American Tower Corporation (NYSE:AMT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

The short answer is 5 times as soon as possible. 5 times in 2024 would be great. That’s possible, and we’re driving towards that and we’ll see if we can achieve it. And then with AFFO, I would absolutely say, our portfolio, consistent with the way we’ve explained this for years is really well positioned for durable AFFO per share growth. This year, that was interrupted primarily because of financing cost headwinds, driven by interest rates, additional shares that we issued for some of our prior acquisitions and some minority interest that we have because of some of the private capital that we raised in certain parts of our business. With our new AFFO per share outlook of around $9.79, we’re pretty much flat with where we were prior year. So we’ve been able to convert a 1% to 2% reduction in AFFO, AFFO per share up to closer to flat, which is good.

But when you think about that number being flat and an 8% headwind from financing being embedded in it as well as a 2% headwind from VIL short payments or, let’s say, the VIL reserve of $75 million we made, you adjust for those things, the underlying core operating performance of the assets that we own around the globe are driving double-digit growth without those headwinds. So we absolutely believe this business can drive growth over the long term and in 2024. The thing that we’ll be watching that a potential interrupters would be any material volatility in FX. We don’t know where rates will go. Rate uncertainty is something that we watch. But absent those sorts of items, we think the portfolio is well positioned to grow next year and over the long term.

Batya Levi: Got it. Thank you.

Rod Smith: You’re welcome.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our Q&A session for today. I’ll hand the call back over to our team.

Adam Smith: Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining today’s call. If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to me here at the Investor Relations team. Have a great day.

Operator: And that does conclude the call for today. Thanks for your participation and for using AT&T Teleconference. You may now disconnect.