Rod Smith
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer at American Tower
Thanks, Tom, and thanks, everyone, for joining today's call. As you saw in today's press release, we're off to a great start in 2022, delivering another quarter of strong performance across our global business. Before getting into the details of our Q1 results and revised outlook, I want to touch on a few highlights from the quarter. First, demand for our towers continues to be strong throughout our global footprint, evidenced by the sequential acceleration of organic tenant billings growth across each of our reported segments. Additionally, organic leasing activity was complemented with nearly 1,450 newly constructed sites in Q1, our 11th quarter of over 1,000 new builds in the last three years, a milestone that was only achieved once prior to 2019.
Second, growth from our recently acquired premier assets, Telxius and CoreSite, is at the high end of our initial expectations. As a result, we are modestly raising guidance for Europe organic tenant billings growth and the midpoint of our data center segment revenues. Additionally, in Europe, we recently signed an agreement with 1&1 in Germany, establishing a leasing framework to support their network rollout, which we expect to be another solid catalyst for growth in an already strong leasing market. We believe this further speaks to the quality and strategic positioning of our acquired Telxius assets, the opportune timing of the transaction and our optimism for the future.
And finally, we continue to leverage the capital markets to support our investment-grade balance sheet, and we're able to issue $1.3 billion in senior unsecured notes on attractive terms right after the end of the first quarter, with proceeds used to term out a portion of our floating rate debt. Looking ahead, and as it relates to our CoreSite financing plan, we continue to explore options that are aimed at maximizing shareholder value, while supporting our investment-grade credit ratings. Consistent with our prior outlook, we are targeting to finance the $10 billion plus purchase price, roughly equally between debt and equity, the latter potentially being satisfied through issuances of common equity, mandatory preferred equity, or other convertible instruments, or private capital, or a well-balanced combination.
With that, please turn to Slide six, and I'll review our property revenue and organic tenant billings growth for the quarter. As you can see, our Q1 consolidated property revenue of $2.6 billion grew by 22% or over 23% on an FX-neutral basis over the prior year period, which included a contribution of approximately 17% in growth from Telxius and CoreSite. In the U.S. and Canada, property revenue grew under 1% due to the impacts of Sprint churn, while international growth stood at roughly 32% or nearly 35%, excluding the impacts of currency fluctuations. Additionally, our newly expanded U.S. data center business contributed over $180 million of growth in the quarter.
These growth rates across our property segments continue to reflect the essential nature of digital services and our communications real estate throughout our served markets. Moving to the right side of the slide, you'll see our organic tenant billings growth for the quarter, with consolidated growth standing at 3%. In the United States and Canada, while growth was 0.6%, we saw an acceleration of gross organic new business on a dollar basis, posting our highest quarter since Q1 2020, resulting in a 3.3% contribution to growth. Given the mechanics of our MLAs and the timing of certain use fees in 2021, we will see a decline in gross organic new business in the second quarter before ramping up in the back half of the year, which was all contemplated in our original 2022 guidance.
Escalators were 3.5%, which is also impacted by certain timing mechanics within our MLAs. Though for the full year, we expect escalators to come in right around 3%, consistent with historical trends. This growth was largely offset by the impacts of Sprint churn. On the international side, growth was 7.4%, and we saw improvements across each of our reported segments. Starting with Latin America, growth came in at roughly 8.7%. This includes approximately 8.5% from escalations, which represents an acceleration of 300 basis points as compared to Q4 2021. Additionally, relatively consistent growth organic leasing trends were largely offset by churn primarily associated with certain decommissioning agreements as highlighted on our Q4 2021 earnings call.
In Africa, we generated organic tenant billings growth of 8%, which includes 7% in gross organic new business contributions, our second highest quarter on record. This strong new leasing activity was complemented by the construction of over 600 sites in the quarter, as we see 4G coverage and densification initiatives continue to drive strong top line growth and returns across the region. We have now constructed over 3,800 sites in Africa since the start of 2020, around the time we closed the Eaton Tower transaction, which meaningfully augmented our scale and enhanced the existing MNO relationships in the region.
As a point of reference, prior to the Eaton transaction, we had constructed less than 2,200 sites in the preceding nine years of operations in Africa combined. Turning to Europe. We saw growth of 18.8%, reflecting pronounced contributions from the Telxius portfolio, which was not in our Q1 2021 base. Absent Telxius, our legacy European business grew over 6%, an expansion of 300 basis points as compared to our Q1 2021 growth rate. As we look to the back half of 2022, where we'll have more comparable year-over-year results with Telxius included, we expect to see strong organic tenant billings growth in the mid-7% range, driven by accelerating 5G deployments and continuing investments in 4G.
In APAC, we saw growth of 2.1%, a continuation of the improvements we have seen over the past several quarters as churn further moderates in the India market. In fact, churn is now down to the mid-6% range, the lowest we've seen in nearly five years, which we project to further improve over the course of 2022. Turning to Slide seven. Our first quarter adjusted EBITDA grew approximately 13% or nearly 14% on an FX-neutral basis to $1.6 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 61%, down over five percentage points over the prior year, driven by the lower margin profile of newly acquired assets, the conversion impacts of commenced Sprint churn, along with the higher pass-through revenue resulting from rising fuel costs.
