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.