Hi, my name is Richard Choe. I cover communications infrastructure here at J.P. Morgan. I'd like to thank Steve Vondran, President and CEO of American Tower, for joining us today.
Thanks. Great to be here.
Great to see you. You took over as President and CEO at the start of the year. As you kind of look out, what are your top priorities for this year, and how do you see the overall space evolving over the next few years?
Yeah, thanks for the question. So, yeah, I've been with the company for almost 24 years now.
Mm-hmm.
So kind of my perspective as CEO is kind of informed by my prior roles. You know, I've been a member of American Tower for a period of time, was part of the executive team for the last five years. So if you think about kind of our strategic priorities, you should expect to see a lot of continuity in terms of the way that we think about the business. In terms of the short to midterm, you know, our primary focus right now is, you know, number one, it's trying to maximize the organic growth that we're seeing, so working with our sales teams and our operating teams across the globe to give our customers great customer service and to drive sales as much as we can. We complement that with selective investments in our internal CapEx program.
We have the ability to move capital around to different places around the globe, and so we have a healthy build-to-suit program that we're pursuing in some of our markets and as well as our CoreSite asset to do some construction there. So you take those two kind of revenue growth lines, and you complement that with a focus on margin expansion. So if you look at kind of the midpoint of our guide this year, we're actually projecting to bring SG&A down by about $30 million year-over-year. And we'll continue to focus on the kind of that bottom line and taking the opportunity to optimize our cost structure.
If you think about the way we've grown over the past decade or so, we've been very active in acquiring assets and integrating them and aggressive in growing all of our markets. When you're doing that, you don't have the chance to focus on your cost structure as much, and so we've got some opportunity now to look at that and really harvest some of the efficiencies in that. So that's kind of the third pillar, and then fourth, it's really focused on our balance sheet. We're kind of laser-focused on bringing our leverage ratio under the top end of our range, so trying to get underneath that 5.0 leverage ratio is kind of the fourth priority there.
No, that makes a lot of sense. And then in terms of, I think, with the U.S. Tower business, people feel like that the growth might not be there, that you've seen in kind of past cycles. Like, we saw big upgrades from 3G to 4G and now 4G to 5G. Do you think that there's still a decent amount of growth laying ahead as we move into a world where... And we can talk about it a little bit more later on in terms of AI and data centers, but, like, there seems to be just as much data being produced and used, and that's ending up on your mobile phone.
Yeah, absolutely. Look, I look at 5G, and I see where we're on the cycle. It reminds me of the prior Gs. In every investment cycle that the carriers undertake, there's always an initial period where they're investing. The highest CapEx is the first couple of years because they're investing in the core as well as the radio access network. And that first phase is coverage. They're trying to get to 200 million POPs, 250 million POPs, whatever their number is, and then there's always a little bit of a slowdown. Now, last year, it slowed down a bit more abruptly than in 4G, but I think that's more the cadence of when they started than anything else. In 4G, we had more of a staggered start by each of the carriers because they got their spectrum at different times.
For 5G mid-band, they got them kind of at the same time. So you had a spike up, and then you've had a little bit more of a pullback. But what we see is mobile data usage continues to increase at 20%-30% per year in the U.S. Now, that's a little bit lower percentage-wise than 4G, where it was like 30%-40%, but the base is so much larger today that the amount of gigabytes that our customers have to, have to produce is exponentially larger in 5G than it was in 4G. And 5G is giving them a much lower cost per gigabyte, which they need to be able to continue to provide the service that we're demanding, you know, at kind of the same rate plans and preserve their margins.
So I think 5G is a success story for the industry. If you look at our kind of long-term guide that we put out, you know, we said that in the U.S., our organic tenant billings growth in the U.S. would be at least 5% on average from 2023 through 2027. And that's 6% if you normalize for Sprint churn. Those are healthy levels of growth, and what we're seeing in the market kind of bears that out.
I think the thing that doesn't get as appreciated as much is that you're still seeing a good amount of growth, but you're also being able to optimize. I think the carriers are doing the same thing in that they're seeing still healthy levels of growth. In this world of, I guess, much larger base and moving from 4G to 5G, do you feel like there's a decent amount of effort that needs to go into the optimization of the networks and your business overall?