Moving to the right side of the slide, attributable AFFO and attributable AFFO per share grew by roughly 6% and nearly 4%, respectively. Growth was meaningfully impacted by the timing of cash taxes and maintenance capex in 2021, which was heavily back-end weighted. The contributions of these two line items provided a negative year-over-year growth headwind of approximately 5% on AFFO in the quarter. Let's now turn to our revised full year outlook, where I'll start by reviewing a few of the key high-level drivers. First, due to higher pass-through revenue associated with rising fuel costs, strong underlying trends in the business and modest FX improvements, we're increasing our property revenue outlook by $75 million at the midpoint.
It's important to note that we continue to apply our standard methodology for projecting FX across our regions, taking the more conservative of the trailing 30-day spot rate averages and an aggregation of bank estimates. When applying current spot rates, we would actually see improvement beyond these revised assumptions, although we believe it's prudent to continue with our standard approach. Second, through solid conversion of our top line upside, the carryforward of some cost benefits and strong services performance in Q1, we are raising our outlook for adjusted EBITDA by $55 million. At an attributable AFFO per share level, we are raising our guide at the midpoint to $9.72, an increase of $0.02.
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, we are maintaining our prior guidance assumptions around the equity financing for CoreSite. With that, let's move into the details of our revised full year expectations. As you can see on Slide eight, we are now projecting consolidated year-over-year property revenue growth of 14% at the midpoint. The increase, as compared to prior guidance, is due to approximately $66 million in additional international pass-through and straight-line revenue, $7 million in core property revenue outperformance, along with another $2 million in FX benefits. Moving to Slide nine, you'll see our revised organic tenant billings growth expectations for 2022.
With the leasing environment remaining largely consistent across our footprint, we are reiterating our prior growth rates for Latin America, APAC, international, U.S. and Canada and on a total consolidated basis. We are modestly raising our expectations for Africa, driven by stronger new business, and Europe mainly due to higher CPI-driven escalation contributions. As such, we now expect organic growth of greater than 6% and greater than 9% in Africa and Europe, respectively. Moving to Slide 10.
And as noted earlier, we are raising our adjusted EBITDA outlook by $55 million and now expect year-over-year growth of roughly 10.5%. These revised expectations include $26 million from cash gross margin outperformance, driven by the increase in our revenue guidance and some services margin expansion, partially offset by higher pass-through expenses. We also now expect an additional $19 million in net straight line and another $10 million associated with revised FX assumptions. Turning to Slide 11. We are raising our expectations for AFFO attributable to common stockholders by $10 million at the midpoint as the benefits from the operational and FX upside I just mentioned are being partially offset by higher interest expenses, the result of an elevated rate curve since our last call. This translates to an increase of $0.02 on a per share basis, moving the midpoint to $9.72.
As I mentioned earlier, and consistent with our initial outlook, our AFFO guidance includes an assumption for the CoreSite equity financing, which, for modeling purposes, assumes a common equity issuance by midyear. However, we continue to evaluate several potential sources, including common equity, mandatory convertible preferred equity and other convertible instruments and also private capital partnerships, where discussions continue to progress as a result of strong interest from leading private investors for a minority stake in our U.S. data center business. That said, we remain flexible in our approach, with the final mix ultimately depending upon what course offers the most attractive cost of capital, terms and operational flexibility.
Finally, with respect to the balance sheet management, following our recent senior unsecured note issuance, which I highlighted earlier, and pro forma for executing our equity financing, we will have termed out a significant balance of our floating rate debt and would expect to bring our net leverage to the high five times range, with a clear path to returning to our target range of three to five times over the next couple of years. Moving on to Slide 12, let's review our capital deployment expectations for 2022, which are consistent with our prior outlook and reflect our continued focus on driving strong, sustainable AFFO per share growth.
As always, distributing capital to our common shareholders remains our top priority, and we continue to expect to allocate, subject to Board approval, approximately $2.8 billion towards our dividend in 2022. On a per share basis, this equates to approximately 12.5% in year-over-year growth, consistent with our double-digit target. On the capex front, we are reiterating our prior outlook midpoints across all categories. This plan supports our initial expectations to construct approximately 6,500 new sites across our international footprint and includes roughly $300 million towards our data center business, $270 million of which is tied to development projects.
We will continue to prioritize our development opportunities across our global footprint given its strong return profile and our ability to largely fund these initiatives through locally generated cash flows. In fact, of the nearly 1,450 sites we constructed in Q1, we saw an average day one NOI yield of 14%, at the high end of the double-digit initial return rates we've seen through our build program historically. Looking ahead, our development pipeline remains strong, with opportunities afforded by our scale, market positions, customer relationships, operational capabilities and solid underlying secular trends, which continue to drive strong demand across the portfolio.
Finally, on Slide 13 and in summary, Q1 was a fantastic start to the year, with organic tenant billings growth accelerating sequentially across each of our reported segments as 5G deployments, 4G densification initiatives and the benefits of our comprehensive MLA agreements drive strong organic new leasing and increasing demand for newly constructed sites. We see the same secular trends driving solid performance on the data center front, and we could not be happier with the assets and team we've added through the CoreSite and DataSite acquisitions. We continue to be encouraged by the demand trends across our global portfolio of distributed communications real estate and look forward to executing on a number of strategic initiatives, including finalizing our CoreSite financing through the rest of the year, as we aim to deliver compelling total returns to our stockholders. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for Q&A.