Rod Smith
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer at American Tower
Thanks Tom. Good morning and thank you for joining today's call. Before I dive into our 2022 results and expectations for 2023, I would like to highlight a few key accomplishments from the past year and provide an update on several developments in India since our last earnings call. First, demand and operational performance across our global portfolio remain as solid as ever. We closed the year on a positive note with colocation and amendment tenant billings growth contributions of over 4% in Q4. In particular, our US and Canada property segment delivered its strongest quarter since Q1 of 2020, and we have a clear line of sight to continued acceleration into 2023, which I will discuss shortly. Organic growth was complemented by the construction of nearly 7,000 sites, an American Tower record, including over 2,300 sites built in Q4, our highest level over the past eight quarters with an average day one NOI yield of over 12%.Moreover, during its first full year of ownership by American Tower, CoreSite delivered record new business, selling nearly double the number of megawatts compared to the previous trailing two-year average, demonstrating the value of the company's interconnection and cloud on-ramp rich ecosystem. This robust growth was driven by increased demand from high quality new logos and expansions from existing customers, driven by secular tailwinds of digital transformation and the demand for hybrid IT solutions. Furthermore, since the announcement of CoreSite acquisition, we successfully executed on our permanent financing plan at attractive terms, including through the issuance of common equity and senior notes, as well as our strategic partnership with Stonepeak.
These financing activities reduced our leverage from 6.8 times at the end of 2021 to 5.4 times at the end of 2022 and moved us closer to our target range of three times to five times. Next, I'd like to take a moment to cover the latest developments in India. As anticipated, Vodafone Idea or VIL continued making partial payments in Q4 of 2022, consistent with our outlook, resulting in total revenue reserves of approximately $38 million for the quarter and around $87 million for the year. Recently, we were pleased to see the completion of the Indian government's conversion of the adjusted gross revenue interest balances to equity in VIL. We view this as a reaffirmation of the government's commitment to support a three-player private carrier telecommunications market and a critical first step towards the possibility of more stabilized collections from VIL. However, although VIL had committed to pay their billings in full in 2023 and make payments for outstanding balances from prior years in early 2023, they have communicated that they would continue to make partial payments. For that reason, we believe it is prudent to include revenue reserves against their annual billings and other contracted obligations in our 2023 outlook, which we've assumed at $75 million. We will, however, remain focused on collecting what we are contractually owed in full over the course of the year. In the meantime, we have worked to incrementally better position American Tower and our receivables balance, while also demonstrating a level of support for VIL and India's wireless market. This includes the expectation to convert approximately $200 million in existing VIL receivables into optionally convertible debentures pending Vodafone Idea shareholder approval.
Upon closing this agreement, we would have elevated the seniority of our pre-existing receivables balance and established an additional level of liquid collateral at American Tower's option. And finally, as we remain focused on stabilizing our India business, collecting our outstanding and future receivables in full and assessing the positioning of our global portfolio, we are currently exploring various strategic options, including the potential sale of an equity stake in our India business. As always, any decision taken will include careful consideration of the growth opportunity and risk profile in the market going forward, valuation and the optimal portfolio and capital structure mix for American Tower and its stakeholders. We will certainly keep our investors informed of any developments as we move forward. With that, let's dive into the details of our full year 2022 results. Turning to slide six. Full year consolidated property revenue growth was nearly 15% and nearly 18% on an FX-neutral basis, which included a contribution of approximately 11% of growth from Telxius and CoreSite and negative impacts of approximately 2% and 1% from Sprint churn and revenue reserves taken associated with VIL in 2022, respectively. Organic tenant billings growth for the full year came in at 3.2%, in line with expectations, complemented by solid growth from new builds with actual volumes coming in at the upper end of our prior outlook range for the year. In the United States and Canada, property revenue growth was nearly 2% with organic tenant billings growth of just over 1%, in line with expectations, including approximately $150 million or 3.4% from colocations and amendments. Escalators added another 3%, consistent with historical trends. This growth was partially offset by churn of around 5%, which consisted of roughly 1% in normal course churn with the balance being driven by Sprint.
