AMERICAN TOWER CORP /MA/

We are one of the largest global REITs and a leading independent owner, operator and developer of multitenant communications real estate. Our primary business is the leasing of space on communications sites to wireless service providers, radio and television broadcast companies, wireless data providers, government agencies and municipalities and tenants in a number of other industries. In addition to the communications sites in our portfolio, we manage rooftop and tower sites for property owners under various contractual arrangements. We also hold other telecommunications infrastructure and property interests that we lease primarily to communications service providers and third-party tower operators, and, as discussed further below, we hold a portfolio of highly interconnected data center facilities and related assets in the United States. Our customers include our tenants, licensees and other payers. We refer to the business encompassing the above as our property operations, which accounted for 97% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2025 and includes our U.S. & Canada property, Africa & APAC property, Europe property and Latin America property segments and Data Centers segment.

We also offer tower-related services in the United States, including site application, zoning and permitting, structural and mount analyses, and construction management, together with program management offerings that support customer deployment needs from project scoping through construction. Our services operations primarily support our site leasing business, including the addition of new tenants and equipment on our sites.

The following table details the number of communications sites, excluding managed sites, that we owned or operated as of December 31, 2025:

(1)Approximately 98% of the operated towers are held pursuant to long-term finance leases, including those subject to purchase options.

As of December 31, 2025, our property portfolio included 30 operating data center facilities across eleven markets in the United States that collectively comprise approximately 3.7 million NRSF of data center space, as detailed below:

(1)Excludes approximately 0.4 million of office and light-industrial NRSF.

In most of our markets, our tenant leases for our communications sites with wireless carriers generally have initial non-cancellable terms of five to ten years with multiple renewal terms. Accordingly, the vast majority of the revenue generated by our property operations during the year ended December 31, 2025 was recurring revenue that we should continue to receive in future periods. Most of our tenant leases for our communications sites have provisions that periodically increase or “escalate” the rent due under the lease, typically based on (a) an annual fixed escalation (averaging approximately 3% in the United States), (b) an inflationary index in most of our international markets, or (c) a combination of both. In addition, certain of our tenant leases provide for additional revenue primarily to cover costs, such as ground rent or power and fuel costs.

Based upon existing customer leases and foreign currency exchange rates as of December 31, 2025, we expect to generate over $54 billion of non-cancellable customer lease revenue over future periods, before the impact of straight-line lease accounting.

The revenues generated by our property operations may be affected by cancellations of existing tenant leases. As discussed above, most of our tenant leases with wireless carriers and broadcasters are multiyear contracts, which typically are non-cancellable; however, in some instances, a lease may be cancelled upon the payment of a termination fee.

Revenue lost from either tenant lease cancellations or the non-renewal of leases or rent renegotiations, which we refer to as churn, has historically not had a material adverse effect on the revenues generated by our consolidated property operations. During the year ended December 31, 2025, churn was approximately 2% of our tenant billings, primarily driven by churn in our U.S. & Canada property segment, as discussed below.

AT&T Mexico Dispute. We are currently engaged in an Arbitration with AT&T Mexico. AT&T Mexico, which represented approximately $300 million of tenant revenue in 2025, is challenging the calculation of the monthly lease amount established under the MLA, as well as certain other provisions of the MLA, seeking rent abatement both retroactively and prospectively, and had been withholding tower rents since the start of 2025. We incurred approximately $30 million of reserves during the year ended December 31, 2025 related to this customer. We expect to record future reserves until the Arbitration is settled. We believe we have meritorious defenses to the claims raised in this Arbitration, are vigorously defending the full enforceability of the MLA and remain confident in the terms and conditions of the MLA. The Arbitration is scheduled for a hearing in August 2026.

On September 23, 2025, we and AT&T Mexico reached an agreement pursuant to which AT&T Mexico will remit payment of the majority of the withheld tower rents and will resume monthly payments of the majority of its owed tower rents. The remainder of the outstanding receivables and the future monthly tower rent amounts not remitted directly to us will be deposited into an irrevocable escrow account, overseen by an independent trustee, to be released in accordance with a final ruling in the Arbitration or by mutual consent of us and AT&T Mexico.

DISH Dispute. On September 24, 2025, DISH delivered a notice purporting to be excused from its contractual obligations under the SCA. DISH has failed to meet its payment obligations, and as of January 2026 is in default under the SCA. We remain confident that DISH has not been excused from its obligations under the SCA, and that the SCA remains in full force and effect. On October 20, 2025, we filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado seeking a declaratory judgment that DISH has not been excused from its obligations under the SCA, that the SCA remains in full force and effect, and that DISH remains required to perform all of its obligations under the SCA. DISH represented approximately 2% and 4% of our total annual property revenue and total annual U.S. & Canada property revenue, respectively, for 2025.

