American Tower (AMT)
Real Estate · NYSE · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
American Tower trades at $168.92, which is 41% below the $238.70 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure alone it screens as undervalued, though a DCF is an argument rather than a measurement, and the market is frequently right about why something is cheap.
Our moat model scores it 80 out of 100, which is a wide moat. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 27.2 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About American Tower
American Tower Corporation is one of the largest global real estate investment trusts. It is a leading independent owner, operator and developer of multitenant communications real estate. The Company's 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 few other industries. The Company refers to this business, inclusive of its data center business discussed below, as its property operations. Additionally, the Company offers tower-related services in the United States, which the Company refers to as its services operations. These services include site application, zoning and permitting, structural and mount analyses, and construction management services, together with program management offerings that support customer deployment needs from project scoping through construction. The Company's services operations primarily support the Company's site leasing business, including through the addition of new tenants and equipment on its sites. The Company's customers include its tenants, licensees and other payers. American Tower Corporation was incorporated in 1995 in Delaware and is based in Massachusetts, Boston.
AMT passes 6 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
20 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Arrowstreet Capital, ARROWSTREET CAPITAL, LIMITED PARTNERSHIP$724.14M · 0.4% of book
- Capital Research Global, Capital Research Global Investors$708.16M · 0.1% of book
- William Von Mueffling, CANTILLON CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC$556.56M · 1.9% of book
- Ken Fisher, Fisher Asset Management, LLC$299.67M · 0.1% of book
- Two Sigma, TWO SIGMA INVESTMENTS, LP$211.74M · 0.2% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is American Tower (AMT) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of $238.70, AMT at $168.92 is 41% below fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own AMT?
20 of the institutions we track reported a position in AMT in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is AMT's P/E ratio?
AMT trades at 27.2 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
The full research page for AMT, with financial statements, ownership detail, peer comparison and alerts, is free inside the app.
Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.