Down 44% from all-time highs, can this blue-chip dividend stock recover in 2026?

American Tower (AMT) has been done the wringer lately. The telecom infrastructure elephantine has seen its banal crater 44% from all-time highs, leaving investors wondering if this blue-chip dividend payer tin signifier a comeback successful 2026.

At a caller UBS conference, CEO Steve Vondran made his lawsuit for wherefore the selloff is overdone. He pointed to the company's rock-solid concern model, which combines semipermanent contracts with precocious operating leverage, ensuring gross converts to nett astatine awesome margins.

The institution besides has an investment-grade equilibrium sheet, which gives it a cost-of-capital vantage implicit its competitors.

"Our wide extremity is to thrust industry-leading AFFO per stock growth," Vondran emphasized astatine the conference.

For the uninitiated, AFFO stands for adjusted funds from operations, which is the currency travel metric that matters astir for existent property concern trusts.

Value investors looking for accordant dividend maturation should support an oculus connected American Tower banal successful 2026. Let’s spot why.

American Tower's bread-and-butter concern is simple: ain towers and lease abstraction to wireless carriers. The thesis remains intact. Mobile information maturation successful the U.S. has exploded astatine astir 35% annually for the past 3 years, according to CTIA. That torrid gait shows nary signs of slowing.

Industry experts foretell carriers volition request to treble web capableness implicit the adjacent 5 years conscionable to support up with demand. That creates a agelong runway for caller tenant additions and instrumentality upgrades connected American Tower's sites.

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Vondran explained:

The institution is already seeing aboriginal signs of web densification, successful which carriers adhd much compartment sites to code capableness crunches. This mirrors patterns from erstwhile exertion cycles, specified arsenic 3G and 4G.

What's encouraging is that exertion volumes jumped 20% year-over-year successful Q3, arsenic per the caller net call. Further, colocation requests surged adjacent faster astatine 40%, signaling the opening of a densification wave.

Services gross deed near-record levels this year, which typically serves arsenic a starring indicator for aboriginal operation deployments.

AMT operates successful a mature assemblage that is reasonably recession-resistant, allowing it to make unchangeable currency flows crossed concern cycles. According to information from Fiscal.ai, it presently offers shareholders an yearly dividend of $6.80 per share, which translates to a guardant output of implicit 4%.