Property Operations Revenue Growth. Due to our diversified communications site portfolio, our tenant lease rates vary considerably depending upon numerous factors, including, but not limited to, amount, type and position of tenant equipment on the tower, remaining tower capacity and tower location. We measure the remaining tower capacity by assessing several factors, including tower height, tower type, environmental conditions, existing equipment on the tower and zoning and permitting regulations in effect in the jurisdiction where the tower is located. In many instances, tower capacity can be increased with relatively modest tower augmentation capital expenditures, which are often reimbursed to us.

The primary factors affecting the revenue growth of our property segments are:

•Growth in tenant billings, including:

•New revenue attributable to leasing additional space on our sites (“colocations”) and lease amendments;

•Contractual rent escalations on existing tenant leases, net of churn; and

•New revenue attributable to leases in place on day one on sites acquired or constructed since the beginning of the prior-year period.

•Revenue growth from our Data Centers segment in the United States, including rental and power revenue from new lease commencements and expansions, contractual rent and power escalations on existing leases, mark-to-market increases on renewing leases and increased interconnection services and solutions.

•Revenue growth from other items, including additional tenant payments primarily to cover costs, such as ground rent or power and fuel costs included in certain tenant leases (“pass-through”), straight-line revenue and decommissioning, partially offset, in certain cases, by revenue reserve provisions.

We continue to believe that our site leasing revenue, which makes up the vast majority of our property segment revenue, is likely to increase due to the growing use of wireless services globally and our ability to meet the corresponding incremental demand for our communications real estate. By adding new tenants and new equipment for existing tenants on our sites, we are able to increase these sites’ utilization and profitability. We believe the majority of our site leasing activity will continue to come from wireless service providers, with tenants in a number of other industries contributing incremental leasing demand. Our site portfolio and our established tenant base provide us with new business opportunities, which have historically resulted in consistent and predictable organic revenue growth as wireless carriers seek to increase the coverage and capacity of their existing networks, while also deploying next generation wireless technologies. In addition, we intend to continue to supplement our organic growth by selectively developing or acquiring new sites in our existing and new markets where we can achieve our risk-adjusted return on investment objectives.

Property Operations Organic Revenue Growth. Consistent with our strategy to increase the utilization and return on investment from our sites, our objective is to add new tenants and new equipment for existing tenants through colocation and lease amendments. Our ability to lease additional space on our sites is primarily a function of the rate at which wireless carriers and other tenants deploy capital to improve and expand their wireless networks. This rate of wireless network investment is influenced by the growth of wireless services, the penetration of advanced wireless devices, the level of emphasis on network quality and capacity in carrier competition, the financial performance of our tenants and their access to capital and general economic conditions. According to industry data, recent aggregate annual wireless capital spending in the United States has averaged at least $30 billion, resulting in consistent demand for our sites.

Based on industry research and projections, we expect that a number of key industry trends will result in incremental revenue opportunities for us:

•Rapid growth in mobile data consumption continues to be driven by increasing smartphone and other advanced device penetration, the proliferation of bandwidth-intensive applications on these devices and the continuing evolution of the mobile ecosystem. We believe carriers will be compelled to deploy additional equipment on existing networks while also rolling out more advanced wireless networks to address coverage and capacity needs resulting from this increasing mobile data usage.

•The deployment of advanced mobile technology, such as 4G and 5G, will provide higher speed data services and further enable fixed broadband substitution. As a result, we expect that our tenants will continue deploying additional equipment across their existing networks.

•Wireless service providers compete based on the quality of their networks, which is driven by capacity and coverage. To maintain or improve their network performance as overall network usage increases, our tenants continue to deploy additional equipment across their existing sites while also adding new cell sites. We anticipate increasing network densification over the next several years, as existing network density is anticipated to be insufficient to account for rapidly increasing levels of wireless data usage.

•Continued spectrum acquisition and deployment by wireless service providers, which is expected to result in additional sites and equipment on existing sites as operators optimize network configuration and utilize the additional spectrum. We expect this to be particularly relevant in the context of higher-band spectrum such as 2.5 gigahertz (GHz) and C-Band being deployed for 5G, as these spectrum assets tend to have more limited propagation characteristics compared to the lower-band spectrum that has historically been deployed on our towers.

•Emerging next generation technologies, such as edge computing functionality, autonomous vehicle networks and a number of other internet-of-things, or IoT, applications and other potential use cases for wireless services requiring wireless connectivity. These technologies may create new and complementary use cases for our communications real estate over time, although these use cases are currently in nascent stages.

