American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 2 of 11

We’re building out another 30 megawatts of capacity under construction. We actually got one-third of that already pre-leased, and we have 224 megawatts for future development. So there’s an incredible demand, as you well know, as we’ve heard from other competitors in the market for interconnection hubs. And that’s what I really refer to as core side. It’s not a co-location facility. It’s an interconnection hub creating opportunities for new logos. We added over hundred logos last year. And we’re really excited about the opportunity and the demand that we see in the market for activity relative to our data center business in the United States. Did I miss anything, Simon?

Simon Flannery: Well, I guess, just in terms of the scale M&A, you’ve obviously done a lot of deals over the years. If you get back down into that three times to five times leverage, is that when we think about you’re potentially looking at larger deals again?

Tom Bartlett: Interesting, Simon. We have a lot of different ways of being able to secure M&A. We demonstrated that really with what we’ve done in Europe, with our capital, even in the United States with Stonepeak in terms of private capital. So I think the capital is there. For us, yeah, it is a function that our objective is to delever. I really do want to get down to that five times kind of leverage. And so that remains a top priority for the business. But on top of that, we want to continue to feed our build program. We had record build last year. We have a strong build program this year. With regards to the M&A, there’s just still a significant difference between the valuations, the bid and the ask. And there’s nothing out there that’s compelling as we see it today.

And so our focus continues to be on, as I said, what we do every day, driving organic growth, driving efficiency. You see we expect margin improvement in 2023 versus 2022 and supporting our build program. Our customers are very active around the world from a build perspective. And I think in the last several years, we brought in like €“ we built like 25,000 sites. And so there’s a significant opportunity there, and the returns are incredibly compelling on that new build program. So as I said, there’s just nothing at this point in time that we see out there that’s interesting really from an M&A perspective. And we continue to just keep our head down in terms of funding our build program and delevering our business.

Simon Flannery: Great. Thanks a lot.

Tom Bartlett: You bet.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Rick Prentiss from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Rick Prentiss: Thanks, Good morning, everyone.

Tom Bartlett: Hey Rick.

Rick Prentiss: A couple of questions. I’ll give it to you part-by-part. First, as we think about the guidance, and thanks for all the color there, how should we think about in US, Canada the pacing throughout the year? Is it going to ramp through the year? Does it start high and come down? Is it balanced? But opening question everybody is trying to figure out what is happening with the pacing in 2023 in US, Canada?

Tom Bartlett: Actually, Rick, it’s going to be very consistent, very linear throughout the year. And so largely, it’s a function of the relationships and the agreements that we have in place. But we would expect it to be very consistent in the US throughout the year.

Rick Prentiss: Okay. And the related question to extrapolate from that is last year at this time, you laid out some thoughts on longer-term leasing activity in the US, Canada 2023 through 2027 being above 5% and then extraordinarily above — equal or above 6%. How are you feeling about that exiting 2023, looking at 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027 as you gave us a year ago?

Page 2 of 11