Our international property revenue grew by nearly 13%.International organic tenant billings growth was 6.6%, led by Europe at 8.4% and followed by Latin America at 7.9%, Africa at 7.7% and APAC at 2.6%. Overall, colocation and amendment growth for the full year was around 5%, while 6% came from escalators, partially offset by just over 4.5% of churn, the result of decommissioning agreements in Latin America, carrier consolidation in Africa and customer-specific churn in APAC. Finally, our data center segment contributed over $765 million to our total property revenue in 2022, including a record year of new business from CoreSite as I previously mentioned. Moving on, adjusted EBITDA grew around 11% to over $6.6 billion or around 13% on an FX-neutral basis for the year. Growth was supported by solid contributions from Telxius and CoreSite and strong flow-through of top line growth achieved through effective cost management. On a consolidated basis, adjusted EBITDA margins were down around 190 basis points as compared to 2021, primarily due to the impacts of the VIL reserves and Sprint churn in the US, higher pass-through revenue due to rising fuel costs and the lower margin profile of newly acquired assets, which we believe are well positioned to drive meaningful margin expansion over time. Moving to the right side of the slide, attributable AFFO and attributable AFFO per share grew by approximately 5.6% and 3.5%, respectively, including over 11% growth on a per share basis in Q4. For the year, both metrics included over 2% in headwinds associated with FX. Attributable AFFO per share of $9.76 exceeded the original 2022 outlook midpoint laid out a year ago by $0.06, despite absorbing the negative impacts of incremental VIL reserves, rate-driven interest costs and FX relative to our initial assumptions.
Now before I discuss the details of our outlook for 2023, I will start by summarizing a few key highlights and assumptions. First, as we've previously communicated, we expect a meaningful step-up in US and Canada organic tenant billings growth, driven by an acceleration in new business backstopped by the comprehensive MLAs we have signed over the last few years together with the sequential improvement in contracted Sprint churn. Internationally, we expect a strong year of organic tenant billings growth across most of our regions driven by continued strength in organic leasing trends, along with contributions from CPI-based escalators, particularly in Europe and Africa. As we've communicated over the past couple of quarters, growth in Latin America will be moderated by churn headwinds associated with a continuation of Telefonica churn in Mexico and Oi churn in Brazil, where we'll see some staggered impacts over the next several years. Second, and as I mentioned earlier, we have factored into our guide an expectation for a continuation in VIL collections volatility, resulting in an assumption of $75 million in revenue reserves for the year. Third, given the unprecedented rise in interest rates over the course of 2022, which saw the one-month LIBOR increased by more than 400 basis points and 10-year treasuries increased by around 250 basis points from the beginning to the end of the year, we expect 2023 to have one-time outsized negative growth headwinds associated with financing costs. Key components driving this assumption include elevated costs on our floating rate debt and to a lesser extent, the refinancing of our 2023 senior note maturities as well as the full year impacts of our 2022 equity-related initiatives, including our common equity issuance and the incremental minority interest and preferred distributions associated with our partnership with Stonepeak.
Taken together, we have assumed a roughly 8% headwind to attributable AFFO per share growth associated with financing costs in 2023. Next, our initial outlook reflects estimated negative translational FX impacts of approximately $150 million for property revenue, $64 million for adjusted EBITDA and $47 million for attributable AFFO as compared to 2022. And finally, looking beyond the challenges I mentioned associated with interest rates, VIL reserves and FX, our core business continues to demonstrate strong performance and resiliency, representing nearly double-digit year-over-year growth at the attributable AFFO level. While this performance is fueled by the solid organic leasing trends we're seeing across our global portfolio, it's further amplified by exceptional conversion rates through AFFO, achieved through a keen focus on cost management across our business. With that, let's dive into the numbers. Moving on to the details of slide seven. At the midpoint of our outlook, we expect total property revenues of nearly $10.8 billion, representing growth of approximately 3% or approximately 4% absent the incremental reserves assumed for VIL in 2023. Our guide includes expected cash revenue growth of around $230 million in the US and Canada, and $245 million of FX neutral growth in our international regions, excluding the 2023 VIL reserves of $75 million. We also expect data centers to contribute roughly $55 million of growth in cash revenue to the property segment in 2023. Lastly, as I mentioned in my earlier remarks, we anticipate a modest FX headwind of just under 1.5% to consolidated growth. Turning to slide eight. We expect organic growth to contribute meaningfully to our property revenue growth assumptions. Starting with the US and Canada, we anticipate organic tenant billings growth of approximately 5% or greater than 6% excluding Sprint churn.
This expectation includes record levels of year-over-year co-location and amendment growth of around $220 million, a nearly 50% increase over the levels achieved in 2022 and a 60% increase as compared to the trailing three-year average. Of the $220 million, over 90% is locked in through MLA-driven use right fee commencements and carryover growth. On the churn side of the equation, after incurring the largest impact of Sprint churn last year, we expect churn of around 3% in 2023, including an approximate 1% impact associated with Sprint, which would represent a year-over-year improvement of over 200 basis points in the segment. Moving to Latin America. We expect organic tenant billings growth of greater than 2% for the year driven by relatively consistent co-location and amendment activity and continued solid contributions from CPI-based escalators of approximately 8%. This escalator rate does represent a step down from 2022 levels, as we saw inflation in markets like Brazil moderate in 2022 as compared to 2021. As we've previously highlighted, higher churn of around 8% is partially offsetting gross growth due to the expected continuation of Telefonica churn in Mexico and the early part of what we expect to be staggered Oi churn in Brazil. Similar to last year, we do expect to receive some settlement payments from Telefonica over the course of the year, which will be captured outside of the organic tenant billings growth metric. We've assumed approximately $50 million in 2023 payments as compared to the over $80 million we received from Telefonica Mexico and Nextel Brazil in 2022. Turning to Asia Pacific. We are guiding to approximately 4% organic tenant billings growth in 2023, including churn of around 4%, which is around 70 basis points lower than the 2022 churn rate. We expect co-location and amendment growth contributions to ramp up compared to 2022, coming in around 6%, fueled by the rollout of 5G networks.
