American Tower Corporation (NYSE: AMT) yesterday reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2018.
Jim Taiclet, American Tower’s Chief Executive Officer, said, “The strong demand we experienced in late 2017 for our telecommunications real estate further accelerated in the U.S. as well as in our Latin America and EMEA regions in the first quarter of 2018. Notably, record levels of new business commencements, along with a robust pipeline of applications for both amendments and new co-locations resulted in our increase in expectations for full year U.S. Organic Tenant Billings Growth to approximately 6.5% in 2018.”
Analysts seemed satisfied overall. Spencer Kurn of New Street Research said results were “solid,” with revenue and tower cash flow beating estimates both domestically and internationally, “and that beat carrying through to AFFO,” Kurn said. New Street recently downgraded AMT to Neutral on the thesis that higher-than-expected churn in India would drive reductions to estimates. “This quarter sheds light on the risk; however, we are wary that there is more to come,” he said.
Amir Rozwadowski of Barclays said the results were above their forecasts on property revenue, gross margin, EBITDA and AFFO. “Property Revenue of $1,710M was 5.0% above our estimate, Adjusted EBITDA of $1,062M was 0.6% above our $1,056M estimate,” Rozwadowski said, “while consolidated AFFO of $807M was 5.2% above our $767M estimate.”
HIGHLIGHTS First Quarter 2018
- Total revenue increased 7.8% to $1,742 million
- Property revenue increased 7.3% to $1,710 million
- Net income decreased 8.8% to $280 million
- Adjusted EBITDA increased 6.5% to $1,062 million
- Consolidated AFFO increased 11.9% to $807 million
“Significant network investment initiatives announced by the major U.S. wireless carriers,” Taiclet said, “coupled with aggressive network deployments in key markets such as Mexico and Brazil, enabled us to drive Consolidated AFFO per Share growth of nearly 10% in the first quarter while growing our common stock dividend by approximately 21%. We remain confident that our U.S. macro tower business, complemented by our franchise small cell installations, extensive international portfolio and emerging innovation initiatives will continue to drive strong growth and attractive total returns for many years to come.”
May 2, 2018
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