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AMERICAN TOWER CORP MA

For the period ended Dec 31, 2023. Filed Feb 27, 2024.

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FY2023 · Filed Feb 27, 2024

AMT$188.79-2.7%Stored close · as of Nov 6, 2026

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Overview

We are one of the largest global real estate investment trusts and a leading independent owner, operator and developer of multitenant communications real estate. Our primary business is the leasing of space on communications sites to wireless service providers, radio and television broadcast companies, wireless data providers, government agencies and municipalities and tenants in a number of other industries. We refer to this business, inclusive of our data center business discussed below, as our property operations, which accounted for 99% of our total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2023. We also offer tower-related services in the United States, which we refer to as our services operations. These services include site application, zoning and permitting, structural and mount analyses, and construction management, which primarily support our site leasing business, including the addition of new tenants and equipment on our sites. Our customers include our tenants, licensees and other payers.

Since inception, we have grown our communications real estate portfolio through acquisitions, long-term lease arrangements and site development. Our portfolio primarily consists of towers that we own and towers that we operate pursuant to long-term lease arrangements, as well as distributed antenna system (“DAS”) networks, which provide seamless coverage solutions in certain in-building and outdoor wireless environments. In addition to the communications sites in our portfolio, we manage rooftop and tower sites for property owners under various contractual arrangements. We also hold other telecommunications infrastructure and property interests that we lease primarily to communications service providers and third-party tower operators, and, as discussed further below, we hold a portfolio of highly interconnected data center facilities and related assets in the United States that we provide for the leasing of space primarily to enterprises, network operators, cloud providers and supporting service providers.

As of December 31, 2023, our communications real estate portfolio of 224,502 communications sites included 42,905 communications sites in the U.S. & Canada, 77,647 communications sites in Asia-Pacific, 24,229 communications sites in Africa, 31,241 communications sites in Europe and 48,480 communications sites in Latin America, as well as (i) urban telecommunications assets in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, India, South Africa and Spain, (ii) other property interests in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States and (iii) 28 data center facilities across ten United States markets.

On January 4, 2024, through our subsidiaries, ATC Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. and ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited (“ATC TIPL”), which holds our operations in India, we entered into an agreement with Data Infrastructure Trust (“DIT”), an infrastructure investment trust sponsored by an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management, pursuant to which DIT will acquire a 100% ownership interest in ATC TIPL (the “Pending ATC TIPL Transaction”). We will retain the full economic benefit associated with the optionally convertible debentures issued by one of our customers in India, Vodafone Idea Limited (“VIL,” and the optionally convertible debentures, the “VIL OCDs”), and rights to payments on certain existing customer receivables. Subject to certain pre-closing terms, total aggregate consideration would potentially represent up to approximately 210 billion Indian Rupees (“INR”) (approximately $2.5 billion), including the value of the VIL OCDs, payments on certain existing customer receivables, the repayment of existing intercompany debt and the repayment, or assumption, of our existing term loan in India, by DIT. The Pending ATC TIPL Transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions, including government and regulatory approval.

We operate as a real estate investment trust for U.S. federal income tax purposes (“REIT”). Accordingly, we generally are not required to pay U.S. federal income taxes on income generated by our REIT operations, including the income derived from leasing space on our towers and in our data centers, as we receive a dividends paid deduction for distributions to stockholders that offsets our REIT taxable income and gains. However, we remain obligated to pay U.S. federal income taxes on earnings from our domestic taxable REIT subsidiaries (“TRSs”). In addition, our international assets and operations, regardless of their classification for U.S. tax purposes, continue to be subject to taxation in the jurisdictions where those assets are held or those operations are conducted.

The use of TRSs enables us to continue to engage in certain businesses and jurisdictions while complying with REIT qualification requirements. We may, from time to time, change the election of previously designated TRSs to be included as part of the REIT. As of December 31, 2023, our REIT-qualified businesses included our U.S. tower leasing business, a majority of our U.S. indoor DAS networks business, our Services and Data Centers segments, as well as most of our operations in Canada, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda.

We report our results in seven segments – U.S. & Canada property (which includes all assets in the United States and Canada, other than our data center facilities and related assets), Asia-Pacific property, Africa property, Europe property, Latin America property, Data Centers and Services.

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