Services and infrastructure for Citi. Just a quick housekeeping item: disclosures are available at the back of the room. If you don't have access or would like another copy, please email me at michael.rollins@citi.com, and we'll get those to you. It's a pleasure to welcome back Steve Vondran, President and CEO of American Tower. Steve, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thanks for inviting us.
Maybe to get us started, we'll start maybe high-level and get into some of the particulars of the regional segments, but maybe just provide us with an update on American Tower's strategy to enhance financial performance and improve value for shareholders.
Yeah, happy to. As we laid out about 18 months ago, we're laser-focused on several key priorities for the portfolio. And the first and foremost is to maximize organic growth across the portfolio. That's going to deliver the best bang for the buck for our shareholders. That's our number one priority: focused on organic growth. Second, is we will selectively deploy capital, predominantly in our developed markets, to further enhance the portfolio, have more assets to sell, and that'll complement that growth as well. You couple those two things with a very disciplined approach to cost. And we've been very successful in bringing down SG&A over the past couple of years. And now we're turning to kind of the bigger cost stack. And the goal there is to keep our costs growing slower than our revenue.
That can be challenging in an inflationary environment, but we think we can do it. We believe that we'll continue to offer an expanding gross margin that creates value for our shareholders. Finally, it's focusing on our balance sheet as a strategic asset, making sure that we've got a balance sheet that can withstand the ups and downs of the markets, that is less subject to volatility than it has been in the past. At one point, our floating rate debt was a little bit higher. We've brought that down, making the balance sheet an asset and making sure that we do have dry powder when there are other opportunities to invest as well.
So when you combine all of those with the backdrop of our industry, which is still an incredibly strong industry, mobile data growth continues to grow in our developed markets in that kind of 15%-20% range. In the emerging markets, it could be around that range or even higher. And that means our carrier customers have to continue to deploy assets across the globe. So we see a very long horizon of investment by the carrier customers that's going to drive tremendous growth and a lot of value for our shareholders over time.
And so maybe drilling down just on some of that for a moment. You mentioned this transition, increasing mix towards the developed markets with the investments. You've also in the past talked about optimization of the portfolio. Are you through all of that optimization, or is there more to go?
When you think about the international markets in general, the reason that we originally went into those markets is we had two theses that underpinned the investment there. The first is that we could leverage our operational capabilities to provide a differentiated value proposition for the customers that would give us the chance to drive better returns than anybody else could in those markets. We've been phenomenally successful at that. I can tell you without any hesitation, we are the best operator on every continent we operate, and we get paid for that. We get to charge a premium for that operational excellence. The second leg of that was that by investing in those markets that were a little bit further behind on the technology curve, that we could enhance and elongate our growth curve as a company.
And that's where we've struggled a little bit in some of the emerging markets. It really comes down to kind of three categories of things that happen in those markets. The first is additional carrier consolidation beyond what you see in the developed markets. The second is you're more subject to one-off things that happen in those markets. The third is FX has been a little bit more than what we underwrote in those. I'll actually use Latin America as an example of kind of how those three have played out to be more challenging for us. When you look at carrier consolidation in Latin America, we've been very clear that Latin America is a challenge for the next couple of years for us. We've seen Telefónica exit Mexico. We've seen Oi that kind of sold itself to its three competitors in Brazil.
And you continue to see some smaller consolidations in the other countries who are in there as well. And so that's put some challenge into the growth there because you're having churn from those carrier consolidations. The second thing is you have more one-off items that happen in the emerging markets that happen in the developed markets. In fact, last quarter, we disclosed that we have a customer who has initiated an arbitration on some of the contractual provisions and the calculation of rents in a market. I actually want to give a little bit more clarity on that than what we gave there. That customer is AT&T Mexico. Their annual rents are about $300 million. And we took an additional reserve in Q2 on that because as part of that, they've stopped paying tower rents this year. So the AR has gone up there.
And we feel really good about the contractual provisions, and we intend to fully defend ourselves in the arbitration and use all the legal remedies. But that's an example of a one-off item that can lead to more volatility in those earnings because we may have to book additional reserves if they keep withholding payment. And then the third issue that we see in those developed markets is really FX. And in some years, it's a benefit. And in some years, it's a big detriment. And over the past several years, the dollar has been stronger than historically it has against some of those currencies. So it's been a real headwind for us. So we add all those things together, that really leads to more volatility in those markets. Now, we believe that there are still good markets that will deliver growth in excess of our developed markets over time.
