American Tower Swings to 3Q Profit Amid Strong Cell-Phone, AI Demand

By Rob Curran

American Tower REIT swung to a third-quarter profit on strong revenue growth and ratcheted up its 2025 earnings projection as continued to benefit from capital investment by cell-phone carriers and artificial-intelligence firms.

The Boston owner of cellphone towers and data centers posted earnings of $853.3 million, or $1.82 a share, in contrast to a loss of $792.3 million, or $1.69 a share, a year earlier. The year-earlier quarter included a $1.21 billion loss from discontinued operations.

Adjusted funds from operations, a key metric for real-estate investment trusts, came to $2.78 a share, topping the average Wall Street target of $2.66 a share, as per FactSet.

The REIT's revenue rose 7.7% to $2.72 billion, handily beating the mean analyst peg of $2.66 billion, according to FactSet.

"Leasing activity across our U.S. and international towers remains robust as carriers invest in network coverage and capacity, and in our data center business, strong hybrid-cloud demand, favorable pricing, and rising AI-related workloads drove a strong quarter, including a record quarter of signed retail new leasing," said Chief Executive Steven Vondran.

To build AI models, tech firms require vast amounts of computing power, and that has triggered a rush of investment dollars into data centers.

For 2025, American Tower boosted its net-income projection to a range between $2.46 billion and $2.51 billion from a prior estimate of $2.33 billion to $2.44 billion.

The company raised its projection for adjusted funds from operations to a range between $10.60 and $10.72 a share from a prior target of $10.46 to $10.65 a share.

American Tower raised the lower end of its projected total property revenue targeted range, and now anticipates property revenue between $10.21 billion and $10.29 billion, compared with the previous $10.14 billion to $10.29 billion range.

Write to Rob Curran at rob.curran@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 28, 2025 07:47 ET (11:47 GMT)