Towers For Sale

Colby Synesael and Gregory Williams of Cowen and Company hosted an investor lunch with CFO Fran Shammo, Controller Tony Skiadas, and SVP of IR Mike Stefanski in New York City this week. Synesael commented in a research note about their discussion concerning Verizon’s potential sale of towers. “As management continues to consider the sale of its tower assets, management provided more insight into what they found particularly attractive about the AT&T tower sale to Crown, which was the impetus of Verizon’s interest,” he said.“Outside of the attractive price paid by Crown for the AT&T towers, Verizon was particularly attracted to the terms and conditions granted, more specifically mentioning the ability for AT&T to maintain control (and reserve space) on the towers. Continue reading here. 

NAB Fires Back at FCC

The National Association of Broadcasters isn’t too thrilled with being made the scapegoat for the FCC’s Incentive Auction delay. The FCC announced Friday, October 24, that the auction scheduled for mid-2015 would be pushed back until early 2016, citing the NAB’s recent lawsuit as part of the reason. “Given its complexity, there is good reason Congress gave the FCC 10 years to complete the proceeding. We reject suggestions that our narrowly focused lawsuit is cause for delay. We look forward to a speedy resolution of our legal challenge and a successful auction that preserves access to free and local TV for every American,” NAB Executive Vice President of Communications Dennis Wharton said in a statement. Continue reading here.

FCC Delays Auction

On Friday, the FCC announced they would postpone the 2015 Incentive Auction until early 2016. This auction is meant to reallocate airwaves now used by broadcast television stations for use by mobile phone companies. The New York Times reported, “The commission attributed the delay in part to a pending lawsuit filed by the National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group for the television industry, and to the need for more time to recruit television stations to participate.” This auction is likely to be the largest and most complicated sale of airwaves because it involves multiple steps where broadcasters agree to give up their airwaves or move their signals to new spots on the electromagnetic spectrum in exchange for a portion of the proceeds of their sale. Continue reading here. 

Keep Out

The secret cell tower snooping devices have been all over the news lately. A lot of customers want to know how they can stop this, the ACLU wants to know how the government is going to handle this situation, and carriers are doing their best to let everyone know who requests information from their towers and when. T-Mobile has been quietly upgrading their network to make it more difficult for surveillance equipment to eavesdrop on calls and texts, according to the Washington Post. “The upgrade involves switching to a new encryption standard, called A5/3, that is harder to crack than older forms of encryption,” Ashkan Soltani and Craig Timberg of the Washington Post explained. Continue reading here. 

AT&T Looks to the Future and Beyond!

Anders Bylund of The Motley Fool recently noted that AT&T invests more money in future growth drivers than any other American technology business. “Over the last four reported quarters, AT&T showed $23.2 billion of capital expenses according to Capital IQ data. That’s nearly $6 billion ahead of telecom rival and No. 2 spender Verizon Communications. In fact, Intel, well known for investing heavily, came in third-place,” Bylund explained.  AT&T does have $114 billion worth of operating assets; however, the company doesn’t separate growth and maintenance capital expenses in its financial reports. “Backing out AT&T’s depreciation from its trailing capital expenses, then, leaves about $7.5 billion of growth-focused spending.  Continue reading here. 

MasTec Acquires WesTower

MasTec, a leading infrastructure construction company, has acquired telecommunications services firm WesTower for $199 million. WesTower’s operations have experienced significant revenue expansion, growing from approximately $100 million in annual revenues in 2010, to approximately $450 million in projected revenues in 2014. In the transaction, MasTec acquired all of the issued and outstanding equity interests of WesTower for a one-time payment of approximately $199 million in cash, subject to customary purchase price adjustments. At closing, WesTower had approximately $159 million in tangible net worth, comprised mostly of working capital of $151 million, including approximately $18 million in cash. Continue reading here. 

Investments Keep Climbing

Edgewater Growth Capital Partners announced their recent investment in Vertical Bridge Holdings, owner and manager of wireless communications infrastructure. Vertical Bridge is following in the footsteps of their founding partners’ predecessor, Global Tower Partners who was acquired by American Tower in 2013 for $4.8 billion. The company is acquiring cell towers and rooftop cell sites to build out their mobile communications network. Edgewater Growth Capital Partners has made an undisclosed investment in Vertical Bridge so no financial terms were disclosed. Continue reading here.