How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Crown Castle (CCI Quick QuoteCCI - Free Report) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to CCI for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Crown Castle's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Crown Castle's main business drivers.

Houston-based Crown Castle International Corp. is a leading independent operator of wireless communication towers in the United States. The company is engaged in the ownership, management and leasing of more than 40,000 cell towers and around 80,000 route miles of fiber supporting small cells and fiber solutions spread across key markets in the nation.

On Sep 9, 2013, the board of directors of Crown Castle approved the steps needed to reorganize the company to qualify as a real estate investment trust (REIT) for tax purposes. Crown Castle became a REIT on Jan 1, 2014.

The company's operating segment consists of towers (86.3% of site-rental revenues for three months ending Mar 31, 2022) and fiber (13.7%).

Crown Castle reports revenues under site rental (90.5% of net revenues in first-quarter 2022) and services and other (9.5%). The company generates site-rental revenues from its core business by entering long-term tenant contracts in various forms, including lease, licensing, sublease and service agreements with its tenants, for space or capacity at its shared communications infrastructures.

Revenues from services and other segment are generated by offering certain services primarily relating to its towers segment, consisting of site-development and installation services.

Importantly, the three major U.S. wireless carriers Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile contributed to 75% of the REIT's site-rental revenues for the first quarter of 2022.

Note**: All EPS numbers presented in this report represent FFO per share. FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

Bottom Line

While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Crown Castle ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in June 2012 would be worth $3,378.06, or a gain of 237.81%, as of June 7, 2022, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.

The S&P 500 rose 213.39% and the price of gold increased 11.21% over the same time frame in comparison.

Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for CCI.

Crown Castle’s better-than-anticipated first-quarter performance was driven by growth in site-rental revenues and strong leasing activity, partially offset by rising operating expenses. An increase in mobile data usage, spectrum availability and high network investments by wireless carriers to deploy 5G networks are anticipated to spur demand for the company’s towers. Capitalizing on these, Crown Castle is well-positioned to grow. Its shares have outperformed the industry in the past three months. Additionally, the recent trend in estimate revisions for full-year 2022 funds from operations (FFO) per share suggests a favorable outlook for the company. Nevertheless, the evolution of new technologies might reduce demand for the site leases. A highly leveraged balance sheet curtails the company’s ability to withstand any credit crisis.

The stock has jumped 5.36% over the past four weeks. Additionally, no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 3 higher, for fiscal 2022; the consensus estimate has moved up as well.