But that volatility decreases the quality of earnings that we have. And it makes us a little bit more subject to those things that we don't control. And so strategically, what we said is we're going to pivot more of our investments to developed markets. We did divest India. And before we divested India, about 40% of our AFFO came from emerging markets. After we divested India, it's about 25%. And we still think we should decrease that. Now, we haven't set a specific target for that. But as we continue to invest in developed markets versus emerging markets, that mix will generally kind of come down over time. And again, we think they're an appropriate part of our portfolio. It just needs to be a smaller piece of it.
So when we think about strategically where the company needs to be, it's more focused on developed markets, a little bit less interest in the emerging markets, and then going back to those kind of key strategic priorities. Now, you asked about further divestitures, et cetera. We did also divest fiber in Mexico and South Africa, sorry. And there are some markets that we've designated as kind of non-core or that we're not or subscale in. But what we've done is we've kind of changed the way we operate those to operate them from regional hubs. So there's no compelling need to get rid of them. They're not a drag on the business. So we're not going to do any fire sales.
But if we found somebody else who wanted those assets and is willing to pay more than what we think they're worth to our shareholders, we would certainly look at that. Look, I grew up in a family-owned business. Everything's for sale at the right price, but I'm not going to do any fire sales in terms of divestitures.
And just going back for a moment, so this customer that you've entered arbitration with, you mentioned is $300 million of annual rent?
Yep.
What's the range of outcomes that investors should keep in mind from that process?
Look, we're not going to speculate on any kind of worst-case scenarios on that. We feel very good about our contract. We feel that it's very clear in terms of what we should be collecting on it. And so we'll continue to pursue that. And as the arbitration develops, we'll let people know. We just want to be a little more clear on what that disclosure was because if this payment pause continues, we could be taking additional reserves in addition to what we took in Q2.
And the details are very helpful. Maybe moving to the domestic business, the domestic tower business. So when we look at your leasing activity, American Tower seems to be generating better activity and organic tenant billings growth than some of your competitors when you pull out that merger churn. And you mentioned earlier that you're able to extract a premium for the services that you provide. Are there other factors that go behind what's driving your relative success in the U.S. market?
Sure. I don't want to comment on my competitors, but I'll just tell you what we've done and what we've focused on. The first thing you have to remember is it's a real estate business, and so not every tower is created equal. We were very thoughtful in constructing our portfolio, and some of the most valuable towers in our portfolio go back to those old A and B block carriers that really formed the nucleus of the network, and everything was designed around that. I think we've had some natural advantages from that construction of our portfolio. Then you add on to that the value proposition we've created for our customers. We're not just a landlord. We're a partner to them. Our services business has become a real benefit to the customers. In fact, they're the ones that are driving us to do more.
It's not us trying to grow it. It's them wanting to do more with us. We have a Shared Power program that gives them a little bit of an easy button in terms of that, and the way we maintain and operate our assets decreases our total cost of ownership, then you add to that the investments we've made in our operational capabilities to get them on air incredibly fast, coupled with those comprehensive MLAs that are kind of like an easy button in terms of upgrades. That really gives them a reason to do more business with us, and I think it's the combination of all that that's led to us being able to continue to offer more value to our customers and drive higher growth.
What are you seeing in terms of leasing activity? Is it still improving quarter over quarter? And do you have some updates just in terms of what you're seeing out of the environment?
Bless you. Yeah, we continue to see growth in the pipeline there. And if you look at our guide for the year, it implies a higher growth toward the back end of the year. Our services guide is going down a little bit toward the back end of the year. That's because we had some customers that were kind of front-loaded in terms of their efforts. And I think what I would say about the pipeline is you kind of see it mirroring where people are in terms of their network deployments. The folks that are further along in terms of getting their mid-band upgrades done, they're slowing down a little bit. And the folks that are further behind are speeding up a little bit. So we continue to see a robust pipeline. It is building throughout the year. And that's a good sign for activity.
I would just mention that there's a little bit of decoupling of activity from property revenue sometimes with us because of our comprehensive agreements. So when the customers are under the comprehensive agreements, it kind of evens out the revenue piece of it. So if those customers are scaling down a little bit, it doesn't mean that revenue's coming down because it's a little bit more of a spread on that. But we are still seeing a robust pipeline. We're also seeing a little bit of a mix change. On a percentage basis, it's about the same for colocations and amendments. And that is still about 90% amendments in terms of volume, which you'd expect because we have carriers on a lot of our towers and about 10% colos. But as the overall volume's increased, that means the number of colos has increased. And it's actually up about 200%.
