American Tower Corporation (AMT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
June 16, 2020
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystHi. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Sami Badri at the Crédit Suisse Communications Conference. I'm the senior equity analyst covering communications equipment and communications infrastructure. Thank you for joining us. Just some housekeeping. If you want to ask a question to Rod or myself, please e-mail me directly to my inbox. I will filter and factor in the question accordingly. Rod, thank you very much for joining us. Rod is the CFO and EVP of American Tower. Thanks a lot for joining us today.
Rodney Smith
executiveYes. Thanks for having me, Sami. Great to be here.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystYes. So just to kick off the conversation, if we could go through some of the 1Q '20 results, the revisions in 2020 guidance, that would be very helpful for us to really set the tone of the conversation. We're going to roll from there into some of the different question sets that we've actually prepared for our fireside chat.
Rodney Smith
executiveYes, that sounds great. So we had a strong Q1. It was certainly in line with our expectations. So we posted property revenues and tenant billing and overall revenues of just below $2 billion, which represented more than 10% year-on-year growth for the quarter for both of those categories, which was great to see. We also expanded our EBITDA margins by about 230 basis points or so and we ended the quarter with about $4.2 billion of liquidity. And subsequent to the quarter end, we entered into an additional -- a little over $1.1 billion of additional term loan, 364-day term loan, which put our overall liquidity up to about $5.2 billion. So really strong beginning to the year. Organic tenant billings growth is one of the key drivers for us. So we had performed in line for Q1 as well. Overall, organic tenant billings growth came in at about 5.4% globally. That breaks down throughout the regions of ours of about 5.6% in the U.S., international was about 5.1%. When you look at the different regions within our international category, you see a few different things that's certainly noteworthy. So that 5.1% covers all of international. That was led by Africa with organic tenant billings of about 9.3%. Our Latin America region came in at about 7.5% for Q1, Europe came in just under 2%, and India came in about a negative -- negative 1%. So you see different growth rates kind of around the world, again, led by strong performance in Africa at 9.3% and Latin America at about 7.5%. And then the other noteworthy thing at the beginning of this year, we were very busy integrating the acquisitions we did in 2019. So we acquired about 9,000 sites in 2019. Almost 8,000 of those came right at the end of the year. So we were busy in Q1 integrating those, and that's gone very well. That was primarily driven by a large acquisition in Africa, the Entel acquisition, which covered 5 markets throughout Africa; towers in Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Burkina Faso and Niger. And then we also did an acquisition from Entel. Basically, a carrier outsourced towers there in Chile and Peru. So very busy integrating those. That went extremely well. And last year, we also built 4,500 towers across our region. So we're busy integrating those and driving revenue across there. We're expecting a strong year. So certainly, in line with our outlook that we provided and certainly in line with our expectations, with the one exception, which you probably saw from our Q1 announcements, where the foreign exchange translation effect on our business did require a revision to outlook. So we took that down of revenues, EBITDA and AFFO. But since the end of the quarter, some of the emerging markets that we operate in, their currencies are actually strengthening compared to where they were a few -- even a few weeks ago. So that's been encouraging. And then across the board, we reiterated our operational guidance across the board. So again, organic tenant billings growth is a key driver here. So for 2020, the full year, we're expecting about 5% organic tenant billings growth across the board globally. That's driven by the piece parts. Again, U.S. tower, our U.S. division at about 5%; international at about 5%. Africa, we expect to come in at about 9%. Latin America, we expect to come in at about 7%. And then when you get into Europe and Asia, Europe, we're thinking 1% to 2% organic tenant billings growth and Asia at about 0. So again, in line with our expectations. And that's with the backdrop of COVID-19 now and the global pandemic that we're all in. So we've been doing a lot of work in terms of our outlook for the full year. And beyond the obvious impacts because of the foreign exchange translation, we don't see any other material or significant impacts to our business. So we are able to conduct business. We're taking in customer applications. We're processing those applications. Our employees, our office employees now are working from home in the U.S. and around the globe, and that process is going exceptionally well. So we have the systems in place to be able to conduct business from really anywhere. So that's been relatively seamless. The other thing I would note is that this pandemic is really highlighting the importance and the critical nature of wireless networks globally. And it was the infrastructure that those networks run on, which includes towers. So in places like India and Latin America and Africa, we've actually seen a bump up in traffic on these networks in those markets because of the shift from people working in offices and going back to their homes and working and getting on the wireless networks for larger parts of their workday. So that's been very interesting. We're also designated as an essential provider or essential workforce. So our field crews in the U.S. and around the globe still have access to get out into areas and do installations and maintain towers and those sorts of activity. So that's been relatively seamless. The only thing where we've seen a little bit of a pullback or a slowdown is with new builds in India relative to COVID-19. So in that regard, we did take our outlook for new builds in 2020 down by about 1,000 towers. So bringing down from roughly 6,500 down to about 5,500 towers globally that we now expect to build. So we've had a really strong start to the year, and everything has kind of been in line with our expectations.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystGot it. Thank you for giving that very, very concise and holistic overview. I wanted to just double-click on India. Very topical in the news, Vodafone Idea continues to come up as a pretty big headline grabber as far as issues that could probably come up within India and potentially the Asian region. Now you have recently seen hyperscalers also make some announcements regarding their potential entry, either organically or inorganically, into India. Just -- could we just maybe discuss some of the puts and takes and the implications for AMT as far as all these headlines, Vodafone Idea, maybe kind of the house view on what you guys think is going to happen or play out as far as we see the world today?