Look, I think our carriers do an amazing job of engineering kind of the best networks in the world. And, you know, they're dealing with the complexities of still having to support prior Gs as they're developing that. And when you look at 5G, you know, there are sort of different levels of 5G that give you different levels of performance and different cost levels. So, for example, if you don't have standalone 5G, it's not as efficient as if you do have standalone 5G. So I do think that there's some optimization yet to be done there. But again, I look at what our carrier customers are doing, they continue to deploy 5G. You know, again, we're in the phase now, we're starting to see a ramp-up this year.
We saw a higher application flow in Q1 than we saw in Q4 of last year, and March was the best month we've had in the last twelve. So again, we continue to see green shoots that the carriers are restarting that build activity, and that implies that they're continuing to look at those networks and optimize them.
...And that's something you mentioned on your earnings call, was that, at the end of last year, there was a little bit of a slowdown, but as the year started, things seemed to be picking back up. Has that continued? And I guess the nice position that you're in, is that you have a lot of your growth already kind of contracted out. But let's start with what you're just seeing in the past, you know-
Sure.
-recent days.
And maybe I'll talk about those two components, the rental revenue and the services. So our rental revenue is supported by our comprehensive MLA agreements. So there's a little bit of a disconnect between the activity levels and the actual revenue guide. So underpinning our kind of revenue guide is the minimum contracted level in the MLAs, plus the activity level that we see happening. Our services business is number one, harder to predict, but number two, it's much more driven by volumes. And so this year, we did predict an uptick in our services business.
Two components to that: One is construction management, which is a smaller piece, and that's much more of a niche markets, and not nationwide, it's not for every carrier. So that one doesn't give you a broader read-across. But we also have our acquisitions, zoning, and permitting, and our engineering services, which are more broad-based. And we've predicted an uptick in both of those as the year goes along. And the activity levels that we saw in Q1, and the uptick of conversations with customers in Q1, gave us the confidence to reiterate our guide for that services business through the year, which implies an increasing level of activity throughout the year.
Yeah, and I feel like the services business you've mentioned in the past is more volatile, but it seems like it's on a better or a good run rate right now. And, is that level of confidence kind of something you see increasing through the year, or how do you kind of-
Well, Q1 was good. It came in ahead of our expectations.
Mm.
Because of that, and then also the conversations we had with those customers... And when we're setting a services guide, those aren't C-suite level conversations. That's talking to the boots on the ground that are actually deploying the networks. And everything we're hearing from them supports the guide that we set out, and that's why we're able to reiterate it.
No, that's great. In terms of... I feel like initially there was a lot of minimal activity. When you saw 3G to 4G, there's usually amendments, and then there's co-location that ends up happening, and it takes time. Are you starting to see that co-location activity, or is it mainly amendment activity right now, and that's gonna sustain the build for a while?
Yeah, we're seeing some uptick in co-locations, but again, that first phase of that build and that kind of repeatable cadence they do is mostly amendment-driven because they're just trying to get to a coverage area. Then when you get through that coverage area, you look at your network, and you're gonna find some places that need to be optimized, so you need some fill-in sites. So you see an uptick in co-location there. And then there is a big push to continue to push coverage out in parts of America that don't have good coverage. So you'll see a little bit of new sites there. But we still don't have ubiquitous Mid-band 5G everywhere on the existing sites. I think what we've said publicly is one of our carriers is over 80%, one is a little bit over half, and one's a little bit under half.
So that implies a long level of activity still to get to that ubiquitous nationwide coverage for mid-band 5G. So we still expect there to be a healthy level of amendments as we get through that. Even once you get to kind of full coverage, once people are using the network, and when you first deploy it, there aren't a ton of users that have, you know, mid-band, 5G-capable phones at first. Now we're starting to see more uptick in handsets, so you're gonna see more pressure on the network. So they'll need to go back and amend those sites again to put more equipment on to add capacity to the existing sites. So we still think there's a lot of amendment work to be done, both to get to full 5G everywhere and then to densify the network once the usage upticks.
Something that a lot of people have been asking, and it could be difficult for you to be able to see on a kind of site-by-site or from your level, but fixed wireless has really taken hold. The carriers, first T-Mobile, then Verizon, but now AT&T, it just seems like that's a great incremental opportunity for them to use their mobile networks. Are you able to see that at all in terms of your densification or build?
So today, the carriers say that they're using the excess capacity on their existing networks to do that, and I believe them. And so today, we're not seeing standalone fixed wireless applications by the major carriers, and we haven't seen a huge change in their behavior on that. I'm hopeful, though, that as they continue to add subs, that that will be something that drives densification on the networks at some point. And that's kind of incremental to our business case that we've laid out. When I, you know, reiterated that kind of longer-term guide, that's based on kind of the current viewshed of what we have of mobile data consumption. But fixed wireless is exciting. This industry's been trying to deploy it for 20 years.
