American Tower Corporation (ATC) is expecting to experience a period of solid growth in its European markets, where the firm is seeing similar network growth trends to the U.S., with early-stage 5G deployments set to accelerate in the coming years, the company’s President and CEO, Tom Bartlett, said during a conference call with investors.
“We expect that our newly scaled European presence will allow us to drive long-term value creation, as the explosion of mobile data usage across the region continues, and the need for communications infrastructure accelerates as a result,” the executive said.
“Across Germany, Spain, and France, where 5G mobile subscriptions currently make up less than 5% of the total user base, we expect mobile data usage per smartphone to grow by more than 25% annually for the next five years, similar to the U.S. And consequently expect Capex spend across the three markets to exceed $11 billion annually over a similar time period,” Bartlett added.
He also said that the firm is also seeing growth opportunities in Europe with the efforts by regulators to boost connectivity in rural areas. “Although we expect a significant portion of initial 5G investments to be focused in urban locations across our European footprint, where roughly 80% of the population resides, we anticipate urban oriented consumer demand to be complemented by an ongoing push from European regulators to deliver rural connectivity, which will represent another opportunity for us to drive co-location on our tower sites in those areas. We believe our balance of rural and recently expanded urban assets positions us well to capture significant market share of upcoming 5G deployments over the next decade.”
In June, American Tower Corporation had closed the first tranche of the acquisition of Telxius Towers, comprised of nearly 20,000 communications sites in Germany and Spain, for total consideration of approximately 6.2 billion euros (currently $7.23 billion). Approximately 4,000 additional rooftop communications sites in Germany were expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.
In January, Spanish telecom operator Telefónica’s subsidiary Telxius Telecom had signed an agreement with American Tower Corporation for the sale of its telecommunications towers businesses in Europe and Latin America.
The agreement involves 30,722 telecommunication tower sites and covers two separate and independent transactions: One for the European division and another for the business in Latin America. Telxius has telecommunications towers in Spain, Germany, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
American Tower ended the first quarter of 2021 with a portfolio of approximately 219,000 communications sites.
The company reported overall revenues of $2.45 billion for the third quarter of 2021, surging 21.9% year-on-year. American Tower’s profits for the period amounted to $726 million, up 56.1% compared to the third quarter of 2020.
