Crown Castle, American Tower Shares Jump on SpaceX Cell-Site Talks

Shares of the two largest U.S. cell tower real estate investment trusts rose sharply on Friday, October 23, 2026, after a report that SpaceX is seeking access to tens of thousands of tower sites for a planned nationwide wireless network. At 9:53 a.m. Eastern time, Crown Castle was up 12.6% and American Tower was up 6.9%, Reuters reported, while the S&P 500 real estate index advanced 0.8% on a day when nine of the index's 11 sectors declined.

What was reported

Bloomberg News reported late Thursday that SpaceX is in talks with cellular infrastructure companies to secure access to at least 80,000 sites across the United States, citing people familiar with the matter, according to Reuters. The agreements would potentially solidify the company's path toward building a fourth nationwide wireless carrier. SpaceX, which is also buying nationwide low-band spectrum, is in talks with Crown Castle specifically, according to the report.

The 80,000 sites would equal half of the 158,500 purpose-built cell towers operating in the U.S. last year, according to figures from the Wireless Infrastructure Association cited by Reuters. Crown Castle operates about 40,000 U.S. towers and American Tower has about 42,000 U.S. sites, while privately held Vertical Bridge owns around 18,000. Brokerage TD Cowen has estimated that a nationwide terrestrial network would cost more than $80 billion and require many years of additional spending. Crown Castle, American Tower, Vertical Bridge and SpaceX did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

How the shares moved

The tower stocks began rising before the opening bell. By 5:45 a.m. Eastern time, Crown Castle had climbed more than 7% and American Tower 6% in premarket trading, Investing.com reported. At 7:15 a.m., Crown Castle was up 7.5% and American Tower 3.3%, according to a separate Investing.com roundup of premarket movers. The gains widened after the open.

Wireless carriers moved in the opposite direction. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile fell between 4.2% and 5% in extended trading on Thursday and were down between 3% and 4.7% on Friday morning, pulling the S&P 500 communication services index 1% lower, according to Reuters.

Analyst and company comments

Truist Securities analyst Matthew Niknam called the report "another positive headline/potential catalyst for a still 'less loved' Towers group," while noting that the talks fall "far short from actual MLA's (master lease agreements) being signed," according to Investing.com. He said tower REITs trade at a weighted average 2027 price-to-funds-from-operations ratio of 15 times, about five turns below data center REITs. Niknam also pointed to Starlink's earnings call this week, in which the company referenced ambitions to become a major U.S. mobile carrier by 2028.

Crown Castle Chief Executive Chris Hillabrant said on Wednesday that the company was talking to "all parties" when asked about potential leases with SpaceX and Amazon, but declined to discuss specific customers, Reuters reported.

Crown Castle's latest quarter

The report came two days after Crown Castle released third-quarter results on October 21. Site rental revenues fell 5% to $966 million from $1.012 billion a year earlier, which the company attributed partly to a $61 million impact from terminations of leases with DISH. Net income declined to $283 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, from $323 million, or $0.74. Adjusted funds from operations, a measure REITs commonly report, rose 8% to $530 million, or $1.24 per share, up 11%.

Crown Castle raised the midpoint of its full-year 2026 outlook for adjusted EBITDA by $25 million to $2.715 billion and for AFFO by $5 million to $1.98 billion. It paid a quarterly dividend of $1.0625 per share, unchanged from a year earlier. The company completed the sale of its fiber and small cell businesses on May 1, 2026, receiving about $8.4 billion in net cash proceeds, and now describes its approach as a pure-play U.S. tower strategy.

What comes next

American Tower is scheduled to report third-quarter results on October 27, with analysts expecting earnings of $2.84 per share on revenue of about $2.77 billion, according to Investing.com. No lease agreement between SpaceX and any tower company had been announced as of Friday morning.