American Tower Corp at TD Cowen Communications Infrastructure Summit Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Now I want to -- we're just talking about this before we got started. You started in 2001 at American Tower. That is a company veteran if I've heard one. From your perspective, like could you give us an overview of your time at American Tower and a bit of your path to your currency? I think that'd be helpful as we set up this conversation.

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Congratulations to you. And now since you've stepped into that role, and we're about halfway through the year, I'm curious, can you talk about your key learnings and stepping into that present role and as part of that, the strategic priorities and objectives for you in the US? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 12, 2025 / 5:15PM, AMT.N - American Tower Corp at TD Cowen Communications Infrastructure Summit

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : And we'll talk about that in a little bit because that's been a topic that's come up on the earnings call. But I want to in the US specifically, I want to focus on the commentary that we've heard about the big three in terms of where they stand in their upgrades, right? I think on the two key earnings call was that their goal is to get over 95%, one of them is at 85% today, another at 70%, and the last one is around 50%. When you're having your conversations with the carriers, what are you hearing from them in terms of let's say timing of their upgrades and how does that compare to the conversation and the narrative when you're sitting down last year?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : When I hear of so in data center land as an example, right, you have one buyer who's super active and then another one falls behind because whatever situation it may be, but usually what you see is you see like the spring effect where the person who's behind is like, oh we need to catch up, and they just go on a massive procurement spree. When I hear about the 50%, the one that's at 50%, obviously without naming any names, my gut is to say, okay, well they need to play catch up, right? And as a result we could see an acceleration there. Does the same dynamic that applies in, data center land with the hyper scales apply to the carriers where you can see that, hey, we need to catch up to our peers?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Okay. And then also, you've been highlighting the increase in the application volumes, right? And as part of that you're highlighting the increases on the co-location side, I'm curious, like as you think of the relative mix between the two, how has that evolved? I know costs have increased, but just kind of like trying to see the chart in my head, if you will. And then the second question becomes, as you think about the book to bill or the timeline between when it's signed to ultimately when it commences, what is that, how has that changed if at all?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Got it. One of the things that I think through is like the conversion of pipeline, and I'm trying to find the right way to say it because I always get, I get tripped up sometimes with the terminology, but as I think about it, you said when the application is received, then it goes through the legal review and so on, and then an application is signed, right? What percentage of what you receive actually gets converted into something that's signed that ultimately does become revenue generating just trying to get a sense for that that percentage?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : It's been baked in, yeah, that makes sense. One of the questions I would ask is we're talking about these holistic agreements. I think there is one customer who you've talked about on the call without naming specific names that that they, you're not on a holistic agreement with them. I'm curious, how would you just generally describe the opportunity to have holistic agreements with all of your big carriers in the US, in the near to medium term. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 12, 2025 / 5:15PM, AMT.N - American Tower Corp at TD Cowen Communications Infrastructure Summit

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : I do want to ask about your US new leasing guidance, which you gave an update for on the call. So you took it to roughly 160 million versus the 165 million to 170 million prior, and you know you gave the reasons in terms of commencements and all that. Now that you're 70 -- you've done 77 million through the first half of the year. I mean, clearly in order to get there, like, it needs to take a step up. But what I thought was interesting is that almost like similar to the beginning of the year or unlike the beginning of the year, you didn't provide like a range -- organic growth range before it was greater than 4.3% or greater than or equal to 4.3%. Now it's roughly 4.3%, which makes me think like, have you guys fully de-risked the guidance, we feel comfortable that this is where we come in, or is there still some execution risk around that?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Now I'm going to try and phrase this in the best way possible. So as we think about the business and we're moving towards, our 4Q exit, let's say this, activity comes through in the commencement, right? What I'm curious about is if you were taking a historical purview looking at the tower industry, what would you say is implied for 2026, if at all, based on the jump off point at the end of the year? I'm just trying to calibrate and make sure that we're kind of like dialed in and we're not getting too far over our skis in terms of getting excited about the activity that's out there. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 12, 2025 / 5:15PM, AMT.N - American Tower Corp at TD Cowen Communications Infrastructure Summit

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Okay. Would it be fair to say, because I appreciate the step down in what we call the use fees, right? Is that that's right. So I appreciate that dynamic, but I would think that to the extent that you're seeing a step down there, well, there's going to have to be something else that's going to have to come and an offset. That and you know what I'm just generally curious about is every quarter we get on the call and we hear more about hey activities is picking up, right? Do you just broadly think that the momentum is there for the overall industry, right, that we could be offsetting any potential step downs that some tech tower companies could have as a result of changes in their use phase, and it's not an American Tower specific questions.

