Huge Upside On Low-Risk Stock

The investment case for American Tower is a solid one built on steady annuity-type income with increasing revenue from emerging markets.

- Petri Redelinghuys

Whenever we think of telecommunications companies, we tend to think of the large network carriers like Vodacom and MTN; or in the US, AT&T and Verizon. Seldomly do we think of the underlying infrastructure that supports those carriers.

Surely these large mobile network providers own and operate the infrastructure they use. Right? Wrong. Well, mostly wrong. Our focus in this issue is US-based and New York-listed American Tower (with share code NYSE: AMT), which owns and operates around 175 000 cell phone towers around the world.

Let’s start with surveying the landscape and building an understanding of what we’re investing in. Voice and data from your mobile device make its way to other devices via networked telecommunications equipment installed on cell phone towers (cell towers). A cell tower, in its most basic form, is a tall structure built to host the networking and transmission equipment of multiple cellular network operators. Basically, the cell tower houses the “routers” that your phone connects to and uses to gain access to the cellular network.

As time has passed, newer “generations” of data technology has enabled us to do so much more than we ever imagined possible. With each new generation of data technology (3G, 4G, and now 5G), comes the need for higher-frequency radio waves (so-called spectrum), which facilitate more and more efficient data consumption. 3G technology enabled anyone to surf the web, while 4G allowed us to stream high-definition video seamlessly. Now 5G is going to make data transmission even faster, enabling autonomous vehicles and improved cloud-gaming experiences and who knows what else.