Buffett Brain · Research note
Score updated 21 May 2026
CCI· Real Estate
Crown Castle
Crown Castle owns 40,000 U.S. towers but trailing five years show -20% EPS CAGR, the fiber strategy did not work and the REIT structure leaves limited room.
Buffett fit
Weak fit
Owner
84
Durability
27
Management
56
Price
60
Score updated 21 May 2026
Buffett's checklist
Each number against Buffett's bar, and where it ranks among Real Estate stocks in our database.
How much profit the business makes on each dollar invested in it. Higher is better.
What is left of each sale after the cost of making the product. A high number often means pricing power.
The cash the business earns for its owners, compared with the price of the whole company.
How fast sales grew each year over the last five years.
How many years of today's profit you pay for at today's price. Lower means cheaper.
How much the company owes compared with what it owns outright. Lower is safer.
The four pillars
How the business measures up on each of Buffett's four tests.
Owning Crown Castle at 35.7x earnings means betting that the strategic review monetizes fiber and refocuses the business on the durable tower franchise.
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Cell towers are about as durable as infrastructure gets, carriers cannot easily relocate equipment and lease escalators are contractual.
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Share count is essentially flat (+0.2%). /NI of 6.48 is the meaningful metric, REITs deliberately depress GAAP earnings via depreciation.
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Owner-earnings yield of 7.6% is the most interesting number, meaningfully above the bond yield.
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For and against
The strongest points on each side, with the numbers behind them.
In its favor
5- 148.0% reflects exceptional tower-REIT economics
- 2More than 40,000 U.S. towers form a genuine scale
- 3/Net Income of 6.48 confirms the cash story is real
- 4Carrier lease escalators provide contractual revenue growth
Concerns
6- 1Revenue contracted 9.4% per year over five years
- 2Five-year EPS CAGR of -20.4% reflects fiber-strategy missteps
- 3Net-debt/EBITDA of 9.09 is genuinely high for any business
- 4Interest coverage of just 2.08x is uncomfortably thin
Price history
$78.65-56.1%· 5-year return
Weekly closing prices. Touch or hover the line for a date.
The business
How the business works
Crown Castle owns more than 40,000 U.S. cell towers and 80,000 route-miles of fiber supporting small cells. The 65.7% and 48.0% are exceptional, classic tower-REIT economics where each new tenant on an existing tower is essentially pure profit. The catch is that the fiber/small-cell business, which Crown bet heavily on, has not delivered the returns of the macro tower business. Revenue has actually contracted 9.4% per year over five years as the fiber strategy gets restructured.
What other investors would say
The same company, judged by three other documented playbooks.
Keep researching
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