American Tower Expects Minimal Disruptions From COVID-19

American Tower is seeing a small COVID-19 business impact, the company said Wednesday, reporting Q1 results. “Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we delivered a solid first quarter,” said CEO Tom Bartlett. “The resilience and stability of our business model, our investment-grade balance sheet, substantial liquidity and the secular global growth trends in mobile data usage will help us manage through the ongoing crisis.” Bartlett told analysts executives have been working remotely. “Our infrastructure is incredibly critical to ensure our tenants are able to keep their customers connected,” he said: In many markets, staff got “official priority definitions” so their work can continue “largely uninterrupted.” The company expects “temporary” delays in a few markets, he said. Bartlett said 5G trends include the cloud “coming closer to the edge” and deployment in a number of bands “depending on the specific area’s coverage and capacity requirements.” The variety of devices and apps “is expected to grow faster than we can possibly imagine,” he said. The company had almost $2 billion in revenue, up 9.9% over last year, and profit of $419 million, up 2.7%. “When most companies are pulling guidance, the fact that American Tower left its 2020 guidance basically unchanged … says a great deal,” MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett told investors.