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : One of the things that I've thought about is if we rewind the clock to, I want to say it was when bonus depreciation started to come out. For the carriers, this is with the Jobs Act and all that stuff, right? It had a negative impact on their financials and then now you, you're seeing you obviously saw the one Big Beautiful Bill. That I would think that stands to benefit them though the question that we get from investors is, how has now with this incremental flexibility, how have their investment decisions changed or how have their capital allocation priorities changed. Now you initially think, okay, this is probably good for the towers, but I'm curious in your conversations, let's say, are you getting any sense in terms of a shift in where their focus is going as a function of hey, maybe we have some more capital to play with?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Okay. And then one other thing historically I have looked at the services business as the leading indicator to activity on the leasing front essentially. I hear some nuance on the calls about, the type of business that you're getting within the within services. Is it fair to say that, based on what we're seeing within services, hey, this sets up well for the leasing picture, or is there something that you would caution me on?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : That answer says to me more no than yes. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 12, 2025 / 5:15PM, AMT.N - American Tower Corp at TD Cowen Communications Infrastructure Summit

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Okay. And then I do want to talk to you already brought it up in this conversation. You brought up US Cellular, right? You know, think on the call the commentary was that it's 0.5% of your global property revenue and then I think it's greater than 1%, so around 1%, is there an internal expectation of the size or any potential impact from US Cellular because I think the commentary was that you haven't had the conversations with them yet, but I'm sure you can take a look at the map and see maybe where there's some overlap. So curious if you have any thoughts there.

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Now as part of that, one of the things that when I think back to Sprint T-Mobile with their with their merger. And the tail of that churn, it didn't all come out like immediately. It came out over time. Do you think that that's something that we could reasonably see here in this situation to the point where we don't even feel it just kind of like dribbles out or with smaller, let's say smaller deals for a carrier that they would just take it, drive the cost efficiencies kind of as soon as they can or it just depends on really just the model?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Okay, I do want to talk a little bit about. EchoStar. So we recently saw the kind with the dynamic with the FCC. I think on the call you highlighted that's around 2% of global revenues, and slightly over 4% I think was the commentary for the for the US. How do you think of that, the relationship there long term? Obviously, I appreciate them asking about something specific, but I'm just curious how you think about it, given the headlines. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 12, 2025 / 5:15PM, AMT.N - American Tower Corp at TD Cowen Communications Infrastructure Summit

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Okay, so to that point, you've embedded just the minimums, but I also think about what I think about is, there's a shot clock, right, and as part of that you need to make investments in that work. Would it to the extent that we saw them, increase their activity, right, and this is not a question about them, this is more about an American Tower specific question to the extent that you saw upside to the minimums. Could it be a needle mover for growth, like, is it a small incremental? Is it something that could be meaningful? I'm just curious how you frame up that relative upside case with them?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : I want to talk to you. I want to shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about AI because we've been talking about AI a lot today, so of course let's do the same with Tower. For me, I think about, how I interact with it in my personal life, and it drives out bits and bytes, mostly text, right? I'm curious how you think about, giving your time in the in the industry, how you think about AI impacting demand for mobile infrastructure, one of the, I think Mark on the earnings call said don't sleep on mobile infrastructure, right, making the point that there will be a benefit. I'm curious how you see that translating into demand for American Tower.

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : Would you think, because this is one of the things I've been struggling with is I heard a stat that was Chat GPT will output more text in this year than all of humanity created in going back to the Gutenberg Press. Now what I think through is like, okay, if we iterate this as a function of time, it is more text just moving through and we know text is a little bit intensity or relative to video. I'm curious, do we really need to see a world in which there's video, like video, That's created using AI that's moving across the network that really is what would drive incremental bits and bytes that require it. Or do you think we could there's a world in which we can just see more text moving through the system and that would drive enough upsides to traffic to really be a catalyst for mobile investment?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : As I'm curious, when I'm at, I think you're at Connect (X) if I'm not mistaken, you go to the panels and we talk about 6G. Yes, and we're not quite through 5G yet. I'm curious, how do you think about the, I know it's a ways out, but how do you think about the next upgrade cycle and kind of based on the workloads and applications that you're seeing out there, what that would need to be oriented towards?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : So I do want to switch gears a little bit, and I do want to talk about the cost initiatives that you've been working on. I hear 80 basis points, I believe is one of the targets for the year in terms of savings. As you look at the op opportunity saving, where do you see the most latent opportunity on the cost saving cost saving side?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : One of the things that I also think about is, and this is going. Shift a little gears a little bit, but it'll tie back into the into the tower is as I think of the original idea for doing the CoreSite acquisition, right? You own the Metro edge or you own the interconnection facility at the Metro Edge. You have a distributed footprint. You could put modular data centers kind of at the base station of these tower sites, and you could own out to the far edge, right. Now you know one of the themes we're talking about today is for the proliferation of AI and pushing out to the Edge, but I'm curious from your perspective, how has that op opportunity set played out, particularly around the far edge and to the extent that we see a meaningful increase in demand. At the far edge, could that actually be something that's margin accretive to your tower business?

Question: Michael Elias - TD Cowen - Analyst : You know what's interesting is I'm going to rewind a bit, maybe date myself a little bit. In June 2021 we're having a conversation with the American Tower team, and the idea was presented as being the one stop shop, right. You have a globally distributed footprint, you can be the easy button for a hyperscaler to deploy at the edge, right? Then you went and acquired core site, but from my perspective, like if you were truly going to be the one stop shop, core site is step one along a journey of acquiring interconnection facilities in a bunch of markets around the globe. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 12, 2025 / 5:15PM, AMT.N - American Tower Corp at TD Cowen Communications Infrastructure Summit So as we think about the original proposition that was presented before the courses that acquisition, I'm curious how has that evolved, and if you still want to play in that space, wouldn't that suggest that there is much more that needs to be done in scaling up the data center footprint in order for you to drive that interplay?