So that's a very positive sign as well. So we're excited about the carriers continuing to invest. We are seeing densification starting. And that's in line with what we thought was going to happen at this point in the cycle. And we feel very good about the carrier activity that we're seeing and how much work they have left to do.
So with the news last week, can you help us understand the implications of EchoStar selling spectrum to AT&T and how this is going to influence the forward pace of organic leasing growth for American Tower?
Sure, so all we know is what's public. We don't have any specialized knowledge that you guys don't have on this. I think it's too early to tell in terms of some of the knock-on effects of what's going to happen there. I think, generally speaking, spectrum in the hands of a well-capitalized carrier promotes more development and more activity over time than it does in the hands of an under-capitalized carrier. Having said that, we don't know exactly what's going to happen with Boost yet. First of all, it hasn't been approved. There's still a government approval process. Second, the terms of that agreement are pretty generic that have been put out there. We don't know how that's going to pan out and exactly what the plans are between AT&T and Boost on that, and so we don't really know exactly what's going to affect this yet.
Having said that, if you look at Boost as a customer of ours, what we've been very transparent about in the past is we have a comprehensive MLA in place. The only thing that's baked into our guidance through 2027 is the contractual minimums under that agreement. So as long as they continue to pay under that agreement, it shouldn't have an effect on that piece of it. Beyond that, it remains to be seen what's going to happen on that. And in terms of kind of the downside risks with Boost, again, we feel very good about the contract we have in place. But the worst impacts, if you had churn from it, is they represent about 4% of our U.S. business, about 2% of our global business. And we don't expect the worst to happen, but that's just to size the exposure for everybody there.
We'll continue to evaluate this as it plays out. When we have more information, we'll be able to give you guys a better feel for how that impacts us.
So we've been getting a bunch of questions, as you may imagine, across the implications. And so one of the questions that we're getting, maybe just to think about the durability of the lease itself. So if EchoStar were to decommission the network, you mentioned you have a comprehensive through 2027, but the contract actually goes for longer, right?
It does. We signed that agreement in 2021, and it expires in 2036.
It's a 15-year deal.
Yeah.
What's the durability of a customer who may be decommissioning the network, paying out what's owed on the contract versus the risk that they find a way not to pay the contract?
We do our best when we craft these agreements to protect ourselves on it, and we will aggressively defend our revenue stream on that, so how it's going to play out, I don't know exactly, but rest assured, I'm a lawyer by training. We've done everything we can to protect ourselves on it, but I can't predict what the other party is going to do or what's going to happen with that, so I expect to get paid, but we'll have to see. If something else happens, we'll have to figure that out, but I expect to get paid.
In terms of just thinking conceptually, so one of the interesting things about the sale is AT&T is buying 600 MHz spectrum, which they currently don't have in their network. Is this an incremental amendment opportunity for American Tower above and beyond what they're doing with the mid-band right now?
It could be if they decide to deploy it. It could be. Again, it's too early for us to know exactly how it's going to pan out and how they plan to use it. But look, any spectrum that a carrier has when they deploy it can represent opportunity for us. And so we'll just have to see what their plans are because as of yet, they haven't shared with us what they're planning to do with it.
So one other question on this, and this is maybe a hard one because it's kind of in the realm of scenario analysis, but with AT&T potentially getting more spectrum with this transaction and the possibility that other carriers get some spectrum as well, that could be plug and play. So maybe more mid-band, maybe more AWS-3. I guess maybe just a quick clarification is if those things happen, those are kind of like plug and play where those are not amendment. If the carrier has that spectrum deployed and they're getting more of it, is that right?
They could be. It's possible that that's the outcome on it. Again, I think it depends on who gets what, what they do with it. At the end of the day, though, the additional spectrum is not going to solve their need to densify the networks. If you go back to the CTIA white paper that was published a couple of years ago, they said they needed 400 MHz of mid-band spectrum by 2027. I think it was 1,400 by 2030 or 2031, somewhere in that timeframe. And so the this spectrum is a lot shallower than that. It gives them some of it, and they're going to be able to utilize that. And that's a good thing because, quite frankly, it can make some of the other things that they're doing, like fixed wireless, more viable for them.
So I don't view this as a negative for towers at all in terms of the other three carriers. I think this is a positive because it gives our customers another avenue to monetize their network and to invest more in the assets that they're putting on our sites.
