American Tower sees Q1 revenues drop in LatAm

American Tower’s property revenues in Latin America declined 4% year-on-year to US$446mn in Q1, according to the company’s quarterly earnings report.

Despite the drop, the region continues to be the telecom infra firm’s second biggest revenue-generating geography after the US & Canada.

Overall, American Tower had a net build of 41 new sites across its eight Latin American markets in the quarter, although the distribution was uneven. 

That was down from 114 deployments in the fourth quarter, a period that tends to be more active in terms of tower deployments. 

In comparison with 1Q23, American Tower accelerated its tower deployments by 21 sites.

As a result, ATC’S Latin American tower portfolio comprised 48,458 sites at end-March, including towers, in-building sites and outdoor distributed antenna systems (DAS), down by 22 from the quarter before.

Brazil alone accounted for 22,698 of the total portfolio, followed by Mexico (9,859), Colombia (4,967), Peru (4,420), Chile (3,837), Paraguay (1,455), Costa Rica (712) and Argentina (510).

Peru and Costa Rica saw an increase in sites, Mexico, Paraguay and Argentina were flat, and ATC’s tower footprint shrank in Brazil, Colombia and Chile.

Overall, Latin America represented 15.9% of ATC’s property revenue for the quarter, while Telefónica remained American Tower biggest international client, accounting for 11% of total property revenues.