•Continued data growth, including through increased use of AI, and emerging high-performance, latency-sensitive applications, will drive an increased need for reliable, secure and interconnected data center solutions. We believe these trends will result in incremental utilization and interconnection demand at our data center facilities.

As part of our international expansion initiatives, we have targeted markets in various stages of network development to diversify our international exposure and position us to benefit from a number of different wireless technology deployments over the long term, while benefitting from our shared global experience, capabilities and services. In addition, we have focused on building relationships with large multinational carriers to increase the opportunities for growth or mutually beneficial transactional opportunities across common markets. We believe that consistent carrier network investments across our international markets will, over the long term, position us to generate meaningful organic revenue growth going forward.

We believe that the network technology migration we have seen in the United States, which has led to significantly denser networks and meaningful new business commencements for us over a number of years, will be replicated in our international markets over time. As a result, we expect to be able to leverage our extensive international portfolio of approximately 108,000 communications sites and the relationships we have built with our carrier tenants to drive sustainable, long-term growth.

We have master lease agreements with many of our tenants for our communications sites that provide for consistent, long-term revenue and reduce the likelihood of non-contractual churn. Certain of those master lease agreements are comprehensive in nature and further build and augment strong strategic partnerships with our tenants while significantly reducing colocation cycle times, thereby providing our tenants with the ability to rapidly and efficiently deploy equipment on our sites.

Strong industry tailwinds also underpin our data center business. Our portfolio of highly interconnected data center facilities and related assets in the United States is well positioned to monetize elevated demand for hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud deployments, as well as demand from early-stage AI-related workloads like inferencing, machine learning models and GPU-as-a-Service from neo clouds. We believe it is important for AI workloads to be collocated with hybrid installations. Our data center facilities are well-suited for this, as they have a rich ecosystem of network and cloud interconnections coupled with purpose-built capacity designed to support AI and other higher-density deployments. These positive trends reinforce our expectation for our data centers to deliver long-term growth with attractive returns.

Demand for our communications infrastructure assets could be negatively impacted by a number of factors, including increased competition within our industries, an increase in network sharing or consolidation among our customers and financial difficulties for our customers, as set forth in Item 1A of this Annual Report under the captions “Risk Factors—If our customers consolidate their operations, exit their businesses or share site infrastructure to a significant degree, our growth and revenue could be materially and adversely affected,” “Risk Factors—Increasing competition within our industries may materially and adversely affect our revenue” and “Risk Factors—A substantial portion of our current and projected future revenue is derived from a small number of customers, and we are sensitive to adverse changes in the creditworthiness and financial strength of our customers.” In addition, the emergence and growth of new technologies could reduce demand for our sites, as set forth under the caption “Risk Factors—New technologies or changes, or lack thereof, in our or a customer’s business model could make our communications infrastructure leasing business less desirable and result in decreasing revenues and operating results.” Further, our customers may be subject to new regulatory policies from time to time that materially and adversely affect the demand for our communications infrastructure assets.

Property Operations New Site Revenue Growth. During the year ended December 31, 2025, we grew our portfolio of communications real estate through the acquisition and construction of approximately 2,230 communications sites globally. In a majority of our Africa & APAC, Europe and Latin America markets, the revenue generated from newly acquired or constructed sites resulted in increases in both tenant and pass-through revenues (such as ground rent or power and fuel costs) and expenses. We continue to evaluate opportunities to acquire communications real estate portfolios, both domestically and internationally, to determine whether they meet our risk-adjusted hurdle rates and whether we believe we can effectively integrate them into our existing portfolio.

(1)For the years ended December 31, 2024 and 2023, excludes approximately 90 and 865 new sites in India, respectively.

Property Operations Expenses. Direct operating expenses incurred by our property segments include direct site or facility level expenses and consist primarily of ground rent and power and fuel costs, some or all of which may be passed through to our customers, as well as property taxes and repairs and maintenance expenses. These segment direct operating expenses exclude all segment and corporate selling, general, administrative and development expenses, which are aggregated into one line item entitled Selling, general, administrative and development expense in our consolidated statements of operations. In general, our property segments’ selling, general, administrative and development expenses do not significantly increase as a result of adding incremental customers to our sites or facilities and typically increase only modestly year-over-year. As a result, leasing additional space to new customers on our sites or within our facilities provides significant incremental gross margin and cash flow. We may, however, incur additional segment selling, general, administrative and development expenses as we increase our presence in our existing markets or expand into new markets. Our profit margin growth is therefore positively impacted by the addition of new customers to our sites or facilities but can be temporarily diluted by our development or expansion activities.

Services Segment Revenue Growth. As we continue to focus on growing our property operations, we anticipate that our services revenue will continue to represent a small percentage of our total revenues.