Because this has been, I think, one of the concerns is that if there's more spectrum that the carriers have, they densify less. For example, if they're getting maybe on the downlink, 20%-30% more spectrum, let's just take that as a percentage. And network traffic is growing, you mentioned earlier, like 15%-20%. That's at least a year of extra capacity that they can use with spectrum versus other sources. So in the past, when you've seen these kinds of things happen, at least for a short-term or mid-term period of time, does it reduce? Is it going to affect the trajectory that you're on right now for densification just for a period of time? And then you get to the other side of this, and it's back to that longer-term path.
What does the outlays add? I don't think so. I think if you look at where they need spectrum, where the densification is occurring today, it's a drop in the bucket of what they need to do in terms of accelerating it. If you think about the need to densify and where they need spectrum, it's not uniform across the country. If you're in rural Montana, you don't need a lot of spectrum. But if you're in a dense urban area, you need a ton of spectrum, and you need it quickly. And if you just think about handset penetration, we just kind of got over 50% mid-band handset penetration this year. That continues to accelerate. 5G mid-band use, those users are using twice as much data as 4G. So I think that where that demand happens is just as important as the fact that it's happening in general.
So when I think about that spectrum being deployed and the spectrum that they're getting, they need every tool in the toolkit to meet that demand. So I don't think it's going to delay significantly any types of densification. When we've seen these types of things in the past, any delays are very short-term. It's really around network planning, trying to figure out what they're going to do with it. And then that's usually where you see a short-term little pause. But even that's pretty short-term, and it doesn't affect the most acute need areas that we're seeing them already attacking.
On the second quarter earnings call, American Tower noted that $5 million of leasing revenue got shifted from 2025- 2026.
Yes.
What caused that? And does this transaction, do you think, have anything to do with it?
So, $5 million on a $10 billion P&L. But I understand how important it is to everyone, a new business perspective. There was a cadence of activity that we thought was going to happen. It's going a little bit slower. This is not an if we're going to get it. It's a when we're going to get it. And quite frankly, we were probably a little too precise in our guide at the beginning of the year, given that more of our revenue is subject to the volumes. I don't think it's related to this transaction. I think that you're talking about a very small number of sites that got pushed out a quarter or two. So I don't think it's this. I think it's just they're not going as fast as we thought they were going to go.
Zooming out on the domestic business, how do you see organic growth pacing over the next few years? You have your multi-year guide out there. How do you see the growth rate from here?
I'll just kind of refer back to what we've said before in terms of our long-term growth algorithm. We think our developed markets will continue to be kind of mid-single-digit growth markets. And the components of that are, we've got a 3% escalator in the U.S. In Europe, it's CPI-based. I'll focus on the U.S. first. 3% escalator. Historical churn has been 1%-2%. And absent UScellular, which is a new thing, we think it's going to trend to the bottom end of the 1%-2%. And just to size UScellular again, that represents less than 0.5% of our global revenues, about 1% of our U.S. revenues. So depending on what happens with that, you can have a little bit more churn from that than what we expected. But so you got the 3%.
You got the churn trending down closer to the 1%. So you got about 2% there. Then you have the incremental growth that's coming from colocations and amendments. We think that gets you into kind of that mid-single-digit organic growth rate. Europe, we have a CPI-linked escalator. We continue to see good demand trends there. We think that'll continue to be kind of mid-single-digit as well.
Maybe while we're just starting to traverse around the world, so LATAM, Africa, data centers, maybe just a sense of how you see growth in those businesses as well.
Yeah. So we've been very clear. LATAM is a challenge for us for the next couple of years. We continue to have churn for Oi that'll affect us in 2026 and 2027. There's some other carrier consolidation churn happening in our smaller markets there as well. So we're expecting growth in Latin America to be low single digits the next couple of years. After that, we feel good about the rebound of growth there. And we're seeing some early signs of that in Brazil where the carriers are starting to invest more in their networks there. So we think that once you get past 2027, that LATAM will be accretive to growth, and it'll be growing faster than our developed markets. Same thing with Africa. In Africa, we're largely through the carrier consolidation churn there. In fact, I think we're pretty much through with everything that we're anticipating there.
And so we're seeing very healthy demand drivers in Africa. And the big challenge there has been FX. And we've seen a little bit of moderation in that this year. So we feel really good about Africa continuing to be a growth driver in U.S. dollar terms for us over the next several years as well. So CoreSite is our fastest-growing segment. And I think what we said publicly on that is we expect them to be double-digit revenue growth for the foreseeable future. But they're a smaller piece of the pie. So it just doesn't have as much oomph on the overall growth rates. But it's doing phenomenally well. And we expect that to continue because all the secular drivers in the data center business are durable in terms of what CoreSite's seeing. They're not subject to some of the fluctuations that you're seeing in the hyperscale space.
