Yahoo Finance American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 30, 2024
American Tower Corporation misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.00196 EPS, expectations were $2.55. American Tower Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Tower First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, today’s conference is being recorded. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the call for questions. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Adam Smith, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and FP&A. Please go ahead, sir.
Adam Smith: Good morning, and thank you for joining American Tower's first quarter earnings conference call. We have posted a presentation, which we will refer to throughout our prepared remarks under the Investor Relations tab of our website, www.americantower.com. I'm joined on the call today by Steve Vondran, our President and CEO, and Rod Smith, our Executive Vice President, CFO and Treasurer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I'll remind you that our comments will contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Examples of these statements include our expectations regarding future growth, including our 2024 outlook, capital allocation, and future operating performance, our expectations for the closing of the sale of our India business and the expected impacts of such sale on our business, our collections expectations in India, and any other statements regarding matters that are not historical facts.
You should be aware that certain factors may affect us in the future and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Such factors include the risk factors set forth in this morning's earnings press release, those set forth in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and other risks described in documents we subsequently file from time to time with the SEC. We urge you to consider these factors, and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information contained in this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.
Steve Vondran: Thanks, Adam, and thanks to everyone for joining today. As you can see in the results we reported this morning, mobile network upgrades and digital transformation trends are driving compelling demand across our tower and data center platforms. 5G rollouts are contributing to an acceleration in our US application pipeline, and another sequential step up in co-location and amendment growth in Europe. Solid demand in Africa continued to drive elevated new business growth, and retail demand resulted in another quarter of strong sales performance at CoreSite, which you'll hear more about later on. Before handing the call over to Rod, I'm going to spend a few minutes discussing the key factors that have driven performance in our US and Canada tower business and underpinning the evaluation and execution of our global expansion strategy.
In particular, we believe that our focus on asset quality, operational excellence, and contract structures, all through the prism of long-term value creation, have been the most critical factors in determining our ability to monetize growth in mobile data consumption, and our ability to drive leading performance on our assets over multiple network investment cycles. Over the last 25 years, we've developed a scaled nationwide portfolio of approximately 43,000 sites across the US and Canada. This portfolio has been methodically constructed, primarily through the acquisition of high-quality carrier-designed and constructed tower portfolios on which nationwide networks have been built and expanded upon through each successive G, and have further benefited from the transition to neutral host operation.
We've complimented the acquisition of these target assets with select high-quality independent tower provider portfolios, smaller tech and portfolios, and build-to-suit sites, which taken together, represent meaningful scale. Our ability to be highly selective in the assets that we've aggressively pursued for acquisition and development, the assets we've chosen not to pursue, and the standards we've used to underwrite our growth, are the result of robust internal analysis and due diligence capabilities that rely on data insights that we've accumulated through our history as a tower operator. These insights have reinforced our understanding about asset location, competition considerations, and structural dynamics come together to create the potential for differentiated value creation.
For example, our focus on high quality assets in premier locations has resulted in a portfolio that's geographically skewed towards suburban and rural environments and transport corridors where the vast majority of Americans live and travel, as well as towers that are structurally designed for co-tenancy, which we believe has enabled us to generate leading new business growth on our assets. Similarly, by focusing on assets with significant structural capacity, we believe we can reduce overall operating and redevelopment costs, allowing for profit and return maximization at the asset level at industry best speed-to-market for carrier deployments in our towers. And we've seen these factors come together to result in significant value creation on our assets.
Notably, cash operating profit margins for our US and Canada property segment have expanded by over 440 basis points since 2016, the year following our Verizon transaction in the US. As we continue to focus on driving more new business and efficiency at the asset level, we see a path to further increasing the profitability of our US and Canada business going forward. Turning to our operating model, through our focus on efficiency and delivering exceptional value for customers, we've invested in technology and the buildup of capabilities that we believe enhance the service we provide our customers and the value of our product offering. For example, through our application and services automation programs, we've continuously reduced cycle times, further supporting critical speed-to-market advantages for our customers, which translates into accelerated revenue realization for our business.
