New Tower Builds May Slow, Capex to Stay

AT&T is the only major carrier who announced their wireless capex would take a hit this year. This stirred speculation within the wireless industry, with people wondering if tower work would finally start to slow down. However, the analysts don’t see this happening quite yet. The wireless market is likely to remain strong throughout 2015. Jennifer Fritzsche, Senior Analyst at Wells Fargo, wrote, “While we expect the Big 4 wireless carriers’ network densification to continue to play a role in the tower companies’ U.S. organic growth, we believe new tower builds may be less than what we saw in 2014. That said, we disagree with the thought there will be a meaningful slowdown in wireless carrier cap-x given the prices paid in AWS-3 auction. Rather, we expect the capital to shift from densification activity back toward more amendment related revenue for tower companies – especially in the densest U.S. cities with small cells playing a key role.”