Coming back to some of the priorities you talked about at the beginning of our conversation, you talked about the goal to grow revenue faster than expense, and you also have talked in the past about the efficiency initiatives that you've been pursuing. Is there anything more you can share with us in terms of how that's progressing to identify maybe a step function change in the cost structure?
Yeah. So the first thing we do is attack SG&A. And at this point, I think we've harvested most of the low-hanging fruit there. So I don't think you're going to see dramatic reductions in SG&A, but there's still some incremental improvement that we can do. It just requires more time. It's things like automation, some investment, things like that. And so we'll continue to work on that over time. What Rod's focused on is the rest of the expense stack. And so some of that's a little bit fixed, like property taxes. There's not much you can do. We do have an aggressive program on land rents. But then it's looking at things like utilities, maintenance, CapEx spend, kind of our global supply chain. And so I'm not ready to set targets yet. I told Rod he's got till the back end of the year to do that.
The way to think about that is there's a trajectory that we've historically had in terms of a cost curve and how it relates to inflation and our revenue growth. The goal is to bend that down over the next several years so that you get more daylight between the two. That's what you should expect to see from us is more of a projection on a bending of the cost curve over time on that. Again, for us, the mission is grow expenses slower than revenue expand margin. We're very confident in our ability to do that. Today, if you look at the gross margin and the way the revenue on towers drops down to the bottom line, it's converting to EBITDA kind of greater than 80% in terms of every incremental dollar we put on the site.
So you're getting some natural margin expansion from that. And just keeping that cost discipline in is going to just help us to keep that growth going.
When you look across your global portfolio, what region or product is the most underappreciated in terms of the growth contribution to American Tower that could actually deliver some upside to how you think about multi-year growth?
So I think there's some growth drivers in the U.S. on the tower side that aren't kind of in that kind of long-term view shed. And there are things that we can't predict yet. So if you think about fixed wireless as a driver, today the carriers are using fallow capacity on their networks for it. But as that product becomes more mature and they're able to monetize it better, that could be something that's a stepwise driver. I think when you look at the impact of AI on the mobile networks as well as on the data center business over time, that's going to create an accelerating demand curve on the networks as well. When you start getting to the point where you're doing AI manipulation of video on devices, it could have the same types of effect that social media had.
And if that happens, there's not enough spectrum. The densification is going to have to accelerate. So I think that there are some demand drivers just on the core tower business that are underappreciated in terms of what could happen out there. I think in terms of the rest of our portfolio, I think there's some opportunities for us to do more in terms of power. We've developed a lot of really interesting things in Africa on power that could benefit our customers in places like the U.S. or Europe. It's just it's a little bit tough to break through that because that's kind of one of their core competencies, and you're asking to share more components. But I think that's a value add we could do for our customers there. I do think edge compute will have its day.
It's a little bit further out than I expected it to be, but it will come, and I think that'll be an enhancement. So when I look at the future, there's a lot of drivers that are going to drive the core tower business, some of the ancillary offerings that we have, and I'm excited about what the future holds. I think we've got a lot of ways to grow the revenue base and the portfolio over time.
It's maybe boiling that down to AFFO per share growth. What's the current goal for the multi-year annual AFFO per share growth, recognizing that there's a few things that you're dealing with right now? You've got some merger churn. You've got interest rates. You've got FX. But when you sort of cut through and normalize, help us appreciate what that trajectory looks like.
Yeah. So I'll give you the generics, and then I'll refer you back to we put out a chart in our Q1 earnings that shows this year because I think it's illustrative of this. If you look at our long-term growth algorithm, if you can grow developed markets at mid-single digits on an organic basis, and you can grow the international markets a couple hundred basis points higher, then that drops down to the bottom line at a higher because of the conversion rate, right? If you take that plus some incremental investment in the portfolio, minus some FX headwinds, minus some refinancing headwinds, we still think we can drive mid- to upper-single-digit AFFO growth per share on a durable basis over time. And our goal is to get as high as we can every year in that. But that's how we think about the business.
If you look at that chart that we put out in Q1, I'm sorry, Q4 earnings.
During Q1.