Rodney Smith
executiveYes. Yes, sure. So India is a very interesting market. We've been in there for several years now. A couple of, I guess, cable setting issues first I'll hit. So India has gone through a carrier consolidation where the market had more than a dozen wireless carriers across India to service the population that's 1.3 billion people and to build networks that didn't exist a few years ago. So they're transitioning from 2G to 3G networks. There's only one provider really building out a nationwide 4G network at this point. So that's kind of where the networks are in terms of their development. A company called R-Jio came into the market, and they invested tens of billions of dollars building out a network of 4G networks, so kind of leapfrogging technologies from where some of the other players were. And they also provided the service to subscribers at a very reduced fee and close to free service for broadband and data consumption and those sorts of things. That disrupted the market pretty significantly. It caused a lot of pressure on the other carriers. So there was a rapid consolidation there. We expected a consolidation in that market. We knew that, that market wasn't going to have 12 or 13 wireless carriers 10 years from now. But the rate and the pace of that consolidation really surpassed our expectations. So it happened very quickly, and it was driven by R-Jio's entrance into the market and their price points. It's interesting to note that they had been saying that they wanted their market share to achieve around 45%. They are at or just about at that level. So then they began to increase their tariffs. So we've seen significant tariff increases in India. So the pricing is becoming closer to market rates. Not quite there yet, it's still well below market. But the fact that R-Jio is kind of in the range where they want to be from a market share perspective and they have now raised the prices, that gives Airtel and Vodafone the ability to raise prices, which they have done. So that's a huge signal in the marketplace for the whole wireless ecosystem there to become much healthier and to become much more commercial-based. So I think that's certainly a really good sign. The other really interesting point is that now the consolidation is behind us and we have experienced churn over the last few years, that's largely subsided. So our churn now is much less than it used to be. And by the end of the year, we think that consolidation churn will really be all flushed through, and then we'll be back to a normal churn level in India. But there was another event in India where the Supreme Court made a ruling on the definition of adjusted gross revenues in India. This is an issue that goes back some 15 years or so. And with that, it was an unfavorable ruling to the carrier, so it triggered taxes on wireless services and telecom services in general. 75% of all the liabilities that came from this ruling are penalties and interest, not the underlying tax. So the underlying tax is manageable for the carriers, but the penalties and interest that have accumulated over 15 years and having those due all at once is causing a significant financial pressure on some of the carriers. And in our case, primarily the Vodafone Idea pressure there is one that we watch quite a bit. So Vodafone Idea and Airtel both have liabilities under this. R-Jio actually doesn't because they were a relatively new entrant, so they didn't exist 15 years ago. Vodafone and Idea have -- and Airtel have both been making payments, let's say payments. And along the way, they've also been petitioning the government to reduce the liabilities and to potentially extend out the payment terms where instead of having those penalties due all at once now, to try to move them out over a number of years, maybe 10 years, maybe 15, maybe even longer. The court system in India has repeatedly denied their request to change the fee amount, but they've left it open in terms of the timing of the required payments. So that's a point where we expect -- or where -- we don't know what's going to happen in India. But we are hopeful and we think it's realistic that the combination of either the government or the court system there will decide to extend payment terms to these folks in order to make sure that they have a healthy wireless ecosystem in India. So just recently, a couple of days ago actually, at the end of last week, the Supreme Court, the court system did rule, and they requested the carriers to turn in affidavits about their ability to pay. And it seems as though part of that might be setting up the situation where this -- the government and the court system will extend those payments when they see that the carriers really will have difficulty paying now but they could handle it over time. So that's what we think is probably happening directionally here. So that's certainly interesting. But then on the backdrop of India, I