Crown Castle Inc. (CCI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Panel. I'm pleased to -- I'm Jon Atkin with RBC, and I'm pleased to be spending the next 20 minutes of fireside with the Chief Financial Officer of Crown Castle, Sunit Patel. Welcome, Sunit.

Thank you. Glad to be here.

So you go a long way back and have an interesting perspective as both a Board member more recently, CFO but also having had important roles at T-Mobile and Lumen and going way back, other start-ups like Looking Glass Networks. But interested in just perspectives, given recent announcements and let's start with the AT&T purchase of Spectrum from EchoStar from a couple of weeks back. And just kind of any thoughts on how that affects mobile infrastructure usage and kind of spending as well as maybe how it might affect Crown specifically?

Yes. So you mentioned the time when I was at T-Mobile -- in charge of putting T-Mobile and Sprint together. That transaction resulted in T-Mobile gaining a lot of mid-band spectrum, which they've leveraged to the hilt in terms of 5G deployment. When I look at this most recent announcement of AT&T spending $23 billion to buy spectrum, I think that's a big signal because it's a big capital allocation shift. So while you hear about AT&T and Verizon doing both fiber-to-the-home, that's -- this clearly says that wireless data matters. It matters a lot whether you look at the price of the spectrum on a per megahertz pop or whether you look at the amount of money they've spent and also realizing this is just a down payment before you deploy the Spectrum. So from our perspective, from a tower perspective, I think that's good generally because I also think that with the other carriers, they also have to think about their position in terms of their network leadership and network leadership is defined by several key elements. What's your coverage? How many towers are you on? What's the throughput? What's the speed you're providing to the consumer? What's the throughput in terms of actual bits handled per tower or network quality? All those important metrics to keep your churn low and keep going with mobile -- people that all of us our phones. So I think probably the key takeaway, I think, is that it's good for the tower sector. And also, I think it also puts some of the other carriers on the defense of looking at their position and what they are going to do to respond. So I see it as a plus for us.

So not to get too technical, but we'll talk about AT&T, EchoStar, which we just chatted about a little bit. And then later on, I want to get a little bit into SpaceX, which is the more recent headline. But maybe taking a step back, there's been some management changes. There's some corporate events around divestitures of small cells and fiber. Tell us about the new CEO. I think this might be his second day on the job?

That's right. Chris Hillabrant joined us this Monday, so it's day 3 for him. And I would say -- we are pleased, as you know, the company has been through quite a few changes. Chris, most recently was running Vantage Towers, which is a very large tower operator in Europe. But he's got great mobile industry ecosystem experience. He's at T-Mobile for many years in charge of deploying some of their networks, mobile data networks regionally. He was at Ericsson, Samsung and now at Vantage. So we are pleased he's joined us on the board. As you know, we've been through a couple of CEO changes, so excited about it. And is that very deep operating experience. With respect to the fiber sale in small cell business, I was on the Board early last year, I was on the fiber review committee and a couple of other committees. So we're glad to get that concluded, which then now allows us to focus on being just a U.S. dollar-only company. Obviously, Chris is aligned with that strategy. So we're excited about what it means for our investors going forward.

So strategy seems clear, the decks were cleared before he was selected. So is this role mainly around execution and delivery? Or are there other types of directions that we could see Crown going into as a pure-play mobile infrastructure company?

I think the strategy of being a U.S. tower only operator is clear. Clearly, there are some execution things ahead. We have to complete and conclude the sale of the fiber in the small cell business. We think that there are dissynergies in operating three businesses versus one business. So we think we'll continue to be able to drive some operating expense efficiencies. Finally, something we've talked about before, we think that some small investments in our platforms and systems, it will also allow us to drive to be the best-in-class operator. going beyond that over the next year or two, I think we obviously want to make sure we are focused on driving growth for our business, and we think there's a lot happening right here in the U.S. So we think there will be possibilities there, too.

And then just looking to the most recent quarter and current operating trends in your tower business, maybe just kind of refresh us on where we are on things like organic tenant billings growth, churn and what types of activity levels are starting to ramp or decelerate for that matter?