I first worked on some projects with one of our carriers 20 years ago, and the technology just didn't work. Today, it does. So I think fixed wireless is an exciting use case, and, you know, I'm glad my customers are able to monetize it, and I hope to see that they grow it, and it becomes, you know, a new driver for us as well.
You mentioned it a little bit earlier about bringing your leverage down, but one of the reasons your leverage was up was buying CoreSite. In your most recent quarter, the bookings level was one of the strongest it's been for a little while. Can you talk a little bit about how CoreSite is doing, how that acquisition has turned out for American, and then where could we see it go over time?
Yeah, look, we're very excited about CoreSite. In fact, the last two years, we've had record levels of new business the past two years. In Q1, what we had was a record level of, or at least the highest in a few years, retail sales. That's one specific segment of it. I don't know if we're gonna have another record year of sales overall. We set a pretty high bar for ourselves last year, but what I would say is the pipeline this year is very robust, and it's gonna be in excess of what they typically saw before we bought them, so it's gonna be another great year. CoreSite benefits from a couple of trends that are happening in the industry.
The main driver of new business in CoreSite is hybrid cloud deployments by enterprises, and that's people who either still have their computers in their offices and wanna move into a data center to take advantage of cloud tools, or people who went cloud native or all cloud, and they're finding it too expensive to host their data there. So they, they end up doing what's kind of called a hybrid cloud, and you need to be in an interconnected data center like CoreSite to do that. And we see a very long tail of that business. That'll continue to drive sales in CoreSite for the foreseeable future, and that's a very sustainable new business pipeline for us. AI is also providing an incremental new use case for CoreSite.
Now we're not the right venue for hosting large learning models and some of the hyperscale that you're seeing a lot of money being invested in, but we are a good location for what's called the inferencing layer. So it's taking those large learning models and then talking to all of us. And so that's a use case that we are seeing, interested in and signing business in CoreSite. What all these different use cases are driving, though, is a lot of demand for the asset. And the AI use cases that are happening in other parts of the industry are taking a lot of the available capacity, and that's creating an imbalance between supply and demand that's driving prices up.
And so we're certainly able to take advantage of the higher prices while still continuing to kind of stick to our core business, which is serving this curated mix of networks, clouds, and enterprises to create that interconnection ecosystem that's so critical to that business plan. So we're very excited about CoreSite. You know, right now, the majority of our investments are going into replenishing the capacity we sold. And so record years of sales, we're replenishing that. We've got about 40 MW of construction going on today, and we brought some online earlier in the year. And in that 40 MW, about 35% of it's pre-leased. That's high relative to what CoreSite traditionally had in terms of pre-leasing.
And what that does for us is it de-risks that investment, accelerates the time to stabilization, and gives us a lot of of visibility to that revenue stream for the future. So we're very excited about what's going on there. You also saw us buy a small data center in Miami about 18 months ago. And you might see us look at another Tier 2 market or two. When we're doing that, that's trying to sow the seeds of a new campus. So we'll start out small, try to get that mix of clouds, networks, enterprises going, and hopefully build some new campuses to give us more chances to invest later.
So, so just to clarify a little bit, it seems like a lot of the CoreSite business and the bookings and the growth there has been on the existing overall business and kind of call it their bread-and-butter type of growth, and it's not necessarily all, like, AI-driven these days.
That's correct. We've had some incremental new business from AI, and then prices have gone up across the ecosystem because of AI, but the main driver of our business continues to be that hybrid cloud deployment.
Mm-hmm. And something that we're hearing a lot more about is that it is difficult to continue to provide the supply in terms of power, space, land, and you're spending a decent amount of CapEx this year to, I would say, you know, keep up with the capacity and demand that-
Sure.
-you've been... how do you see this evolving over the next few years, and, how do you kind of manage that with the overall business?
Yeah. So in terms of the CapEx, you know, one of the things that differentiates us, I think, from other companies, is we've been able to build a portfolio of assets where we have a lot of flexibility in terms of how much CapEx we put in. And when we brought private capital into CoreSite as one of our partners, part of that was giving us more optionality in terms of how we fund it. And, you know, the business is going well. We're underwriting great yields, so I'm sure that we can be very willing to do that.