However, it is important to note that the reserves we've assumed for VIL in our guide reside outside of this metric, consistent with past practices. Turning to Europe. 2023 organic tenant billings growth is expected to be 7% to 8%, which is slightly lower than 2022 due to the mathematical benefits realized last year, given Telxius was only in the prior year base for a partial year. However, this does suggest a solid acceleration off our Q4 2022 organic growth rate of around 6%, which represents a more normalized comparison. On the co-location and amendment front, we anticipate 2% to 3% growth, while growth from escalators stand at roughly 6%, reflecting the benefits of CPI-linked escalators across the majority of our European footprint. Churn is expected to decline to around 1%, reaping the benefits of the lower churn profile of our recently acquired Telxius portfolio. Finally, in Africa, we expect a solid acceleration off of 2022, with expected organic tenant billings growth of approximately 9%. This includes co-location and amendment contributions of around 6%, along with escalators of around 10% and expected 450 basis point increase from 2022 levels. This will be partially offset by an expectation of elevated churn of greater than 6%, as carrier consolidation continues to work its way through the financial metrics. Moving on to slide nine. At the midpoint of our outlook, we expect adjusted EBITDA growth of approximately 4% and around 5%, absent the incremental reserves assumed for VIL in 2023, while absorbing approximately 1% in FX headwinds. We expect this growth to be achieved through solid cash conversion rates of 85% to 90%, the result of prudent cost controls across the business and the expectations for another strong year from our US services business.
Turning to slide 10. We expect attributable AFFO per share to decrease by $0.16 on a reported basis, while remaining flat year-over-year absent the impacts of the 2023 VIL revenue reserves. As mentioned, we expect growth to be meaningfully impacted by financing costs, which include a rate-driven increase to cash interest expense along with the incremental full year impact of minority interest and preferred distributions associated with our US data center business. Together with the common equity share issuance in 2022, financing costs are expected to provide a significant one-time growth headwinds of approximately 8% in 2023. As I mentioned earlier, absent the impact of financing costs, FX and the 2023 VIL reserves, our business is demonstrating solid growth contributions of around 9%.Moving on to slide 11, I'll review our capital plans for 2023 and our balance sheet progress and priorities for the upcoming year. In 2023, we will continue to deliver returns to our shareholders through the growth of our dividend. And subject to Board approval, we expect to distribute approximately $3 billion, representing an approximately 10% year-on-year growth rate on a per share basis. In addition, we expect to deploy around $1.7 billion in capex, of which 90% will be discretionary. This will largely be spent continuing the success of our new build program internationally, which assumes the construction of around 4,000 sites at the midpoint. We also expect data center capital to increase modestly as we seek to replenish the record capacity sold in 2022 and maintain appropriate levels of sellable capacity.
Moving to the right side of the slide. As you can see, we made tremendous progress towards strengthening our balance sheet over the course of 2022, putting us ahead of the deleveraging path we committed to with the rating agencies, which actually afforded us the flexibility to repurchase a modest number of our shares in Q4. Throughout 2023, we will continue to be guided by our long-standing financial policies as we execute on our financing plans. This includes the refinancing of maturing debt, while leveraging our strong liquidity position as needed to remain opportunistic as we access the capital markets. Finally, we remain committed to our investment-grade credit rating. And our priorities over the course of 2023 and into 2024 remain on deleveraging our balance sheet back down to the three to five times range. Consistent with our recent comments, at this time, we do not see any material M&A in our pipeline that would alter these areas of focus. Turning to slide 12. And in summary, we delivered strong results in 2022, demonstrating the resiliency of our business model in the face of various macro-related and customer-specific challenges. Our global portfolio of assets and operational capabilities continue to prove critical in meeting the growing demands of our customers and the customers they serve. We saw record new build volumes internationally and record leasing within our CoreSite business and experienced a steady acceleration in colocation and amendment growth as we exited 2022, which we expect to continue into 2023. As we look ahead, we expect to further build on the successes of the recent years and leverage our portfolio to drive strong recurring growth on the back of consistent secular technology trends for many years to come.
With that, operator, we can open up the line for questions.
