American Tower has become the top choice among U.S. tower operators for at least two major Wall Street firms, which have pointed to a combination of superior organic growth forecasts, attractive valuation and strategic exposure to data center demand tied to artificial intelligence and edge computing.
RBC Capital Markets moved to upgrade the company to Outperform from Sector Perform and lifted its price target to $205 from $195. The firm highlighted American Tower's stronger organic revenue trajectory relative to peer companies and flagged improving prospects for its CoreSite data center business as important positive drivers. RBC described the company as its preferred tower stock and said it expects American Tower to post the strongest U.S. net organic tower growth among the larger operators through fiscal 2026.
Separately, Goldman Sachs opened coverage of the U.S. tower sector by assigning a Buy rating to American Tower while marking Crown Castle and SBA Communications as Neutral. Goldman said it expects the U.S. tower industry as a whole to return to revenue growth above 3% after 2026, as elevated churn tied to Sprint and EchoStar-related disruptions eases and carrier network spending recovers.
Goldman's model calls for American Tower to deliver roughly 8% annual AFFO per share growth between 2026 and 2029, which the bank said would outpace the 5% to 6% growth it forecasts for the company's closest peers. The firm argued that American Tower's international footprint and relatively higher capital intensity have been weighted too heavily in its valuation, and that the mix of traditional tower assets plus data center exposure offers additional upside from demand for AI inference and edge computing.
Both firms also described improving domestic fundamentals after a challenging near-term period. Goldman expects industry organic growth domestically to improve after a difficult 2026, when churn is projected to spike because of EchoStar lease defaults and earlier carrier consolidation. In its forecast, American Tower is expected to lead peers with domestic organic growth of 4% to 5% annually from 2027 through 2029, supported by network densification, spectrum deployment, fixed wireless expansion and prospective 6G investment.
RBC added that international operations could benefit from favorable foreign-exchange trends in the second quarter, while noting a separate headwind: refinancing higher-cost debt will modestly raise interest expense. The firm adjusted its financial outlook for 2026, raising its revenue forecast to $10.98 billion, raising its adjusted EBITDA estimate to $7.28 billion, and increasing its AFFO per share forecast to $11.07.
Analysts acknowledged the short-term challenges facing the sector - including elevated carrier churn, higher interest rates and uncertainty around satellite-related investment themes - but argued that these factors are largely reflected in the current share price. Both RBC and Goldman also identified potential industry-level avenues for returning capital to shareholders: RBC pointed to significant remaining buyback authority at American Tower, and Goldman cited the company's comparatively conservative leverage profile as a source of capital allocation flexibility.
The recent analyst activity leaves American Tower positioned as the preferred U.S. tower operator among the firms cited, according to their published views, with data center exposure and anticipated network investment cycles forming the basis for their more constructive stances.