American Tower’s Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer, Leah Streams, spoke at the UBS 42nd Annual Global Media and Communications Conference where she updated investors on the goings-on at the company. Streams noted that American Tower will continue to actively seek to buy the ground leases under their tower sites, unless it is less expensive to secure a 30 year lease. Jennifer Fritzsche, Senior Analyst at Wells Fargo, reported some highlights from the conference in a research note, “Big 4 carriers are starting to see shift more toward amendments from new leases. [AMT] ended 2013 at 80/20 amendment to new leasing, then shifted toward 60/40, and now trending back to more amendments as carriers are looking to maximize existing sites before adding new ones. [Streams] reiterated that $20-30B range of U.S. wireless carrier capex supports 6-8% growth of underlying business, and expects 1.5-2.0% churn should hold true in U.S.” Fritzsche also noted that American Tower’s international growth is faster than the U.S. because its portfolio is young (1.5 tenants/tower vs. U.S. ~2.5/tower, and the markets are 5 to 10 years behind U.S. in investment cycle. “[AMT] expects to be below 5.0x levered in early 2015. [Streams] believes having a strong balance sheet has allowed AMT to react opportunistically while others haven’t,” Fritzsche wrote.
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