SBA Communications’ CEO Jeffrey Stoops , whose experience in the tower business dates back to 1996, when he served as legal advisor to Steve Bernstein, gave Bernstein the one suggestion that would change the history of SBA Communications: “Don’t sell this business!”
Stoops would go on to lead the asset ownership part of Steve Bernstein’s then service-centric business, and 20 years later, SBA Communications is one of the top independent towercos in the world, with operations in eight countries and a portfolio of over 26,000 sites. In an exclusive conversation with TowerXchange last week, Stoops looked back at those days in the nineties. “In hindsight, the idea was obviously pretty good from day one. We still use some presentation slides that were conceptualized back then in 1997. We thought the industry would be mission critical, exclusive, with low churn, and we were right.”
And yet, so much has changed since those early days. In today’s market buying and building around 1,000 sites in the United States is not enough to reach the 5% growth target SBA Communications has set for itself and according to Stoops “…to find that 5% or greater growth rate we are targeting, we do need to look internationally.”
Stoops’ interview is essential reading for every tower entrepreneur or investor as the scope of conversation extends from how SBA Communications survived when the bubble burst:
“…because each tower is a business in its own right, we could hive off towers as necessary to raise enough money to pay off enough of our debt and avoid bankruptcy”
To SBA’s current strategy: “We run a solid, sensibly leveraged capital appreciation strategy today.”
And Stoops’ vision for the future: “SBA is likely to be converted into a real estate investment trust (REIT)… I do not see SBA shifting its business focus, which will remain on macro sites since towers will always be the backbone of our customers’ networks.”
SBA Communications is likely to “invest beyond the Western hemisphere” sometime over the next ten years but as of now, the Americas remain its key focus and this is why Jeffrey Stoops and a large delegation of senior executives from the company will be in attendance of the third annual TowerXchange Meetup Americas[J4] , of which SBA Communications is the Diamond Sponsor .
If you’d like to network with SBA Communications’ senior executives as well as top experts from Phoenix Tower International, Torrecom, American Tower, Entel Peru, Telesites, Trilogy International Partners, Telxius and hundreds more, the TowerXchange Meetup Americas is the place to be.
Register today and secure one of the few passes left for the TowerXchange Meetup Americas, the one and only event where the entire CALA telecom tower industry gathers.
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