Elsewhere in our services segment, we've combined investments in data quality and governance with the development of internal data platforms to improve our overall service offerings and asset integrity. Over time, customer feedback shows that these investments have resulted in a consistent upward trajectory in customer satisfaction, achieved by providing a differentiated customer experience, with high asset integrity. In our land management operations, we've also taken an approach that's focused on our customers’ needs and expanding the profitability of our sites. Through our tower asset protection program, we perform thousands of transactions a year that improve the ground rights and ease site access conditions, a critical factor for our customers.
And over the last decade, we've deployed significant capital at attractive rates of return, and emitted thousands of contracts to protect our assets and mitigate growth in land rent, supporting margin performance. Finally, as we've said publicly many times, contract terms and structure are critical to realizing the full value of the assets we own and manage, and our approach has been centered around creating long term value for American Tower and our carrier customers, even when it can potentially come at the expense of short-term wins. Perhaps the most important capability we've built internally over the last two decades is knowing our assets and understanding their value. As a result, we've been able to achieve outstanding growth and create significant shareholder value under traditional MLA agreements, while also developing innovative structures such as the comprehensive MLA.
Under these agreements, we're able to secure guaranteed growth over a multi-year period in a way that maximizes the value of our assets while providing a degree of insulation from quarter-to-quarter ebbs and flows in wireless network spending. Critically, we've seen these contracts representing a compelling value proposition for our carrier customers by lowering their total cost of ownership when compared to self-performance, by providing a framework to leverage our skill for their networks that translates to budgetary operational visibility, and by creating administrative efficiencies that yield lower transaction costs on sell site deployments. Taking all this together, we've seen this focus on the right assets, high quality contracts, and operational excellence, facilitate increasing monetization and growth in mobile data consumption and corresponding carrier CapEx increases over time.
Over the course of the 4G investment cycle between 2010 and 2018, average mobile data consumption per smartphone increased from less than 100 megabytes per month to seven gigabytes per month. And over that period, carriers were deploying approximately $29 billion annually on average, up from approximately $23 billion during 3G. As we've moved into the 5G investment cycle from early 2019 to today, we've once again seen mobile data consumption per smartphone grow to almost 30 gigabytes per month in 2024. We've seen early 5G subscribers consuming roughly two times the mobile data compared to the average 4G subscriber, and we see average annual carrier CapEx step up to approximately $36 billion a year. This CapEx investment translated to the approximately $230 million in year-over-year co-location amendment growth we delivered last year, much of which was attributed to 5G activity, as well as an expectation for growth on a per site basis in 2024 that significantly exceeds the average seen during the 4G deployment cycle.
That brings us to today, where we continue to see all of our key customers actively working on network upgrades and rollouts, and the 5G cycle playing out in line with the broader expectations underwritten in our long-term guidance. On our last call, we indicated that we expected a year-over-year increase in contributions for services segment due in part to early indications of uptick in our application pipeline, as well as conversations that our teams are having with our customers on the ground. The activity we saw in Q1 reinforces that expectation. Specifically, contributions in our services segment for the quarter came out ahead of our internal expectations. And on the application side, Q1 volume was over 70% higher than what we saw in Q4 of last year.
In fact, March represented the highest volume level of the trailing 12 months. It was supported by broad-based step-ups across our major US customers. Now, while there's always some level of risk associated with our expectations in the services segment, I'm pleased to say that what we've seen thus far supports the 2024 guidance we provided in February, including approximately $195 million, the expected services revenue contributions, approximately 4.7% organic tenant billings growth, and $180 million to $190 million in year-over-year co-location and amendment growth, one of our strongest years to date. So, as we move forward, we believe our US tower portfolio is uniquely positioned to continue driving compelling growth as 5G, expected increases in mobile data consumption, and associated carrier investments, are driving increasing demand for our assets over time.
Importantly, by leveraging that same expertise to develop our leading global portfolio, we're well positioned to monetize similar trends across our global footprint, while delivering a differentiated experience and value proposition to our customers. Further, we believe the factors I've taken you through today, as well as the global focus on increasing efficiency in our cost structure, provide a path to continue converting top line growth at a rate that expands already attractive cash operating profit margins and creates incremental shareholder value. With that, I'll turn it over to Rod to discuss Q1 performance and our updated outlook. Rod?