Yes. So as you saw, we did increase our guidance in the second quarter. Our clients continue to be quite active. You see that in us raising the guidance on our leasing activity. I think what we see today is our clients continuing to focus on 5G deployments, coverage. Competitive intensity has increased, you can see that in churn levels with the wireless operators results. And then we also have been working on operating efficiencies. You saw we did better on our SG&A expense outlook. We are focused on process improvements, our cycle times improved, which also helped the revenue line.

Any kind of trends you're seeing around data growth, 5G use cases, AI, FWA that kind of inform your view around either this year's guide or Obviously, you haven't communicated it, but how you're thinking internally about the medium term?

Yes. I think our view is that 5G deployment is going to continue. There's still room to grow over the next number of years. Fixed wireless certainly has been a plus on the margin. When you talk about AI, I think we're still at the very, very early stages. I don't think we've seen an impact yet with respect to mobile data. Having said that, demand growth for mobile data has been pretty strong over the last 10 years, 20% to 30% growth a year. We see mobile data demand continue to grow at any point in time in the last 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, there have been different drivers. More recent drivers have been things like all of us watching more live or video content on our phones. I think going forward, when you look out over the next few years, a lot of demand will be driven by our AI agents working for us in the background. So you won't all be visually driven per se, but whether it's apps on your phone that help you live your lives better, stay connected with people in different ways without you having to look at your phone, there will be other form factors, whether it's glasses or what you wear. So I think you'll see more evolutions coming. When you think about the amount of data that's being thrown around just between data centers, with AI deployments and realize that none of that has really yet flowed into mobile data networks. I think there's a fair bit that's going to happen there that we haven't even seen or experience yet.

So on the regulatory side, you have had former FCC commissioners on your Board and whether it's things like shot clock, other kind of procedural issues that might affect colocation cycle time, approvals, permitting, auction authority. But just kind of broad brush, how do you see the federal -- and if there's any states to kind of point out as well but maybe primarily the federal level regulatory environments as it impacts towers?

Yes. So I think you've seen more recent moves by Commission Carr in terms of what are the barriers or difficulties in getting things done on a local basis permits. All of that, I think they have taken that up. We are seeing transactions being approved, including the most recent DISH one, for example. And you've seen The Big Beautiful Bill Act, which means that more Spectrum is going to be sold over the next couple of years. I mean the FCC clearly has the authority that was also underlying to do that. So I think that things on the regulatory front are positive for us as an industry. Spectrum auctions are good, making it easier for us to do our business is positive and deals are getting approved.

So we get to maybe private spectrum transfers shortly with SpaceX, but thinking about future auctions, what is it that you are sort of seeing as being potentially most impactful as it might pertain to more infrastructure being put on your sites?

So our business is driven by -- we charge based on how much space people occupy on our towers. So when you look at the environment 10, 20 years ago to now, in general, there are several things that have been constant. One is carriers occupying more spectrum bands. When they do that, generally, that means they need more space on towers. Number two, the amount of data that is going through towers has continued to go up, and I think that will continue. When that happens, that's a good thing for our business. So when you look at the specific bands that the FCC has been asked to auction or sell over the next couple of years. Some of them is in the mid-band spectrum. In general, they'll be helpful? Sure. Are they areas where carriers can use the same radios to accommodate contiguous spectrum bands? Sure. But again, when you step back and look at over a longer period of time, the constants I talked about continue to be present. They're going to be occupying more bands, we'll need more data throughput and generally, there should be good for us.

So you did mention you charge based on the space occupied on your towers, and that kind of leads me to the topic of master lease agreements, specifically kind of the holistic style. So you got paid by the drink, the more you touch the tower, the more you pay and then holistic where it's a little bit more kind of prearranged. And maybe you can kind of set the stage in terms of your philosophy that has informed you under the existing MLAs that exist? And then maybe going forward, perhaps under new management now as a soon to be pure-play tower company, how your thoughts on MLAs might differ?

