We reviewed the Elliott Management slickly produced attack on Crown Castle ($CCI). In short, Elliott believes that CCI has underperformed its peers, American Tower (AMT) and SBA Communications (SBAC). While the underperformance is clear, I also think that Elliott’s analysis omits to give proper credence to the opportunity that fiber/small cells may provide to Crown Castle that its peers will miss.
Yesterday, in a surprise press release by Verizon, Verizon indicated that it had formed a joint venture with AT&T and Tillman Infrastructure to develop “hundreds” of communication towers with “the potential for significantly more new site locations in the future”. Tillman Infrastructure is relatively new to the US- but owns a few thousand towers in […]
With SBAC poised to announce earnings this afternoon, and with AMT and CCI’s previous positive reporting for macrocell growth, we thought we would address the questions we have for SBAC, recognizing that some of these won’t be answered. Have you received a substantive number of modification applications related to 600MHz from T-Mobile? What is the […]
FirstNet Award to AT&T Confirmed: Checks Confirm Amendment Activity before Official Announcement Tickers: T, AMT, CCI, SBAC Tags: Ken Schmidt, Wireless Infrastructure In Examining FirstNet Assumptions 12/9/2016, we reviewed the likelihood that AT&T would win the FirstNet RFP and the impact on TowerCos, Equipment OEMs, and FiberCos. As the time, the FirstNet award was stalled […]
On September 20, Comcast’s Brian Roberts announced that Comcast Wireless – a second iteration wireless venture – is scheduled to roll out in mid-2017. While details have been limited so far, here is what we anticipate based upon 20+ years in the wireless industry.
While we had heard about this previously, the news was not public until yesterday. Reuters is reporting that MacQuarie has put Global Tower Partners up for sale. Global Tower Partners owns 6,400 towers and manages or leases another 9,600 properties across the US. Some of these properties are not active cell site locations, they are […]
A follow up story by the Wall Street Journal mentioned reports from American Tower and SBA who confirmed the number of leases impacted: American Tower has 3,100 towers where AT&T and T-Mobile are both on the tower out of 36,000 sites or 8.6% overlap. American Tower’s lease agreements with T-Mobile have between 5 and 6 […]
We went through the annual reports for 2009 for Crown Castle, American Tower, and SBA Communications to gauge which of the tower companies might have the greatest amount of risk due to the AT&T and T-Mobile merger. Below is a graph showing the percentage of net revenue that each company generates from the various big […]
From RCR News- the largest tower companies in the US. Please note that the list is fairly incomplete and just shows those that have contacted RCR News. American Tower Corp. 22,288 Crown Castle International Corp. 12,910 Global Signal Inc. 11,000 SBA Communications Corp. 5,500 Global Tower Partners 2,357 Clear Channel Vertical Real Estate 1,378 National […]
In recent weeks, we have heard evidence that the market for existing tower portfolios is red hot. Towers are bought and sold on the basis of a multiple of annual net cash flow. The multiples on recent deals for cell towers have been steadily increasing and are approaching rates that are significantly higher than those […]