Except for DigitalBridge Group, towerco stocks have nosedived during the first two days of Connect(X) in Chicago. Although futures are showing modest gains, this morning’s pre-market quotes indicate a lower opening for American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications. DigitalBridge is expected to open higher
One of the marquee moments at WIA’s Connect(X) conference has always been the “View from the Top” panel, where tower-owner executives share upbeat forecasts for the year ahead. Since PCIA (now WIA: The Wireless Infrastructure Association) first mounted a tower-focused show in 2003, attendees have left convinced that the next 12 months or longer will bring robust growth.
This morning in Chicago at Connect(X) 2025, the roster of speakers—WIA’s President & CEO, and moderator Patrick Halley; Ron Bizick, President & CEO of Vertical Bridge; Brendan T. Cavanagh, President & CEO of SBA Communications; Ed Farscht, CEO of Diamond Communications; Cathy Piche, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Towers for Crown Castle; and Rich Rossi, Executive Vice President & President, U.S. Tower Division of American Tower Corporation—will almost certainly trot out the same optimistic outlook.
Only this year, the session is retitled “View from the Tower.” There’s an unwelcome new subplot: towerco stocks are tumbling just as the market rallies.
Over the first two days of Connect(X) 2025, some of the lobby chatter skirted tower permits, 5G roll-outs, and AI—instead, it centered on a rare sell-off.
American Tower (AMT) plunged 7.3% in two sessions, Crown Castle (CCI) slipped 6.4%, and SBA Communications (SBAC) slid 5.8%. All this while the S&P 500 climbed more than 4% and the Dow added over 900 points. Investors hate that discrepancy.
At last year’s conference in Atlanta, in contrast to this week, towerco stocks rode a wave that saw the S&P 500 jump 1.2% to top its all-time high in March. The Nasdaq composite added 1.4% to its record set a day earlier, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.9% to beat its recent high.
Halley might ask, why the rout in “steady-Eddie” tower REITs?
First, the answer might be that rising Treasury yields that inched down slightly yesterday make bond interest more appealing than chunky dividends. As the 10-year note nudged from 4.37% to 4.45%, yield-hungry funds quietly swapped out of debt-financed landlords and into “risk-free” Treasuries. Second, growth-stock mania is in full swing—money’s flooding into AI, semiconductors, and cloud plays, so managers are trimming mature, income-centric names to fund their subsequent big tech bets. Third, once technical sell signals kicked in—breaching key moving averages—algorithmic strategies accelerated the slide, turning a normal pullback into a full-blown dip.
What’s DigitalBridge’s secret sauce for success?
Yet DigitalBridge Group (DBRG), parent to towerco Vertical Bridge, the nation’s fourth-largest telecom tower owner with 11,464 structures, bucked every one of these trends and closed 5.7% higher. The secret? It isn’t just a landlord—it’s a digital-infrastructure asset manager. DBRG collects management fees on billions of dollars in data centers, fiber, small cells, and towers, so its revenue streams aren’t nearly as rate-sensitive. Even better, Q1 2025 fee-related earnings jumped 79% year-over-year to $35 million, and the firm raised $1.2 billion in fresh capital. That kind of performance drives buyer demand, even when pure-play REITs are getting dumped.
When Halley asks today if rosy forecasts still hold, expect panelists to nod—but they might acknowledge that today’s “sunny view from the tower” depends on the next rate move and re-capturing investor confidence. Because in a market that’s bullish on growth and wary of yield, optimism alone won’t keep their stock price aloft.