Yes. Then kind of the core growth rate for a portfolio was over 8% this year when you kind of look at the core growth before you add the detractors on some of those other things. So we think that we're delivering results that are supportive of that higher, the higher single digit growth if you can get some moderation in some of the headwinds like FX refinancing. And then we will have a little bit of headwinds from cash taxes growing in the non-U.S. markets.
And so that, just to clarify, was that? Remind me because I remember the slide, but was that inclusive of the merger churn or was that exclusive of that?
I don't remember off the top of my head, to be honest with you.
I guess maybe the question that.
I think it included the churn. I think that was our overall growth rate for this year. It's really, I'm talking from memory. I'll refer you guys back to the chart.
Because I guess the question is, do you see that the organic, the underlying strengthening based on your multi-year outlook? Because you've got, you're getting through the merger churn. You talked about activity getting better in the U.S. You talked about Europe. LATAM's going to get through its issues over the next couple of years.
Yeah. We certainly think that when you look at a couple of years from now, we're past all the big churn events. We think that the organic growth internationally is going to expand. I think when you look at the U.S. and Europe, it's going to be a little bit range-bound around that mid-single digits unless there's a catalyst like fixed wireless or something that really improves that.
You mentioned the balance sheet also and using your balance sheet. What's been interesting is I think your competitors have talked about the opportunity to be IG rated at six times plus EBITDA in terms of a leverage multiple. Your target is still trying to be below five at the high end, which you're kind of right there at the moment, if I recall correctly. You're right near there. So what's the opportunity to potentially revisit your target leverage over the next few years and maybe use that as an opportunity to enhance shareholder returns?
That range is something we set. That's not a range that's dictated by the ratings agency, so we've kind of put that range out there, and the importance of getting down to five was because that's a commitment that we made when we flexed up out of our policy, and so if you look at what's happened over the past year, we've gotten upgrades, so we certainly think there's some flexibility in terms of what those ranges look like. At this point, we haven't elected to do that, and frankly, we don't need to do that right now. We've got enough liquidity and enough opportunities in our current balance sheet structure that we don't need to do anything with that today, but I certainly think if you look at what other companies have done, there's probably some flexibility in there, and we'll figure that out over time.
But we're excited about the upgrades we've gotten. We think that's also very reflective of the change in quality of earnings. And that's been one of the focuses is to make sure that as we decrease the emerging market exposure, that the rating agencies as well as the investors appreciate the fact that that gives us a more durable, reliable, less volatile cash flow stream on it. And that's worthy of a premium. And you're seeing that in the debt markets as well.
Then in terms of using your financial flexibility, how do you think about the priority stack right now of capital allocation where buybacks might fit into that equation, as well as if there's any M&A that you feel like could be opportunistic for the company?
So when we think about capital allocation, the first obligation is we're going to pay our dividend. And this year, subject to board approval, that's looking to be about $3.2 billion-ish of our capital allocation on that. And then beyond that, we have our internal CapEx program. And that typically drives some of the best returns that we can make because those are the investments that we're able to do incrementally. And then beyond that, it's really a math equation for us. Is there more opportunity in an M&A environment than what a share buyback's going to give us or further delivering depending on the interest rate environment? And we've gotten to sufficient scale everywhere that we operate that there's no strategic imperative to buy something that would take us off of kind of a pure math equation.
And so the way Rod and I both think about it is every opportunity that comes our way gets paired up against a theoretical stock buyback, and we look at that. So we think buybacks are a very viable part of capital allocation. Now, I've also been very clear that I personally believe that opportunistic buybacks create a lot more value than programmatic buybacks. So you shouldn't expect to see us put in some sort of buy a certain number of shares at the market. That's not likely to happen under my leadership. But opportunistic buybacks are certainly on the table. And if we don't have a better use for the capital, that's what we'll look at.
We talked about a range of topics today. Is there anything that we didn't talk about or anything that you want to revisit just to leave our clients with today?
No, I would just reiterate. Towers are still one of the best business models ever created, probably the best business model ever created. And there are so many growth drivers over a multi-year period. It all comes down to how often people are using their phones. And so we tend to focus kind of on what's happening quarter to quarter. But at the end of the day, people are going to do more mobile connectivity over time. And there are so many new growth drivers coming, machine to machine, AI, all types of drivers to the business. That's going to make all these businesses grow continually at least over the next several decades. So this is not you shouldn't be thinking about this as a short-term business. This is a long-term investment in infrastructure. And that infrastructure is going to power the next wave of innovation and the next.
That's what people need to focus on when it comes to towers and, quite frankly, data centers.
Thanks for your time. Thank you.