To our shareholders,
American Tower stands at the center of one of the most exciting transformations of our time. With an unparalleled portfolio of high-quality towers and deeply interconnected data centers, we are uniquely positioned to power the world's surging data needs – needs that will only accelerate as Artificial Intelligence (AI) unlocks entirely new possibilities. As connectivity becomes the foundation of global innovation, our assets, expertise and scale place us on the leading edge of extraordinary growth.
When I became CEO in 2024, I knew the first phase of my tenure would be defined by one clear objective: reinforcing our already strong fundamentals by taking risk out of our business to ensure that our underlying assets support long-term, durable growth. The digital infrastructure landscape is evolving rapidly, and I believed then – as I do even more strongly today - that the companies best positioned to lead through this evolution are those built on financial discipline, portfolio resilience, and a willingness to make thoughtful choices about where and how they deploy capital.
Over the past two years, we have delivered meaningfully on that objective — and today, American Tower is a stronger, more resilient and more strategically focused company than at any point in the past decade.
A key pillar of that effort has been fortifying our balance sheet. We took decisive action to reduce our exposure to floating-rate debt, significantly lowering our sensitivity to interest-rate volatility. At the same time, we accelerated our plan to bring our leverage back within our long-standing 3-5x target range. I am pleased to report that, today, American Tower has the lowest leverage and highest credit rating across our peer group, positioning us with exceptional financial flexibility as we look to the future.
A second pillar has been to recalibrate our exposure to Emerging Markets by rebalancing our portfolio.2 These markets continue to offer meaningful long-term upside, but they also carry inherent volatility - from currency and macroeconomic risk to regulatory complexity. By tightening our return thresholds, sharpening our capital allocation criteria, and refining our footprint, we have reduced our unlevered AFFO exposure to Emerging Markets from over 30% five years ago to approximately 25% today. We will continue to direct the majority of our discretionary capital investments toward Developed Markets, which are inherently more stable and have returns that are predictable, and this shift in our investment philosophy will result in even less exposure to Emerging Markets over time. This strategic reorientation is setting up our combined tower and CoreSite data center portfolio for sustained, high-quality growth.
The final pillar has been to reduce our counterparty risk across the portfolio. Some of that has occurred as a result of the carrier consolidation churn, which has weighed on our growth in recent years. Much of it has been the result of a strategic focus on negotiating longer-term Master Lease Agreements with better long-term protections, only investing capital where the counterparty is a tier one carrier and exiting non-core businesses.
The impact of these strategic initiatives is clearly evident in our 2025 performance. It was an excellent year for American Tower, and I am proud of our teams across the globe for their achievements. In 2025, we grew organic tenant billings by 5%, driven by consistently gaining more than our fair share of new business, with a backdrop of broad-based carrier investment across our global portfolio. Through disciplined cost management and the benefits of an optimized capital structure, we delivered 8% year-over-year growth in AFFO per Share, as adjusted.4,5 These results underscore the strength of our business model and reflect the kind of performance we strive to deliver consistently.
“The future for digital infrastructure is extraordinarily promising”
Looking ahead to 2026, we recognize a unique set of challenges. In the U.S., DISH’s decision to sell spectrum and default on its lease obligations resulted in our decision to de-risk our earnings by removing DISH entirely from our 2026 outlook. In Brazil, the industry is working through an important period of market repair, which we believe will ultimately lead to a healthier and more sustainable wireless ecosystem. With the removal of these revenue streams from our 2026 projections, the vast majority of our revenue in all markets is now from the top two or three carriers in such markets, which are unlikely to be the targets of further consolidation.
Even with these headwinds, we expect to grow AFFO per Share in 2026. This resilience reflects both the strength of our contractual model and the benefit of the risk-reducing actions we have taken over the past two years. Importantly, these nearer-term challenges do not alter our long-term view of the opportunities ahead.
Exiting 2026, I expect the first phase of my tenure to be complete, and for American Tower to be on much firmer financial footing and its strongest strategic footing in at least a decade. Our portfolio will be more balanced, our capital structure more durable and our growth opportunities more compelling.
The future for digital infrastructure is extraordinarily promising, setting up the exciting second phase of my tenure, which will afford us more opportunities to grow both organically and inorganically.
Global data consumption continues to increase at a blistering pace. Wireless industry analysts project that mobile data usage in the U.S. will double over the next five years, requiring carriers to double network capacity to keep pace with consumer and enterprise demand. These forecasts, robust on their own, do not yet fully account for AI-driven applications or the arrival of 6G.
History suggests that technological revolutions never remain confined to their initial use cases. We believe the trillions of dollars being invested into AI across consumer, enterprise and industrial markets will spur entirely new applications - applications that will require significantly more data transmission and processing, and therefore meaningful incremental investment in wireless infrastructure.
On top of this, 6G represents an additional layer of long-term upside. While still early, the principles guiding 6G engineering point toward denser networks, more distributed compute and dramatically higher throughput requirements. Each of these trends is inherently bullish for macro towers, which remain the most economical, efficient and scalable way to add coverage and capacity. As we saw in previous generational transitions - from 3G to 4G, and from 4G to 5G - carriers invest first and most heavily in towers. We expect that pattern to repeat and expand in the 6G era.
These wireless trends connect directly to the momentum we are seeing in CoreSite, where demand continues to accelerate. AI-driven workloads require high-performance, interconnected, low-latency data center environments - the exact environments CoreSite has built its reputation on. Our data center footprint is benefiting from the same secular forces that support our tower business, and increasingly the two asset classes are converging at the edge.
“Today, American Tower is a stronger, more resilient and more strategically focused company than at any point in the past decade”
The combination of towers and data centers positions American Tower at the heart of the world's digital infrastructure. Few companies are as well situated to support the growth in wireless, cloud and AI simultaneously - and even fewer possess our global scale, customer partnerships and financial strength.
Together, these structural tailwinds reinforce the fundamental advantages of our business model. We are designed to deliver industry-leading AFFO per Share growth, with an attractive dividend yield and strong returns on invested capital.
Equally important, we have built a company capable of navigating change - whether driven by customer dynamics, macroeconomic conditions or technology transitions. The work of the past two years has strengthened our balance sheet, improved our risk profile, and positioned us to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunities emerging across wireless and cloud ecosystems.
As we look forward, we remain guided by a simple but powerful mandate: to deliver durable, compounding value to our shareholders while enabling the world's digital future. I am proud of the progress we have made, energized by the opportunities ahead and deeply confident in the trajectory of our company.
We are committed to building on this momentum and delivering long-term value for all who invest in us. On behalf of the American Tower leadership team and our employees around the world, thank you for your continued trust and partnership.
Sincerely,
Steven O. Vondran
President and Chief Executive Officer