tower Corporation (NYSE: AMT) and CoreSite Realty Corporation (NYSE: COR) yesterday announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement through which American Tower will acquire CoreSite for $170 per share in cash. The total consideration for the transaction, including the assumption and/or repayment of CoreSite’s existing debt at closing, is approximately $10.1 billion. The transaction, which was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, is expected to create a differentiated, comprehensive and interconnected communications real estate platform optimally positioned to benefit from the convergence of wireline and wireless networks amid accelerating global 5G deployments.

“For AMT, while we believe in the future of edge computing, AMT will face investor doubt for some time and what’s more, it seems this is just the beginning of an edge investment cycle,” Cowen analyst Colby Synesael said. “As such, we expect the deal to be viewed as modestly ‘neg’ for AMT. However we are not 100 percent sure that the process is over.”  

CoreSite, which as of Q3 2021 consisted of 25 data centers, 21 cloud on-ramps and over 32,000 interconnections in eight major U.S. markets, generated annualized revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $655 million and $343 million, respectively, in Q3 2021. CoreSite has averaged double-digit annual revenue growth over the past five years and is led by a seasoned management team that has established leading positions and a critical presence with cloud service providers, positioning the business well for future organic growth. American Tower expects to leverage its strong financial position to further accelerate CoreSite’s attractive development pipeline in the U.S., while also evaluating the potential for international expansion in the data center space.

The transaction is also expected to be transformative for American Tower’s mobile edge compute business in advance of the proliferation of 5G low-latency applications throughout the cloud, enterprise and network ecosystems, establishing a converged communications and computing infrastructure offering with distributed points of presence across multiple edge layers. With increased scale and a broadened, more comprehensive offering, American Tower and CoreSite expect the combined company to be well-positioned to address evolving customer needs through an enhanced value proposition for network and cloud providers, service integrators and enterprise customers.

Tom Bartlett, American Tower’s Chief Executive Officer stated, “We are in the early stages of a cloud-based, connected and globally distributed digital transformation that will evolve over the next decade and beyond. We expect the combination of our leading global distributed real estate portfolio and CoreSite’s high quality, interconnection-focused data center business to help position American Tower to lead in the 5G world.”

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