In terms of looking forward, yeah, you might see CapEx tick up a bit as we're replacing these kind of record levels of new sales. But that's a good use of our CapEx because you're talking about an investment that, once you get to a stabilized facility, is earning us yields in the mid-teens. That's what we're underwriting there. And so we feel very good about that asset and the chances to invest in it, but we also have the option to pull back on that if we decided to. Now, when it comes to power, which is one of the biggest limiting factors in, in data center capacity today, you know, I'm very fortunate that we bought a company that had a very forward-looking group of people.
So we've got power secured for everything under construction today and everything we think we need to build the next couple of years. Then we have pipelines of power that we're pursuing for all of the future development that we have. You know, and so you may commit to a substation today for a building you're not gonna build for 10 years... and that's just good planning for it. Now, we're selling faster than we thought, so we need to provide more power. But I'd also say that there's a good pipeline there, and we feel good about that. I guess one other thing I would mention is our Northern Virginia campus is in Reston. It's not in Loudoun County, so we don't- we're not on the same transmission line, so we don't have the same constraints that they have in Loudoun County.
That was kind of one of my other questions, is that power is becoming so much more of an issue, but it seems like given the planning and the management of that business, that they've already thought of that, and it, it's not gonna be something that you have to worry about, at least in the next few years.
For our core business and the expansions that we plan, we're in good shape on that.
All right. One of the nice things about American, outside of just CoreSite and the U.S. business is you have a large international portfolio, and it seems like you can pick and choose where to allocate capital over time. A market you decided to exit is India. Can you give us an update on how that process is going, and, what should we expect there?
Sure. Well, there's not a lot of new news on that. We did sign a definitive agreement to sell our India business at the beginning of the year, and we have projected that that will close in the second half of the year, and so that's still the approvals are pending. The most significant approval is the Competition Commission in India, and we're just waiting for that process to play out. What we were able to do this year is, if you look at the total proceeds of that transaction, it was about $2.5 billion, and that's enterprise value of about $2 billion, and then there were certain receivables that we retained the rights to, as well as we have an optionally convertible debenture, an OCD, that secured some of the receivables.
And so earlier this year, we had collections that were pretty healthy, and we were able to dividend out about $100 million net of withholding tax back to the parent company, repatriated that capital, and paid down debt with it. We also converted 90% of the OCD, and we're able to sell that stock, and the net proceeds were about $216 million, which we will repatriate. We haven't done it yet, but we'll bring that back to the US and pay down debt with it. So we've accelerated about $300 million of the proceeds, and so there's still another, you know, roughly $200 million with the receivables and also the ticking fee. That's part of that transaction. And so we expect to realize the remaining $2.2 billion as the transaction closes.
And I guess a part of that is, for me, India used to be very high growth five years ago, you know, dating myself a little bit in the past. You know, obviously, the market has changed. You've shifted away from that, and you moved to data centers. Again, it's one of those things where I feel like you're able to allocate capital to higher return, better growth areas. Of your portfolio internationally right now, where do you see kind of more opportunity than less?
Yeah. So when I look at our international portfolio, you know, I'll just kind of go by continent on there.
Mm-hmm.
Europe is a strong performer for us right now. We've seen, you know, healthy new business. You know, 5G is a little bit farther ahead in, Germany and Spain than it is in the U.S., so we're seeing a healthy level of activity there with amendments, and we're seeing that shift a little bit more to co-locations there. We see a good pipeline there. So that Telxius transaction continues to look good for us, and it's a good performer. It's gonna be a good growth driver for us, and so we think Europe's a very strong market. Latin America is a little more of a challenge for us right now. We've got some churn that's affecting us over the next few years, predominantly Oi in Brazil.
Also, because there's been a lot of carrier consolidation, those remaining customers are absorbing the companies they bought, so the new business isn't as robust there as it has historically been. There's also some delays in getting 5G spectrum out in those markets. So while we're seeing some good new levels of business, we're still seeing some churn, and business isn't quite at the pace that it used to be. Now, having said that, I think there's a lot of optimism for the future there. Once we get through this slower period of a few years, we'll have fewer carriers, they'll be healthier. The data trends, the data usage trends are just as healthy there as they are in the U.S.
I just got back from a trip to Brazil, and I met with our sales teams and some customers there, and they're seeing all the same demand drivers that we're seeing here, and so that would indicate that we should see an uptick in business there as well. So I think Latin America's in a challenging period right now for a few years, but I think those kind of out years, I'm very optimistic we're gonna see those return to the high levels of growth that we saw in the past. In Africa, we're seeing tremendous demand for our assets. In local currency terms, we had one of the most successful quarters ever in Q1 in new business. And so if you think about the demand for those, those sites, it's healthy.
