By Matt Grossman

American Tower Corp. will acquire CoreSite Realty Corp. in a deal valued at $10.1 billion, the companies said Monday.

The merger would combine two companies that support communications and data infrastructure. American Tower is a real-estate investment trust that has a portfolio of hundreds of thousands of communications towers and other sites. CoreSite has a portfolio of data centers.

American Tower would pay $170 a share in cash for CoreSite, whose shares closed at $166.59 on Friday.

Adding CoreSite's data centers would help American Tower serve customers amid the rise of 5G connectivity, American Tower Chief Executive Tom Bartlett said.

The deal is expected to close by the end of this year or shortly thereafter, the companies said. American Tower said it expects the deal to be modestly accretive to its adjusted funds from operations initially, and increasingly accretive over time.

Write to Matt Grossman at matt.grossman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

11-15-21 0744ET