Skip to main content
Real Estate

Infrastructure & Digital REITs Primer

Tower and data centre REIT primer with an Excel valuation model. Covers escalators, churn, bookings, power constraints, P/AFFO and rate sensitivity.

15 Sections 40 Pages PDF + Excel

PDF Only

The full primer in PDF format

£25 / ~$32
  • ✓ 40-page sector primer
  • ✓ Worked valuations
  • ✓ Screening thresholds
Buy PDF - £25

Excel Model

Plug-and-play valuation template

£45 / ~$58
  • ✓ Pre-built valuation model
  • ✓ Sensitivity tables
  • ✓ Scenario toggles
Buy Model - £45
Best Value

PDF + Model

Everything you need in one package

£59 / ~$76 £70
  • ✓ 40-page sector primer
  • ✓ Valuation model (.xlsx)
  • ✓ Save £11 vs buying separately
Buy Bundle - £59
Complete Real Estate Library

Three primers, three Excel models

Equity, Mortgage, and Infrastructure & Digital REITs. Everything at ~25% off

£210 £159 / ~$205
Buy All - £159

Inside the primer

The 15-section contents, a worked valuation page, and the Excel dashboard.

Section 09, Step 1, the worked tower two-stage AFFO model: the 7-year explicit AFFO path, terminal value and the $187.98 headline at an implied 18.8x P/AFFO.

Table of Contents

  1. 01 How Infrastructure and Digital REITs Make Money
  2. 02 Listed Company Types
  3. 03 The Asset Lifecycle
  4. 04 Segments and Sub-Markets
  5. 05 Revenue Drivers: Generic Build
  6. 06 Cost Structure: AFFO, Churn and Leverage
  7. 07 Valuation Frameworks
  8. 08 Worked Example: Organic Growth Identity
  9. 09 Worked Example: Two-Stage AFFO Discount Model
  10. 10 Applied Cases: Tower Economics
  11. 11 Applied Cases: Data Centre Economics
  12. 12 The Companies in This Primer
  13. 13 Key Metrics and Screening
  14. 14 Risks, Benchmarks and Case Study
  15. 15 Glossary and Cheat Sheet

40 pages · 15 sections · 2 worked valuations

The Excel model

The model's Valuation Summary: two-stage AFFO value per share and implied P/AFFO for the tower and data-centre archetypes against market price, charted.

Educational material for professional use. This primer and its model are not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and they are not personalised. Worked valuations use illustrative calibrations, not fair-value estimates for any company.

Towers and data centres share a REIT wrapper but earn differently. Tower landlords compound tenant billings through contractual escalators and colocation on built steel; data-centre landlords convert signed bookings into energised megawatts after construction and grid interconnection. Both trade on AFFO per share, not property NAV, and both sit at the rate-sensitive end of the REIT spectrum because the cash flows are long-dated. Standard equity-REIT toolkit (cap rates, same-store NOI) misses the escalator identity, the churn definition traps, and the bookings-to-revenue lag that drive these names.

The primer builds from how the two machines make money through company types, asset lifecycle, and segment economics, before opening the AFFO, churn, and leverage screens. Two worked examples carry the method: the organic growth identity for towers, and a two-stage AFFO discount model for valuation and rate stress. Applied cases walk tower and data-centre economics in turn; a peer set, screening thresholds, and a risks chapter close the framework.

Free guides on tower lease escalators, churn definitions, AFFO for towers, the power constraint, and colocation vs hyperscale feed the same vocabulary. Research profiles for AMT, CCI, SBAC, EQIX, and DLR run the screens on filed results.

The companion Excel model runs ten sheets, from the tower and data-centre AFFO models to a rate-sensitivity screen, with the rate assumptions set on one sheet. Build the tower or data-centre path, then read the valuation and rate-stress outputs on any name in the sector.

Sheets: Quick Start, Instructions, Assumptions, Organic Growth & Churn, Tower REIT, Data-Centre REIT, Valuation Summary, Rate Sensitivity, Implied Multiple, Dashboard.

See this methodology applied to a real company:

American Tower (AMT) →