SBA Refinancing in Light of Favorable Tower Outlook

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SBA Communications Corp. is preparing its thirteenth overall wireless tower securitization through its master trust platform with $640 million of bonds backed by wireless tower leases, according to American Banker.

An SBA spokesperson told Inside Towers they have $755M coming due in April, so the current deal of $640M, plus some additional borrowing, will be used to pay off the $755M. They did something similar in April 2017, where they issued $760M to pay off $610M of debt, the spokesperson said. 

American Banker reported the SBA Tower Trust, Series 2018-1C consists of a single-tranche of 30-year notes with provisional ratings of ‘A2’ from Moody’s Investors Service and ‘A’ from Fitch Ratings. Fitch caps its ratings at the single-A level due to the long-term risks that cellular sites could be eclipsed by alternative technology during the notes’ tenor.

According to Moody’s, the new notes are being launched at a “favorable” time for the wireless tower lease sector with major carriers (making up 94 percent of the leases) continuing to expand their 4G capacity while supporting unlimited data plans.

February 16, 2018

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