The, the networks are so critical there because it's driving their banking and their healthcare and all kinds of other, other things, so the growth of mobile data there is, is very robust and demand's robust. The challenge there for us has been macroeconomic conditions. So we've had some challenges with, FX headwinds, but if we can get some moderation in some of those macroeconomic conditions, again, the demand driver there is great.
It's funny because I feel like so often we're focused more on the next quarter or two versus kind of a longer-term outlook, but to what you were saying about Latin America, like, there are some near-term headwinds, there's some churn, but I assume longer term, you see that as a higher growth market than the US business. Obviously, risk-adjusted.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Once we get through this period of downturn, I think all the ingredients are there to see a return of investment in Latin America, and those growth rates accelerate back to being accretive to our overall growth rates.
Mm-hmm. Then in terms of Africa, there is a lot of FX and macroeconomic volatility. But do you think that that market could be as good as Latin America as things stabilize? Or how do you see it relative to your other opportunities?
Look, from a demand perspective and the sales that we're seeing there, it's better. Again, it's, it's the FX devaluation we're seeing.
Mm-hmm.
And look, we have a number of things in place to protect us from that. We have CPI-linked escalators. We have some agreements where it's pegged to U.S. dollars, so we may get paid in local currency, but it's pegged to U.S. dollars. It's not fully offsetting the devaluation we're seeing today, so it really depends on what happens in those macroeconomic conditions. But from a demand perspective, the best growth we're seeing in terms of new leases and amendments being signed is in Africa today.
So you actually think it's one of the bigger opportunities if the macroeconomic doesn't-
I think if everything else normalizes itself, I think that it's gonna be a great driver for us.
Yeah.
So.
So I think one of your key advantages is your scale and balance sheet, and like you said, you're kinda coming back down below 5 times. Given that rates are high, people are, I guess, or companies are still trying to delever more than not. But do you see, I guess, opportunities in whether domestic or international, markets at some point, coming to fruition? Because right now it seems like there's been a dislocation of private markets still having these super high values, public markets for towers being kinda down. But at some point, I feel like your financial balance sheet and power could be used to reaccelerate growth.
Yeah, look, I mean, if we saw something compelling right now, we could do it.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we don't see anything compelling right now.
Mm-hmm.
That supports our focus on delevering and getting ready, so that if there are opportunities in the future, we're primed and positioned to take those.
Mm-hmm.
Getting our leverage down, you know, we made a commitment to the rating agencies to delever, but we're well ahead of that. Our focus on getting down to five as quickly as possible is really us trying to optimize our cost of capital and getting into a place where we think we're primed to take advantage of whatever opportunities are out there. It just gives us more flexibility. It's hard to predict exactly what's gonna come to market in the next few years. I'm optimistic that there will be some opportunities that make sense for us, but it has to be at the right price and the right terms and conditions.
So if you think about Telxius, we waited for years to enter the European market in a bigger way, and we saw many portfolios trade that we just couldn't pull the trigger on. It wasn't necessarily the price; it was the terms and conditions. For us, we know it's incredibly important to have CPI-linked escalators, even in Europe. It's important to be able to monetize amendments with the anchor tenant. It's important that that anchor tenant be a number one or number two carrier. It's important to be able to lease all your sites, not just some of the sites. You don't wanna have some set aside. There are a number of terms and conditions out there in some of the existing portfolios that we just wouldn't find attractive.
But we would love to be able to do something, you know, more aggressively if we found the right deal at the right price and the right terms.
You talked about optimization earlier, and as you are in the head role now, and as you look across the business, around the world, is it market share? Is it kind of partners? Kind of what do you value the most in terms of how to grow the business longer term?
You know, there are a number of things that we look for, and some of the things that we've learned over our history, it's important that you're partnered with the number one or number two carrier in a market, because that's gonna give you the long-term stability in that market. It's important that we have CPI-linked escalators. It's important that you can get at least localized scale. I say localized scale because you can be in a larger market with not having a huge scale in the entire market, but you have to be relevant to your customers, at least in a locality, to have a seat at the table with those customers. So for us, it's really kind of... it's all of those things combined that give you the right opportunity there. And you may have to start sub-scale.
