Key Reasons to Add Crown Castle Stock to Your Portfolio Now

Crown Castle CCI owns a portfolio of wireless communication infrastructure assets in the United States. As wireless data consumption is expected to increase significantly over the next few years, service providers are likely to continue their network expansion and densification efforts to meet this incremental demand, driving demand for CCI’s properties. A healthy balance sheet position is likely to support its growth endeavors.

Analysts seem positive about this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CCI’s 2025 funds from operations (FFO) per share has moved 3 cents northward over the past two months to $4.21.

Over the past six months, shares of this tower real estate investment trust (REIT) company have gained 2% against the industry’s decline of 2.6%. Given its solid fundamentals and positive estimate revisions, the stock is likely to keep performing well in the quarters ahead.

Factors That Make Crown Castle a Solid Pick

Healthy Industry Fundamentals & Solid Property Base: The exponential growth in mobile data usage, higher availability of spectrum and deployment of 5G networks at scale are driving significant network investments by carriers who aim to improve and densify their cell sites. Wireless data consumption is expected to increase considerably over the next several years, driven by the advent of next-generation technologies, including edge computing functionality, autonomous vehicle networks and the Internet of Things, and the rampant usage of network-intensive applications for video conferencing and cloud services and hybrid-working scenarios.

Given Crown Castle’s unmatched portfolio of approximately 40,000 towers as of the second quarter of 2025, in each of the top 100 basic trading areas of the United States, it remains well-positioned to capitalize on this upbeat trend.

In the second quarter of 2025, excluding the impact of Sprint Cancellations, the company reported 4.7% organic growth, which was driven by an increase in demand across its portfolio of tower businesses.

Long-Term Leases: Crown Castle has long-term tower lease agreements with top U.S. carriers, which contribute to recurring site rental cash flows over the long term. The wireless tenant contracts have an initial term of five to 15 years with contractual escalators and multiple renewal periods of five to 10 years each, which the tenant can exercise at their discretion.

Such long-term leases enable the company to enjoy recurring revenues that provide top-line stability, while contracted rent escalators on the majority of its revenues offer embedded growth. Moreover, a strong and creditworthy tenant base adds resiliency to its business. Management expects more core leasing activity in the second half of 2025, than the company have experienced in the first half of the year.

Balance Sheet Strength: Crown Castle has sufficient liquidity and a decent balance sheet position. The company exited the first quarter of 2025 with cash and cash equivalents of $94 million, up from $60 million in the prior quarter. After closing the fiber segment business, the company expects to use substantial cash proceeds to repay debt. As of June 30, 2025, the company had $6.6 billion of undrawn available under its senior unsecured revolving credit facility.

Other Stocks to Consider

Some other top-ranked stocks from the REIT sector are Pebblebrook Hotel Trust PEB and W.P. Carey WPC, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for PEB’s 2025 FFO per share has moved a cent northward to $1.43 over the past month.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for WPC’s 2025 FFO per share has moved 2 cents downward to $4.87 over the past month.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (FFO), a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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