We delivered solid second-quarter results, increased our guidance for full-year 2026 AFFO, and continued to execute against our best-in-class U.S. First, we continue to increase land ownership purchases under our towers, which improves margins, increases operational control of our assets, and allows us to deliver more quickly for our customers. We believe the edge opportunity is gaining momentum as demand for storage and compute continues to accelerate, while many large data center deployments face multi-year construction and power delivery delays. We are seeing interest from businesses seeking to deploy scale distributed infrastructure to support inference workloads and other high-value-add applications, including cybersecurity, fraud detection, and real-time data processing.
Additionally, the industry continues to see strong growth in mobile data demand. We believe the long-term outlook for our industry remains bright given continued mobile data demand growth, upcoming spectrum auctions, and the momentum in edge data infrastructure. We believe our clear strategy, investment-grade balance sheet, and capital allocation framework position Crown Castle to maximize long-term shareholder value. Starting on page three, second quarter organic growth, excluding the impact of Sprint cancellations and DISH terminations, was 3.9% or $38 million, and included a $5 million increase in other billings.
Second quarter organic growth increases to 4.2% if DISH revenues are excluded from prior year site rental billings. Second quarter selling, general, and administrative costs included a one-time $7 million increase in stock-based compensation expense, which is not expected to recur and does not impact adjusted EBITDA and AFFO. We also expect a $5 million decrease to interest expense, resulting in a $5 million increase to our full year 2026 outlook for AFFO. Full year 2026 organic growth increases to 3.6% if DISH revenues are excluded from prior year site rental billings, which compares to our prior guide of 3.5%.
| Metric | Period | Current guidance |
|---|---|---|
| Site rental revenues | FY2026 | Raised $5M at midpoint; 3.4% organic growth ex Sprint/DISH (3.6% excluding prior-year DISH) |
| Adjusted EBITDA | FY2026 | Maintained ($5M revenue increase and $15M cost reduction offset by $20M lower services contribution) |
| AFFO | FY2026 | Raised $5M at midpoint (driven by a $5M decrease in interest expense) |
| New leasing activity | FY2026 | Unchanged at $60M-$70M |
| Straight-line revenues | FY2026 | Unchanged at -$60M at the midpoint |
| Discretionary CapEx | FY2026 | Unchanged at $200M ($160M net of $40M prepaid rent) |
| AFFO (H2 2026 + H1 2027) | 12 months | On track for $2.1B at the midpoint |
| Metric | YoY | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Site rental revenue (GAAP) | -4% to $967M | $49M DISH terminations, $5M Sprint cancellations and $25M lower non-cash straight-line revenue more than offset organic growth. |
| Organic growth (ex Sprint/DISH) | +3.9% (~$38M) | Including a $5M increase in other billings; 3.6% excluding other billings and 4.2% excluding prior-year DISH revenue. |
| Net income | $94M vs $291M | Lower revenue base after churn plus a one-time $7M stock-comp charge; diluted EPS of $0.22. |
| Full-year contracted organic growth | >90% contracted | Up from ~80% at the start of the year, supporting the view that 2026 is the low point for organic growth. |
| Net leverage | 6.3x net debt/EBITDA | Within the 6.0x-6.5x investment-grade target after using $8.4B of proceeds for $1B buybacks and >$7.2B of debt repayment. |
| Topic | Previous mention | Current period | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transformation into a pure-play U.S. tower operator | Diversified towers + fiber + small cells | Fiber/small cell sale closed May 1; focus on land ownership, systems/automation, cycle times and customer experience, targeting ~200 bps of margin expansion over roughly 24 months. | — |
| DISH bankruptcy and escrow recovery | $3.5B contractual claim, lawsuit filed | Original suit suspended; Crown appointed to Unsecured Creditors' Committee, contesting DISH's attempt to apply a 15% lease cap, and pursuing recovery from the $2.4B escrow funded upon the AT&T spectrum-deal close. | — |
| Edge data center opportunity | Initiated trials last quarter | Still trial-stage but gaining momentum; tower sites with existing power/backhaul can serve sub-0.2 MW distributed inference and edge workloads as incremental, capital-light revenue amid a large data-center backlog. | — |
| Spectrum and demand cycle | Awaiting FCC auction authority | At least 800 MHz of spectrum coming (600 MHz AT&T deployment a near/mid-term driver, upper C-band longer-term); mobile data per smartphone expected to more than double over five years, supporting densification. | — |
| Satellite versus terrestrial debate | Investor concern over satellite substitution | Management argued terrestrial networks remain essential (indoor coverage, ~10,000x stronger signal, far more spectrum and users per site) and that satellite is complementary, requiring terrestrial infrastructure. | — |
| Cost savings and capital discipline | Cost-focused business model | $15M in-year savings from ground-lease buyouts and efficiency; capital-allocation priority is dividend, high-return CapEx, then de-leveraging to target, with excess to buybacks. | — |