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 rise significantly over the next few years, service providers are likely to continue their network expansion and densification efforts to meet the demand, propelling the demand for CCI’s properties. A healthy balance sheet is expected to support its growth endeavors. 

Although over the past three months, shares of this tower real estate investment trust (REIT) have declined 7.8% compared with the industry’s fall of 0.9%, 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 2 cents northward over the past two months to $4.30. Given its solid fundamentals and positive estimate revisions, the stock is likely to perform well in the quarters ahead.

Factors That Make Crown Castle Stock 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. Moreover, 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, cloud services and hybrid-working scenarios. 

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

Amid strong demand for its assets, the company expects a $10 million rise in 2025 straight-line revenues. In the third quarter of 2025, excluding the impact of Sprint Cancellations, the company reported 5.2% organic growth, 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. 

Balance Sheet Strength: Crown Castle has sufficient liquidity and a decent balance sheet position. The company exited the third quarter of 2025 with cash and cash equivalents of $57 million. After closing the fiber segment business, the company expects to use substantial cash proceeds to repay debt. As of Sept. 30, 2025, the company had $4.2 billion of availability under its senior unsecured revolving credit facility.

Other Stocks to Consider

Some other top-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are Digital Realty Trust DLR and Cousins Properties CUZ, each carrying a Zacks Rank of 2 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Digital Realty’s 2025 FFO per share is pegged at $7.35, which indicates year-over-year growth of 9.5%.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Cousins Properties’ full-year FFO per share stands at $2.84, which calls for an increase of 5.6% from the year-ago period.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents 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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