Yes. So while I can't get in the details with our agreements with any of our plans for confidentiality reasons, in general, yes, we do like contracts where we have stable, predictable revenue profiles over a longer period of time, but at the same time, allowing our clients to have flexibility, as you point out, and they want to touch a tower, and they can want to touch a tower for different reasons. They want to swap out equipment, they want to upgrade equipment, they want to occupy more bands. So we try to strike the right balance between those things.

Can you maybe drill down a little bit on just sort of lease expirations, whether it's MLA driven or not, but what are kind of the years going forward that you've talked about around kind of peak exposure to that topic? And the reason I ask is just related to the AT&T EchoStar transaction where they've talked about decommissioning sites, which involves not paying for backhaul and not paying for electricity, can they also not pay tower rents?

Yes. So let me make the general point first, and I'll come to the specifics. So the general point, we provide pretty detailed disclosures in our filings with respect to our contracts and what years they go, not very specific, but generally, so investors have a good sense of that. In terms of the DISH, EchoStar situation. We do have a firm contract with them that goes through 2036 for 20,000 towers. We feel good about our contracts. So again, we'll see how things play out, I can't speak for them, but we do have a strong contract.

So it was a 5-year deal at the time of signing more or less at the end of 2020, as I recall?

Yes. But as I said, our contract goes to 2036.

2036, I'm sorry. Yes. 15 years. So maybe quick words on capital allocation, buying back stock versus other types of priorities, dividends?

Yes. So we have a few key points there. One is we want to be investment grade. And so we will receive -- we are selling our fiber and small cell business for $8.5 billion. We've said that we're going to allocate $6 billion to debt paydown and the rest to share buybacks. So I think we're still -- and the third thing we said is that from a dividend policy perspective, we expect to pay 75% to 80% of our AFFO in dividends as we grow the AFFO, we should be able to grow the dividend. And secondly, that also means that 20% to 25% of our AFFO gives us incremental flexibility to do other things, whether it's to buy more shares back, make sure we are comfortably investment grade, but does give us flexibility there, too.

Since you reported, and you were the first tower company report, there's been some kind of growing awareness of one of the carriers engaged in kind of high rent relocation. And I'm just wondering, is that something that you think you would be exposed to? Or are you protected by MLAs? Or are you not necessarily the target for that sort of effort?

Yes. So different -- all of us as a sector, have different types of agreements with our clients. And I would say that we feel good about where we stand with respect to that. Obviously, I can't comment on others. But we generally feel pretty good. Having said that, yes, I mean, there's always some of that. But I think that we feel good about our position.

And then maybe just the last couple of minutes talking about the second kind of big Spectrum transaction involving SpaceX. We had a panel yesterday where there was kind of more of a technical discussion about the viability and use case for that sort of model. But any thoughts whether it's the economics of it or the business case...

Yes. I mean, as you pointed out, I've been in the business a long time in these sectors. What I would say, there are several things to look at. One is the throughput of data. Now remember, it takes power to move every bit. So when you think about the concept of bits per watt, keep that in mind. The amount of data that flows through fiber networks is many, many orders of magnitude larger than what flows on terrestrial mobile data networks. Similarly, the amount of data that is flowing and it will continue to flow on mobile data networks will be several orders of magnitude higher than what you see going up in the air. So I do think that satellite data has a valuable niche but when you delve into the economics of that business and think about the number of satellites you have to put in, the other thing to remember is, at any point in time, any satellite crossing the earth, 80% of the time, of the geography, there is nobody living there, 70% of the planet is water when you add in the Sahara desert and any other extreme places. Most of the time, the satellite, there's no people it's interacting with. So when you look at any of these businesses need high occupancy rates or utilization rates to make money. So the number of users, the number of satellites and also you need line of sight with respect to satellite communications. Most of us when we interact with our mobile devices are indoors, like here in the office, in the car, et cetera. So you're not walking out outside all the time. So it's a valuable niche. There are a lot of new applications, I remote areas, rural areas. So I think it's going to be a very good option. But I do think it will continue to be a niche option.

Audience questions? Well, I think that does it. Thanks very much for your time. Thank you.