Rod Smith: Thanks Steve. Good morning and thank you for joining today's call. We are off to a solid start to 2024, with Q1 performance, exceeding our initial expectations across many of our key metrics. These results, together with the positive trends highlighted by Steve, the various initiatives we have in place to drive profitability and margin expansion, and our optionality and discipline in selectively deploying capital towards projects yielding the most attractive risk-adjusted rates of return, give us confidence in our ability to drive strong sustained growth, quality of earnings and shareholder returns for 2024 and beyond. Before I dive into the results and our revised 2024 outlook, I'll touch on a few highlights from the quarter.
First, the strong reoccurring fundamentals that underpin our business are again highlighted in our Q1 performance, with consolidated organic tenant billings growth of 5.4%, and another exceptional leasing quarter at CoreSite, including its highest quarter of retail new business signs since Q4 of 2020. Furthermore, we continue to demonstrate cost discipline, resulting in strong year-over-year cash adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, which I will touch on in a moment. Next, in India, the collections trends we saw in Q4 of 2023 continued into Q1, allowing us to reverse approximately $29 million of previously reserved revenue. Separately, while we continue to anticipate a second half 2024 closing on our sale of ATC India to Brookfield, we have already made progress in accelerating certain payments included in the potential $2.5 billion total proceeds associated with the transaction, including the repatriation of approximately $100 million, net of withholdings tax, back to the US earlier this month.
Additionally, we are making progress towards monetizing our optionally convertible debentures issued by VIL ahead of the anticipated closing of our India transaction. Executing the intended purpose of the debentures in serving as a liquid asset to backstop outstanding receivable balances, we expect to use the anticipated proceeds from the India sale to pay down existing indebtedness. We will continue to keep our shareholders informed as incremental progress is made towards the closing of our transaction. Finally, we successfully accessed the debt capital markets last month, issuing $1.3 billion in senior unsecured notes at a weighted average cost of 5.3%, with proceeds used to pay down floating rate debt. Turning to first quarter property revenue and organic tenant billings growth on Slide 6, consolidated property revenue growth was 3.3%, or over 4.5% excluding non-cash straight line revenue, while absorbing roughly 100 basis points of FX headwinds.
US and Canada property revenue growth was approximately 1.8%, or over 4% excluding straight line, which includes over 1% impact from Sprint churn. International revenue growth was approximately 3.7%, or roughly 6% excluding the impacts of currency fluctuations, which includes a benefit associated with the improved collections in India, partially offset by the timing of the sale of our Mexico fiber business at the end of Q1 in 2023, and a reduction in Latin America termination fees as compared to the prior year. Finally, revenue in our data center business increased by 10.6%, continuing the outperformance versus our initial underwriting plan, as strong demand for hybrid and multi-cloud IT architecture continues, and the backlog of record new business signed over the last two years begins to commence in a meaningful way.
Moving to the right side of the slide, consolidated organic tenant billings growth was 5.4%, supported by strong demand across our global footprint. And our US and Canada segment organic tenant billings growth was 4.6%, and over 5.5% absent Sprint-related churn. As expected, growth in the quarter was slightly below our full-year guidance of 4.7%. As we lap modestly elevated churn that commenced in Q2 of 2023, we would expect Q2 and Q3 growth rates to each accelerate to roughly 5%, before a step down in Q4 as we commenced the final tranche of contracted Sprint churn, all supportive of our 2024 outlook expectation. Our international segment drove 6.5% in organic tenant billings growth, reflecting an expected step down from the Q4 2023 rate of 7.7% as we see moderation in CPI-linked escalators.
Meanwhile, contributions from co-location and amendments remain strong, with another sequential acceleration in Europe and a continuation of elevated contribution rates of around 8% in Africa. Turning to Slide 7, adjusted EBITDA grew 5.2%, or nearly 8% excluding the impacts of non-cash straight line, while absorbing 90 basis points in FX headwinds. Cash adjusted EBITDA margins improved approximately 240 basis points a year-over-year to 64.9%, taking certain expense timing in India reserve benefits, and further supported by our ongoing cost management focus. In fact, cash SG&A, excluding bad debt, declined approximately 5% year-over-year in Q1, and was down roughly 7% off our Q1 2022 levels. Additionally, gross margin from our US services business came in just over $16 million, a decline of roughly 50% year-over-year, though representing an acceleration of nearly 70% off our Q4 2023 levels.
