American Tower Agrees To Acquire Global Tower Partners for $4.8B

Today American Tower Corporation announced that they have entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the outstanding common membership interest of MIP Tower Holdings, LLC, which is a private real estate investment trust and the parent company of Global Tower Partners. The purchase price was approximately $.4.8 billion. The purchase price is expected to be paid with approximately $3.3 billion in cash and approximately $1.5 billion of existing indebtness.

GTP owns and operates approximately 5,400 domestic towers, 800 domestic property interests under third-party communications sites, and has management rights to over 9,000 domestic sites, which are primarily rooftop assets. In addition, GTP owns 500 communications sites in Costa Rica.

Jim Taiclet, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of American Tower, said: “GTP has constructed and acquired an outstanding U.S. portfolio of tower, rooftop and land assets, which is highly complementary to that of American Tower. Moreover, GTP’s management of these assets has been excellent, as confirmed through our rigorous due diligence process. GTP’s towers boast a high quality customer base, a strong position with respect to ground ownership and lease terms, and additional structural capacity available to facilitate future leasing activity.

With all four major domestic wireless carriers engaged in aggressive multi-year 4G LTE deployments, we believe our acquisition of GTP solidifies our path to achieving our strategic goals related to growing our AFFO over the next five years.”

American Tower Corporation expects to close this transaction by the fourth quarter of 2013. The company believes that by acquiring high quality assets with strong existing cash flows there will be significant opportunity for future growth. The strong leasing momentum is expected to continue at a steady pace due to the data demand growth and the 4G LTE deployments.

                                                                                                                                           

Global Tower Partners Seeks Buyers

Global Tower Partners is the largest privately-owned cell tower operator in the U.S. and the fourth largest independent operator in the U.S. They manage/master more than 16,000 wireless sites, including 6,400 telecommunications throughout the U.S., Mexico, and Cost Rica. However, GTP is being shopped to the larger companies in the wireless tower industry. In 2007, Macquarie Infrastructure Partners LP acquired GTP for about $1.43 billion.

Ryan Dezember reported for The Wall StreetJournal that, “Though Global Tower and its three larger, publicly traded rivals have made numerous deals in recent years to consolidate ownership of U.S. cell towers, it remains a somewhat fragmented sector.”

With Sprint and T-Mobile trying updating their networks to the latest 4G LTE technology and getting on the level of AT&T and Verizon, the cell tower industry is booming because more cell towers are needed to provide the right type of coverage to customers. The majority of people these days are disconnecting their landlines and relying solely on cell phones, making more towers a necessity.

“Global Tower would be one of the larger collection of towers to come to market in recent years. It bigger rivals have been acquisitive, though their potential interest in Global Tower wasn't immediately clear,” Dezember reported.