AT&T’s tower activity slowed down earlier this year; although, Verizon and T-Mobile have remained steady. Spencer Kurn at New Street Research said he didn’t see much upside to estimates in 2015, but there is an upside to estimates in 2016 and he expects growth to accelerate for the next several years. Kurn remains positive on the sector, but continues to prefer SBA Communications. “Underlying trends for the towers remain robust as Verizon and T-Mobile accelerated new site growth; however, growth has slowed this year due in large part to decelerating activity at AT&T and iDEN churn,” Kurn wrote. The firm expects both of those to pick up next year, which will be complemented by Sprint adding new sites and the carriers deploying AWS-3 spectrum towards the end of 2016. “These trends position the towers for accelerating growth for the next several years. Based on our carrier-by-carrier network deployment model, we see upside to 2016 estimates for all three; however, we prefer SBAC to the others because we think it will grow the fastest and have the greatest upside to long-term AFFO per share estimates,” Kurn said.
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