This performance, together with the broad-based application pipeline buildup discussed by Steve in his prepared remarks, gives us confidence in our expectation for accelerating activity continuing through the duration of the year, and is supportive of our full-year US services outlook. Moving to the right side of the slide, attributable AFFO and attributable AFFO per share grew by 10% and 9.8%, respectively, supported by high conversion of cash adjusted EBITDA growth to attributable AFFO. Now, shifting to our revised full-year outlook, as I mentioned, we are pleased with the results to date in the sustainable demand trends underpinning our performance. However, given the close proximity to our previously released guidance, we have kept core full-year assumptions largely unchanged.
With that in mind, our revised outlook includes several notable updates. First, we have taken the strong collections activity in India through the first quarter, which as I mentioned earlier, resulted in approximately $29 million in revenue reserve reversals, compared to approximately $16 million in revenue reserves assumed for Q1 in our prior outlook, resulting in a net benefit to plan of $45 million for property revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and attributable AFFO. Reserve assumptions for April through December remain unchanged, resulting in a net reserve for the year of $20 million, compared to the prior outlook assumption of $65 million. Next, we have revised our FX assumptions for the year, resulting in a modest headwind compared to our prior outlook.
Finally, while our net interest assumptions remain relatively unchanged, we have increased our interest expense due to elevated rates, which was partially offset by modest interest expense reductions through a reduced debt balance attributed to the accelerated India proceeds I mentioned earlier, and further offset by higher interest income. With that, let's dive into the numbers. Turning to Slide 8, we are increasing our expectations for property revenue by approximately $30 million compared to prior outlook, driven by $45 million of upside related to the positive collections in India during the first quarter, partially offset by $15 million associated with negative FX impacts. We are reiterating our prior outlook expectations for organic tenant billings growth across all regions, including approximately 4.7% in the US and Canada, 11% to 12% in Africa, 5% to 6% in Europe, and 2% in both LATAM&APAC, collectively driving approximately 5% for international and 5% on a consolidated basis.
We will continue to assess our first quarter momentum as we work through the year. Turning to Slide 9, we are increasing our adjusted EBITDA outlook by $40 million as compared to prior outlook, driven by the flow-through of the revised revenue reserve assumptions in India, partially offset by $5 million of FX headwinds. Moving to Slide 10, we are similarly raising our expectations for AFFO attributable to common stockholders by $40 million at the midpoint, and approximately $0.09 on a per share basis, moving the midpoint to $10.42, supported by the revised India reserve assumption benefits, partially offset by FX. As I mentioned, although we are raising expectations for interest expense, it is offset on a net basis by a similar increase in interest income.
Turning to Slide 11, we are reiterating our capital allocation plans for 2024, which is focused on selectively funding projects we expect to drive the most attractive risk-adjusted rates of return, sustained growth and quality of earnings, executing on an accelerated pathway to balance sheet strength and financial flexibility, and delivering an attractive total shareholder return profile. As discussed on our Q4 2023 earnings call, this includes maintaining a relatively flat annual common dividend declaration of $6.48 per share, or approximately $3 billion in 2024, with an expectation to resume growth again in 2025, all subject to board approval. Moving to the right side of the slide, our disciplined approach to capital allocation, together with reoccurring top line growth and its high conversion to profitability through cost management, all support the progress we've made to achieving our goal of 5x net leverage by the end of the year.
While our Q1 net leverage already stands at 5x, it is important to note that the metric for this quarter benefits from the India reserve reversals previously mentioned, and we'd expect to be above 5x in Q2. These efforts, combined with our successful capital markets execution year-to-date, have further reinforced our investment grade balance sheet as a strategic asset, which will remain a key focus moving forward. Turning to Slide 12, and in summary, we are off to a great start to 2024. Our visibility into a solid foundation of recurring contracted growth across our global business, combined with an accelerating pipeline supporting our expectations for future activity, a keen focus on cost discipline and margin expansion, and a continued demonstration of strategically deploying capital, while enhancing balance sheet strength, gives us a high degree of confidence in our ability to drive strong sustained growth over the long-term for our shareholders, while being a best-in-class operator for our stakeholders globally.
With that, Operator, we can open the line for questions.
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