mean it's a great market. When you think about the number of people, 1.3 billion people there, the networks being fairly behind a lot of other places in the world where the primary networks in India are still 3G networks, they don't have ubiquitous coverage across India, the government has put in place a pretty high-level initiative called Digital India where they're trying to get their economy on a digital platform, and they want all transactions running through an electronic digital platform. And the only way to make that work in India is to have a robust wireless network that people can access the Internet from because the landlines don't exist in much of India. So we do think that having a healthy environment in India is right in line with what the government top-level strategic objectives are for India. So that's important to kind of note. And now that the industry has raised their tariffs, and economically, the whole industry seems like it's heading towards a healthier place as long as they can deal with the AGR issue in the government, which is still open, right? So we'll figure that out over the next probably couple of months. And some of the process there was delayed because of COVID-19 and the significant lockdowns that are happening in India. So that's kind of the backdrop in India. The recent developments there is we've seen a number of U.S. entities showing interest in investing in India, including Facebook investing in R-Jio. And there's rumors about other private equity firms investing in either tower assets in India or into Airtel or Vodafone. So it seems like the U.S. investors and the U.S. tech companies are seeing the opportunity in India probably similar to the way we see it. In India, like all of our investments around the world, they are long-term investments for us. And we still believe that India shows great promise for us and great long-term outlook for us.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystRight. That's right. And that's a very comprehensive overview, and we generally share the same house view in terms of directionally what's going to happen with potentially the Indian regulators kind of getting a bit more easygoing with what exactly they're demanding just given the bottlenecks and the issues that have arisen. I want to shift over across the pond here to North America and then the T-Mobile and Sprint deal and some of the guidance that T-Mobile has actually given regarding the number of towers that they want to be at on a pro forma basis versus what they have today. And factoring in some of the narrative from a decommissioning perspective, obviously, AMT is the least impacted of the 3 major tower providers in the U.S. But I think one thing is -- I want to touch on is, has the road map or the plan or the pro forma number that they've outlined from a decommissioning perspective, is it a realistic number? And if they're going to realize that number, how long will it really take them to get there, right? Because some of the lease expirations for AMT are 2 years. For SBAC and Crown, it basically toggles between 4 and 6 years before big renewals can actually happen. So maybe just a quick highlight on T-Mobile/Sprint, potential impact for decommissioning to AMT and then maybe just the time line and whether that actually measures or flushes out the way the industry is actually used to doing things, that would be very helpful.
Rodney Smith
executiveYes. Yes, so I think the fact that T-Mobile and Sprint actually were able to get their merger completed recently is a real positive and a real step forward for the U.S. wireless landscape. So we think that's a good thing. We're excited about that. When you think about T-Mobile's plan, I would never say that what they're planning to do is unrealistic. They -- T-Mobile is a very sophisticated company. They've got a lot of good experience. I think if anything, they've shown over the last few years, when they put their mind to achieving objectives and goals, they do really well at that. So it's a good team, and I'm sure they have a good plan. What I would say, more generally speaking, is this is a massive integration effort when you think about Sprint and T-Mobile coming together. There are very diverse spectrum holdings of the 2 different companies that have to be engineered and woven together across the network. They're managing over 100 million subscribers today on 2 different networks. And as they bring that together, it's going to be a very complicated migration effort. It's going to be a very complicated engineering effort. In my experience, being in wireless and towers and fiber for more than 25 years, about 25 years, we've seen a few other large acquisitions, and they typically take longer and are more complex than people think. So that's one of the things that we think about is we're here to support the new T-Mobile and building out their network and to make a smooth transition. We