Who Owns American Tower?

The tower business began in 1995 inside American Radio Systems, a Boston broadcast group that had been buying radio stations and their transmitter sites. Management recognized that tower space could be leased to multiple tenants, wireless carriers in particular, turning a cost center into a real estate business. When CBS acquired American Radio Systems in 1998, the tower unit spun out as American Tower Corporation and listed on the NYSE in 1999.

The 2000s brought steady accumulation. The company built sites, bought portfolios, and entered Mexico, Brazil, and Chile as mobile adoption spread. The defining structure came in 2012, when the company converted to REIT status and began paying regular dividends.

Scale came from a series of large deals. Global Tower Partners in 2013 added about $4.8 billion of US and Costa Rican sites. Eaton Towers in 2015 made American Tower a major African operator, and a 2015 agreement gave it leasing rights to roughly 11,500 Verizon towers. In 2021 it bought Telxius's European and Latin American towers from Telefonica for approximately $9.4 billion and acquired data center operator CoreSite for about $10.1 billion.

Not every expansion held. India, entered in 2007, became a persistent source of bad debt as carriers consolidated and Vodafone Idea's finances collapsed. American Tower sold its Indian business to Brookfield's Data Infrastructure Trust in 2024 for approximately $2.5 billion and refocused on developed and Latin American markets.

FY2025 revenue reached $10.6 billion with property revenue of $10.3 billion. Through Q3 2026 the company raised its full-year outlook three times, driven by 16.3% cash revenue growth at CoreSite as AI workloads filled its interconnection facilities.