For full 2026, American Tower said it expected its property revenues to reach $10.58-10.73 billion
In sum – what to know:
AI momentum – Rising AI workloads and cloud adoption are reinforcing long-term demand for digital infrastructure and supporting the company’s upgraded outlook.
Traffic growth – Mobile data usage is expected to double in key markets, driving continued investment in network capacity and tower infrastructure.
Data center expansion – Strong interconnection and AI-driven demand are accelerating growth at CoreSite, strengthening its role within the company’s portfolio.
American Tower Corporation has raised its full-year outlook, pointing to sustained growth in mobile data, cloud adoption, and AI-driven workloads as key drivers of long-term demand for digital infrastructure.
“Our performance through the early part of the year, combined with favorable FX and straight line dynamics, led us to raise our full year outlook. The growth drivers shaping our industry continue to strengthen. Rising wireless data consumption, accelerating cloud adoption, rapidly expanding AI-driven workloads, and future generational technology shifts, all point towards sustained investment and high-quality digital infrastructure. These trends are global, structural, and long duration in nature, and they play directly to American Tower’s core strengths,” Steve Vondran, American Tower’s chief executive officer, told a conference call with investors.
For full 2026, the company said it expected its property revenues to reach $10.58-10.73 billion. American Tower Corporation also expects its net profits for the year to be in the range of $3.01-3.09 billion.
The company sees continued expansion in mobile data usage as a central factor underpinning network investment. “Mobile data consumption is growing at a rapid pace, supported by increasing smartphone penetration, continued 5G adoption, fixed wireless access, and expanding enterprise use cases. In the U.S., industry analysts project that mobile data traffic will double over the next five years, requiring a commensurate increase in network capacity. Notably, those projections don’t fully capture the potential incremental upside from the transition to 6G or AI-enabled applications. While still early, the engineering principles guiding 6G point toward denser networks, more distributed compute and materially higher throughput requirements, each of which should translate into increased activity across our tower portfolio. At the same time, AI investment is exploding,” the executive said.
Across international markets, the company expects traffic growth to further support infrastructure demand. “In our European markets, mobile data traffic is expected to more than double by the end of the decade, which is expected to drive significant amendment and colocation activity. In emerging markets, mobile data traffic is expected to nearly triple by the end of the decade, providing a long runway for growth as these less mature markets develop. Over the long term, we continue to expect our international markets, and our emerging markets in particular, to grow faster than the U.S.” Vondran said.
American Tower also highlighted growing demand within its data center business, particularly linked to AI and interconnection.
“Demand is scaling rapidly on top of an already strong foundation, with sustained growth in hybrid and multi-cloud deployments and even sharper ramp in AI-driven workloads, including inferencing. Importantly, this quarter marked a clear inflection in interconnection activity, enhancing both the profitability of the platform and the long-term durability of customer relationships,” he said.
The company said it remains focused on expanding CoreSite as part of its long-term strategy. “After more than four years leading CoreSite, my conviction on the platform is stronger than ever. The business has meaningfully exceeded our expectations, and we’re increasingly enthusiastic about accelerating CoreSite’s expansion as a core driver of long-term value within our portfolio,” the executive added. American Tower completed its acquisition of CoreSite Realty Corporation on December 28, 2021, for approximately $10.1 billion.
American Tower ended the first quarter of 2026 with a portfolio of approximately 150,000 communications sites. The company reported overall revenues of $2.73 billion for the first quarter of 2026, surging 6.8% year-on-year. American Tower’s profits for the period amounted to $879 million, up 76.2% compared to the first quarter of 2025.
During the first quarter of 2026, total capital expenditures were approximately $460 million.