also recognize how complex and difficult it will be. So from that perspective, if you think about the impacts it could have on American Tower, Sprint and T-Mobile each run about 8% to 9% of our global property revenues. So T-Mobile has said that they intend to dismantle the Sprint sites and keep the T-Mobile network up and running and migrate subscribers over to that. That's kind of been their stated plan. They've -- and they've also said in the process, they'll dismantle 35,000 sites or so, a lot of those will be rooftop sites and other types of sites, not necessarily just macro sites. So what we think makes the most sense here is that where Sprint and T-Mobile are colocated on our sites, that's probably the targeted potential churn that we would see. And that number runs between 3% and 4% of our global property revenues. So that's where you'd have a Sprint installation in the same place where there's a T-Mobile installation. We have about 4 years left on our T-Mobile terms in terms of -- in the T-Mobile alone pre-Sprint. And then Sprint, they have about 1 year, 1.5 years now. So in the middle to the back half of 2021 is when the Sprint sites come up for renewal. So that's kind of a trigger date where if you've -- if they've been able to migrate subscribers and they don't need those sites, they could take sites down in as early as 2021. Whether or not they could take down a significant number of those, if they'll be ready, that's an awful short window in terms of the migration of more than 50 million subscribers and everything that they need to do. So chances are we'll be working with them and trying to find a way to help them integrate the 2 networks. And it'll probably take longer than a year or 1.5 years. So we would be looking for contract structures that are supportive to them, and that probably ends up dragging some of that churn out over multiple years. That's kind of the way we think about the churn. The other pieces here is that T-Mobile has said they want to have the first 5G network, and they want to have the best 5G network, and they want to have the best network in general in terms of the 4G network. So in order to have that, when you're competing on network quality and network supremacy, it requires investments into the network on a constant basis in order to do that. So we've been seeing mobile data in the U.S. growing 30%, 40% every year for the last few years. We expect that will continue. That certainly does put pressure on the networks. So we think with T-Mobile integrating the Sprint sites, overlaying their 2.5 on assets across the country and really making a run at becoming the #1 network, that's going to most likely result in a bump up in overall CapEx spending in the U.S. versus Sprint and T-Mobile over and above what Sprint and T-Mobile would have done separately in any given year in recent history. And then we think that, that could also accelerate investments from AT&T and Verizon. So that's an interesting kind of piece of it as well. So we think that will generate additional upside for us and probably at a level that, at least over time, offsets the churn. So it may not be matched up year-by-year. But over the long term, we think there'll be upside here relative to this work that they need to do that will offset and maybe more than offset the 3% to 4% of property revenue that we have coming down the pipe in churn at some point over time. So that's kind of how we see the T-Mobile/Sprint landscape. And we do view the T-Mobile/Sprint merger as a positive to us. We've always kind of said right from the outset that it was neutral to positive. And notwithstanding the potential for some churn, we do believe that it's going to be a positive for us in terms of creating value for our shareholders over the long term.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystYes, absolutely. There are probably 3 key pillars that everyone involved in this should probably understand. It's the decommissioning aspect that has a headwind element but then, at the same time, an acceleration of their strategy. In the middle section here, you have potential equipment spectrum bands all coming online. And then the third kind of pillar to this is it may motivate AT&T and Verizon to move faster than they historically have as a function of being relevant and competitive to basically battle out and deploy 5G. So a lot of moving pieces and very significant. I can definitely agree with a lot of things you said there. Shifting gears a little bit to 5G and some of the equipment that is actually going on to the macro cell towers. Has been the trend that you have seen or at least the company has seen sort of the average weight or the lease terms or the new equipment coming on to the towers are leases getting amended to reflect increased weights of a new gear going up on the macro cell towers? Or has that impact or that transition not necessarily been very clear up to this point?