We're sub-scale in some of our markets, and some of those markets, we're hoping that there's a chance to get to scale at them. Some of them, we may never get there.
Mm-hmm.
Achieving at least localized scale is really important for getting that kind of seat at the table with the customer to get the right terms and conditions.
And you have kind of, in your guidance, put out a significant build-to-suit portfolio. Where are you more focused on these days in that build-to-suit, and then how might that change over time as that develops?
Sure. So we're projected to build about 3,000 sites this year. That's a little bit lower than prior years, but that reflects our disciplined capital allocation strategy. So because of some of the headwinds we're seeing in emerging markets, we've raised the hurdle rates in some of those markets, which gives us a little bit less opportunity. But we're excited about, in particular, we have about 500 sites we're gonna build in Europe this year, and so that's a great market for us, great counterparties, great day one yields. And then, we have about 1,400 that we'll build in Africa, roughly. I think about 100, Latin America, and the balance of them are in Asia, including some in India still.
I'll say most people don't think of Europe as a growth market for towers. People see it as a developed market, tons of regulation. It's gotta be very difficult and expensive to build. Why is that an actually attractive market to build?
Look, what we're seeing is we're seeing healthy demand for the assets that we build and buy.
Mm-hmm.
We have great counterparties there and great terms and conditions. Look, in Germany, in particular, we're struggling with everybody else with some of the permitting and power issues in Germany. It's a new market for us, so we've been, you know, kinda bringing in talent from across the globe to help that team out and get better at it, and we're seeing some improvements there. But we think that as long as you have the right asset in the right place with the right customer mix, there's definitely a chance to grow there.
Mm-hmm.
And so we're excited about what we're able to do.
And then we talked a little bit about the delevering. The M&A market might not be as robust. As you build up more cash flow, and there's not as much opportunity to invest at the hurdle rates that you want, are stock buybacks or dividend kind of... How are you managing those two, and what's your kind of capital allocation?
Yeah.
These days?
So for us, it's all about what creates the best long-term shareholder value. So when we get to 5.0 and we're looking at incremental capital, the way we'll think about it is we'll take, you know, all those different opportunities, whether it's M&A, internal CapEx program, stock buybacks, you know, delevering further, or increasing the dividend. We'll look at all those and say, "What's gonna give us the greatest long-term shareholder value?" And we'll allocate that incremental dollar that way. And again, I think it's one of the real strengths of our company that we've developed, especially our internal CapEx program, in a way that we can fund or not fund at our election. And we've got capital partners in Europe and with CoreSite.
We've also got build-to-suit agreements that let us flex from year to year what we invest in that, and that gives us a lot of optionality. So we'll figure out at the time we get there. It's gonna depend on what's gonna give us the best return. So things like interest rates, share price, things like that will factor into that decision-making.
Something you mentioned earlier with CoreSite was potentially new market. You mentioned Miami. Does CoreSite need more markets, or is it more just very good opportunities that your customers are asking to be in, and you have an existing team that can deliver that?
Yeah, look, it's opportunistic. You know, when we bought CoreSite, they had a lot of capacity in their existing campuses to expand. We've added some land in the right places to give us even more capacity, and so we have an enormous runway of opportunity just in the markets where they currently operate. But what we've seen is there are some other markets that are underserved today, and we'd love the opportunity to build additional campuses in the future. So when we do that in a smaller market, that's really building a pipeline for the future.
Mm-hmm.
So it's not gonna move the needle today, but if we can find three, four, or five markets where we can seed a little bit of money in there and start building that ecosystem, and then a couple of those work, that'll give us new investment opportunities for the next decade.
I think one of the original issues that people had with when you bought CoreSite was that the tower business is in the U.S. was really good, and the returns are hard to match. But given what you said about pricing and the way the market's looking, do you think the returns on the data center business are gonna be equal to the tower business?
Look, before we bought CoreSite, they had the highest returns on invested capital in the industry in the mid-teens. We haven't changed the underwriting at all, and we have more opportunity to deploy capital that we believe will give us mid-teen stabilized yields in those campuses, and so that's a great use of capital. Having said that, towers are the best business model out there. Data centers are close. They're really good. But, you know, if I had the same opportunity to build towers in the US-
Mm-hmm.
at the same returns, I'd pick that one. I don't have that opportunity, so CoreSite's a good alternative to invest in the U.S.
I think that's a great place to leave it.
All right.
Two good businesses to be in.
Thanks.
You got it. Thank you.