A number of our landowners with AT&T towers on their property are being contacted by Octagon Towers, LLC. Octagon is asking landowners to either permit the assignment of the AT&T lease to Octagon or to extend the lease that is in place. Octagon Towers is a recently formed subsidiary of Peppertree Capital. Peppertree is “a private equity firm focused on investments in growing communication infrastructure companies”.
Peppertree purchased 1,000 towers from AT&T for $680M in 2019. These are towers that were primarily built after AT&T last sold towers to Crown Castle in 2013. Peppertree formed Octagon Towers with the AT&T towers.
Octagon is reaching out to landowners for two reasons. First – to get authorization to assign the lease from AT&T to Octagon. Whether a landowner needs to consent to the assignment is based upon their AT&T ground lease. Most of the time, the ground lease provides that AT&T may freely assign to other companies. Unless your lease says otherwise, you likely won’t be able to charge for consenting to the assignment.
Secondly, Octagon is calling landowners who have recently purchased AT&T towers on their property and asking them to extend the ground lease. If you receive an offer from Octagon to extend a lease that doesn’t include an increase in rent or a sizeable signing bonus, we don’t recommend extending in most cases.
If you are contacted by Octagon regarding your AT&T tower lease, please contact us and we will help you understand whether your lease is undervalued. We are not affiliated or related to Octagon Towers, AT&T, or Peppertree Capital. We will advise you when and under what terms it makes sense to extend. Do not extend just because they claim the tower will be moved. Other than extremely high rent situations ($3,000/mo or more), it is very unlikely that the tower would be moved.
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