Rodney Smith
executiveI would say it's still relatively early, and it's probably too early to draw anything definitive in terms of what equipment will be going up on the tower. So the way -- I think just take a step back, the way you want to think about 5G, from a tower perspective, a tower owner's perspective, is not necessarily whether it's 4G or 5G, but it really comes down to what the equipment is and what spectrum they're actually using. And the spectrum in a 5G network can vary from low-band spectrum right up to millimeter wave spectrum. So wherever the carrier is on that curve in terms of the different spectrum that they may have available to them, the equipment would be different. So T-Mobile has said that they plan to build out a nationwide 5G network on 600-megahertz spectrum. That would be very large antennas because typically, the way to think about it is the lower the spectrum band, the larger the antennas are going to be. So if T-Mobile says they're going to build a 5G network on 600-megahertz spectrum, those will be very large antennas there. They're also deploying 2.5 spectrum across all of the T-Mo sites now that they have that spectrum through the Sprint acquisition. So that is much closer to that mid-band spectrum, and the antennas for that would be smaller. And then as you move up into the -- let's say, the millimeter wave spectrum, those antennas in that frequency are probably best suited for small cells. So you end up with very small, light equipment in the urban centers hanging on the sides of buildings everywhere. That's not really a practical application for the suburban and rural areas. And it's important to just recognize that towers are in the suburban and rural areas, not in the dense urban areas. So we believe that 5G will primarily be deployed on mid-band spectrum in the suburban areas and the rural areas over time. And it will be deployed in that mid-band spectrum. And what antennas they use, it's really unclear yet. But it's most likely we'll move towards what they call massive MIMO antennas. So what happens there is you go into millimeter -- or mid-band spectrum, the antennas are smaller. But because you're using a higher-level frequency, it propagates much less than the lower-level frequencies. That means you need to -- and you have -- to sort of compensate for that, you have to have more sites, more densification, and then you also have more antennas on the towers to be able to transmit. So the idea of a massive MIMO antenna is that you take one antenna base panel, and you might have dozens, if not 100 different antennas kind of embedded into that panel. So the equipment may be smaller on -- for each individual component, but the idea of 5G is significant increases in speed, significant increases in capacity, reduced latency, better spectrum efficiencies. So to get all of that, you're going to need a lot more antennas. And the way that they'll probably deploy those is bundling them in massive MIMO antennas. And those are quite large, very heavy, probably equivalent to what you might see in a 600-megahertz deployment. So just because the spectrum bands are higher that they're going to be deploying on macro towers doesn't mean the equipment is going to be lighter or smaller. Even though the physics and the engineering would tell you that a higher band spectrum uses smaller antennas, that's true. But the way the spectrum works and what they're going to be using it for, they're going to need a lot more antennas. And they're going to be consolidating those and embedding them together in something like a massive MIMO antenna.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystYes, very good color. It's probably the big focus of a lot of conversations today, I mean, among all the other kind of decommissioning and one-offs around the world. And I wanted to shift gears...
Rodney Smith
executiveI guess maybe just the other -- the last point I would make there is, I think you had talked a little bit in your question about upgrading a cell site to handle the additional equipment or to replace equipment. But typically, what happens is when you deploy -- when the carriers deploy 5G, their 4G equipment will still be up on the tower. They'll still have -- the majority of their subscribers will be on 4G. Not only will that 4G equipment remain on the towers, they'll continue to invest in it and put more up because the growth in data on the 4G networks will continue to ramp up over the next few years while they're deploying 5G as well, and 5G will ramp up along with 4G over a few years. And then what happens is you look 3, 4, 5 years out, and all of a sudden, you see a shift where the most growth is on 5G, and then maybe that takes over in terms of most spending. But 4G and 5G spending will coexist for probably a good 10-year period. That's what we saw with 3G and 4G, 2G and 3G. They -- these technologies live together, and the carriers invest in both of them and keep them both up and running for a number of years.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystThat's right. I believe one of your tower teaching document shows the number of connected devices by telecom generation or standard. Is that correct? And you can see the transition, 2G, 3G, 4G. And then just the big bulge of 4G that's probably going to last [ rooms that are ] 5 to 10 years on the macro cell towers.
Rodney Smith
executiveYes, yes.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystSo thank you for adding that clarification. I wanted to shift gears a little bit to the M&A mandates of the company and where are the key strategic focus areas, perhaps by company type, tenancy, profile that you're looking for, even region. Where would you describe the AMT road map today? Just because a lot of that question has been coming up as your leverage is actually coming down or is looking a little bit lower than what most investors are used to seeing in the midst of a big telecom standard upgrade.
