In a report published Wednesday, Citigroup reiterated its Neutral rating on American Tower Corp. (NYSE: AMT), and raised its price target from $80.00 to $82.00.
Citigroup noted, “Overall, we forecast industry revenue growth will decelerate based on our bottoms-up industry model from an estimate of ~2% in 2012 to roughly 1-2% during 2013. Themes for 2013 that we expect to explore include: 1) Wireless industry revenue growth is decelerating from headwinds such as maturing Smartphone penetration & increasing uptake of BYOD (bring-your-own-device), while margins may be helped by a longer device replacement cycle; 2) A lengthening sales cycle is slowing the recovery in telecom spending by business & wholesale customers, while we still expect a longer-term recovery as companies increasingly migrate to IP-based services and centralize their computing infrastructure; 3) Rising demand for Internet-based video delivery should drive larger bandwidth consumption; 4) LTE deployments may increasingly compete against lower-end tethered consumer broadband connections; 5) M&A activity is likely to continue as some aspire to expand services beyond the network, some are likely to pursue further scale of spectrum and marketing within wireless, and enterprise strategies will likely focus on metro-fiber reach and cloud-based services; & 6) Regulatory environment will likely remain a headwind for incumbents.”
American Tower Corp. closed on Monday at $76.00.
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Tags: Citigroup
Posted in: Analyst Color, Price Target, Analyst Ratings