$AMT American Tower Tape Reports
Per Ticker.id: $AMT American Tower Tape Reports — 1 podcast mention across 1 podcast (30 days), latest 2026-08-10 08:00 UTC.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, at first they came out with an iPod and I was just like, well, this is just a Walkman that just has, you know, you don't put a tape in it anymore, right? Well, all of a sudden, like they build this platform, that business, it's a great business. They keep iterating off of that business. That was a great momentum stock for a long time, right? Another great momentum stock for a long time that nobody even thinks about was something called American Tower, right? Like they build these cell phone towers, right? With all of this data flying around. And it's not the case anymore. I'm talking about, you know, years ago how this is one, this is just kind of an old example. But you know, that buildout was a big thing. There was a ton of business momentum there. Like nobody knew that name. We had it in some of our indexes and things like that for a really long time.
John Lewis — Animal Spirits Podcast · Talk Your Book: Why Momentum Investing Works · 2026-08-10Elon has never shied away from ambitious projects, to be fair, but man, spending 4 times your annual revenue on CapEx is pretty insane. And SpaceX is certainly not alone in, in making those massive data center investments though. How about now we discuss the final segment? Segment of SpaceX, which I think is the most attractive one from an investment perspective, and that's the connectivity business. So you actually recently pitched American Tower to me, and we covered that business on the podcast a few weeks ago. So SpaceX's connectivity segment seems like it would be an emerging competitor for American Tower. And yet you mentioned that American Tower sees satellite internet as a complement to what is already available via terrestrial connectivity. Not as a direct competitor. But my assumption is that Elon thinks he'll be able to capture a pretty big chunk of what is now AMT's market share.
Shawn O'Malley — The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network · TIP830: SpaceX (SPCX): Is It Really Worth $2 Trillion Dollars? w/ Kyle Grieve & Shawn O'Malley · 2026-07-12So we don't normally do two questions or listener questions in any given show. But we had to do two this time because we actually got a question specifically for one of our guests on the podcast. And we had, we had a question come in from Bruce Clark who asked specifically for Matt's opinions on something. And here we go, Matt, question about American Tower, AMT is the ticker. The question is, is the debt manageable and will satellite technology erode the land-based tower business? And yes, just for some context for people who may not know, American Tower is a real estate investment investment trust that specializes in owning the towers that, you know, companies like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T put all of their communications equipment on. So basically, it's like the landlord for the telecommunications network. So with that slight introduction, and because we need to feature Matt in this whole section, Matt, what do you got?
Tyler Crowe — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Meta Has Been Busy · 2026-07-09Yeah, so well, first, American Tower, to add to your company description, their name's kind of misleading because they are not just American. They are literally all over the world. They have towers all over the place and their chief rival, Crown Castle International, is only in America. I've always argued they should swap names. Bruce is right that their debt is elevated. A debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 4.9 is on the high end for a REIT. They have 4x interest coverage, meaning that their earnings before interest and taxes are roughly 4 times what they're spending on interest on their debt. That's comfortable, but not ideal. They've done a solid job of extending their debt maturities at favorable interest rates, but the debt paydown hasn't been as much of a priority as I feel it should have. For example, they just raised their dividend by 5%. They've been buying back stock, which is kind of rare for a REIT. While I get it, the stock is cheap on paper, as I'll talk about in a minute, I feel like deleveraging would be a somewhat better use of their money. I mean, I'm not worried about the debt in the sense that it's any kind of real existential threat to the company, but I would love to see somewhat of a shift in capital allocation over the next couple of years.
Matt Frankel — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Meta Has Been Busy · 2026-07-09Yeah, it's hard for me to imagine that we would see much of a shift though. I mean, because a lot of those capital allocation priorities, they're kind of hard to move around too much. I mean, as a REIT, right, we pay out 90% of the taxable income, but then there's also kind of expectations from investors that, yeah, we are going to raise our dividend. On a regular cadence and not change where we're putting that money. I, you know, I was just kind of looking at this, you know, American Tower paying over a billion in interest payments annually and roughly $3 billion in dividend payments annually. Wouldn't you say that that high debt load does impact the ability to raise the dividend? I know that there is some flexibility, but I don't know, at a 4% yield, that's good but not necessarily great for a REIT. Wouldn't you say there are probably better options out there with lower leverage?
John Quast — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Meta Has Been Busy · 2026-07-09I want to hit on the second part of the question too, because I think it touches with a lot of what we've been talking about with AI and space and all that stuff, because there has been this new concept of going out there. It's like, well, we're just going to put data centers in space and we're going to put satellite communications in space and we're going to render a lot of like land-based communication, land-based data center is kind of useless. And that's— this really is American Tower's business. So to the second part, like, do you see those endeavors, you know, satellite communication disrupting land-based telecoms or data centers in space, is that going to basically upend American Tower here, or do they still have some legs?
Tyler Crowe — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Meta Has Been Busy · 2026-07-09Yeah, so I mean, this, the satellite direct-to-cell ambitions, you know, we see companies like Starlink, like AST SpaceMobile, It's a threat that's worth watching, but there are some physical constraints with what they're trying to do, is essentially be an emergency backup. If you have your cell phone and you go into an area that doesn't have cell coverage, it would kind of kick over to the satellite. Just for example, the direct-to-cell satellites that exist today anyway are not very good at providing coverage when you're indoors. That's a big obstacle to overcome. So because of things like that, for at least the next few years, this is likely to be a complement, not a replacement, to these these dense tower networks like American Tower operates. It's worth watching, but for the foreseeable future, I'm not worried about it.
Matt Frankel — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Meta Has Been Busy · 2026-07-09The only thing that I'd add here is that everything that Matt said can be true, and yet there can still be a huge greenfield opportunity for the direct-to-cell satellite companies simply because there are areas where an American Tower or other cellular service, land-based, is not available. And you think about remote areas of the USA, that's one thing, but internationally there's just not the infrastructure in many countries that, that we enjoy, um, in this country or even in many developed Western countries. So there, there are plenty of places where, you know, it's not a competing product. It's, it's wide open to whoever can get the coverage there. And in many cases, the most obvious path would be a satellite communication. So the satellite communication companies can grow substantially without even infringing on the existing land-based turf.
John Quast — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Meta Has Been Busy · 2026-07-09