Rodney Smith
executiveYes. Yes, so I guess first, I would say, by -- start by saying that we are a growth company. And we are -- I think we've proven over the last decade or more that we're very efficient when it comes to M&A transactions and we're very acquisitive. So we've looked around the globe, and we're now in 19 different countries across 5 different continents. And we've been able to balance the growth through M&A, so that inorganic growth with strong organic growth at the same time. We've managed our balance sheet very efficiently through that time period, as you said, staying within our targeted leverage ratio, which is between 3 and 5x. We have investment-grade credit. We actually just recently got upgraded by Fitch to a BBB+. And all the while, we've increased our return on invested capital kind of along the way. So we've got a long -- a decades-long track record of double-digit revenue, AFFO growth, increasing margins, increasing ROIC, solid investment-grade balance sheet, while we increased our tower count to 170,000 towers globally. So I think we've shown that we're very disciplined when it comes to M&A and kind of growing our business. And we'll continue along that line. With that said, we are every bit inquisitive today as we have been throughout the last 10 years. So we think our best opportunities for growth is building towers. So that's why you saw us build 4,500 towers last year. We'll build a similar number. Maybe even up to 5,500 is kind of our guidance at this point for 2020. So that's where we get the highest-return capital invested. So we'll build a significant number of towers, and we look to continue to do that. And a lot of that comes from our entrance into some of these emerging markets that need a lot of towers to be built. So in the U.S., as an example, the revenue drivers here are amendments primarily. In international markets, it's building new towers and just densifying the existing networks or even getting coverage to places where there is not coverage. Beyond that, we do expect to continue to be very acquisitive. And really, the most efficient way to invest our capital when it comes to M&A is buying towers either in the markets where we're already in or in countries that are adjacent to our existing markets where we can get leverage in that scale drives efficiency and helps us reduce our overall SG&A as a percent of revenue and that sort of thing. So you'll see us be -- we're looking at acquisitions around the globe. We always are. So we haven't grown terribly large in Europe yet, but we continue to look at Europe, and they're active in a lot of the processes there. We did just buy a big company in Africa. There's more there that could be consumed. So we'll keep watching there. But we're disciplined. So I think many people know that even the deal that we did in Africa, it took a few years to make that deal happen. And it took a few years because both sides kind of waited until the transaction made sense. So we have very disciplined criteria, and we stick to it. And if a target acquisition fits in there, we'll take it in. And if it doesn't, we wait and move on to other things. So you could see us expand in Africa, in countries that are kind of in close proximity to where we already are where we can leverage what we already have in that country to create value. Latin America is the same way. We've got a strong footprint throughout Latin America. We're strong in Mexico and Brazil and a lot of countries kind of in and around Latin America. You'll see us densify those markets, so buying companies within the countries that we're already in, that makes a lot of sense to us, and potentially adding a country here or there. India, I would say, at the moment, we're pretty well satisfied with our 70,000 portfolio in India. It doesn't mean we won't scale up at some point in the future, but today, we're pleased with that size business in India and our market share in India. So we're comfortable there. And in the U.S., we were always active in the U.S. looking for deals. There always seems to be a number of small deals we can do and even some midsized deals that we can roll together. Of course, we know all the developers in the U.S. and all the tower sellers so we're engaged in all those processes. So it's really -- it could be in any one of our regions. And it could -- it tends to be in places that meet our objectives that we assess country risk and rule of law, and we certainly assess the quality of the counterparty and the colocation environment. We want to make sure that there is an embraced colocation business model kind of in those countries. But you'll see us acquire additional towers in and around the regions and the continents where we have existing towers to gain that leverage. Beyond that, you'll see us continue on our innovation program, which we've done some small investments under innovation. But I wouldn't want you or the audience to go away thinking that somehow investing in non-tower assets is the primary objective because it's really not. There's still a lot of consolidation in the tower model, and that's what we're primarily focused on. The innovation is just making sure we're always thinking and challenging ourselves about what the networks of the future will look like and if there are any opportunities that may be coming down the road that we could invest in. And when it comes to innovation, we are looking for tower-like investments, really extending the platform of the neutral host network. And there's a lot of different elements that we're looking for. We're not looking for totally different kind of types of businesses to invest in. We want to find tower-like economics. We want long-term contracts. We'd like to expand our customer base into more of the tech companies and other people that might be using these network components. Maybe there are some other big companies that need to use our assets, and we'd like to figure that out with them and try to help them develop business models that make sense there. So that's how we kind of view the world. But we're very excited about the future opportunities that will come from M&A transactions really around the globe.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystYes, absolutely, unique situation where you have solid end markets, solid opportunity ahead of you and with the right customers, right credit base, definitely a unique combination to have, kind of this trifecta of all benefits. So Rod, thank you very much for joining us today at the Crédit Suisse Communications Conference. Really appreciate your participation. For the entire audience, we have Jon Sabey coming on in about 30 minutes, Founder of Sabey Data Centers, and we'll continue the conversation then. Thank you, all, Rod, for joining us again.
Rodney Smith
executiveYes. Thank you, Sami. Thanks, everyone. So long.
Ahmed Sami Badri
analystGood.
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