Everest Infrastructure Partners celebrated significant achievements in 2020, highlighting ten-fold growth over the last three years, with notable success this past year in tower acquisitions, development and leasing, all to support the greatly expanding needs of its network operator customers.
“We had an incredibly busy fourth quarter and closed 2020 on a high-note,” says Michael Mackey, President. Everest Infrastructure purchased more than 40 tower sites throughout the Midwest, including 30 on-air macro towers located in major markets, with an average tower age of less than five years and an average tenancy of fewer than 1.5 tenants per tower. “These are new macro towers with significant capacity for additional carriers in attractive urban and suburban locations,” adds Mackey. “These towers greatly complement our Midwest cluster around cities including Chicago, Indianapolis, Madison, and St. Louis.”
In the midst of a pandemic, Everest managed to complete an equity recapitalization, new debt financing, and added more towers to its regional cluster in California with the acquisition of Top Sites Inc. “We couldn’t be prouder of our team navigating what everyone would agree was an incredibly difficult year,” says Mackey. “We’re always marking our progress against our larger peers. Our new leasing activity was phenomenal, and 50-100 percent higher than what we see being reported by public towercos,” says Mackey.
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In four short years, Everest has become one of the fastest-growing, private communications infrastructure platforms in the U.S. It owns 400 macro sites and manages another 4,000. It serves hundreds of customers with a portfolio of assets including wireless towers, rooftop locations, tower ground leases and indoor wireless systems.
Everest, whose employees are split between Pittsburgh and Boston, closed more than 100 acquisitions last year. And its growth knows no geographic limits. Everest acquired its first international asset, launching a platform in Australia last month. CEO of Everest Infrastructure ANZ, Will Heapy, has close to 20 years of tower industry experience with Crown Castle and Axicom and is spearheading Everest’s Australian venture.
Christopher Davis, President U.S. Towers division, explains that Everest’s development philosophy goes beyond just getting steel in the air. The company also explores ways to help Carrier partners improve their operating expenses around individual assets. “Major carriers represent about 80 percent of the activity on our tower sites. We’ve made headway with unique programs, not just in acquiring and building sites but helping carriers improve the quality of their lease portfolios.” Davis joined the team in 2018 when Everest acquired his company, Varsity Wireless.
“Our success in 2020 has led to significantly higher goals for 2021,” says Davis. “We have a good head start for the year, though. We’re still seeing significant value come from the Frontier portfolio in terms of leasing and the strategic locations of many of those assets. We’ll see a lot of new development activity this year. Even with existing tower assets, we have a healthy growth forecast.”
A key differentiator for Everest is its agility. According to Davis, “It was eye-opening, as a company that was acquired by Everest, to see how nimble and creative the management team can be. The acquisition side of the business is exceptionally quick in the marketplace, identifying opportunities, working with partners and closing transactions.”
The Everest team has its sights on the next summit. “Our biggest focus for 2021 and beyond is to continue our growth through tower development and acquisitions, expand our developer partners, and foster strategic relationships with carriers,” says Mackey, furthering Everest’s offerings to its customers. On the development side, Davis believes 2021 will be Everest’s largest year for new tower builds.
“We are always exploring new opportunities such as data centers, fiber, small cell and DAS,” Mackey explains. That said, “we seem to always come back to our core focus of macro towers and expect it to stay that way over the next 10 years. 5G will require a longer buildout and macro towers will continue to be a key component of that.”
Everest sees 2021 as an on-ramp to even more action in the coming years. “I think we’ll see a considerable pick up in activity by T-Mobile and the consolidation of the Sprint networks. While we may see a modestly slower 2021 from some of the carriers, we hope to see a lot of work planning for a significant expansion into 2022 and 2023,” says Mackey. Early activity from DISH will likely turn into tangible agreements and new leasing to support DISH’s nationwide buildout. “Based on early visibility, they could have a sizable impact for us in 2021.”
Davis adds, “We’ve seen a lot of big tower company transactions at the end of 2020. Eco-Site sold to Vertical Bridge REIT, LLC. American Tower acquired Insite Wireless Group. Both of those companies are active in tower development and acquiring assets. I think that will open up opportunities for more developers, for more acquisitions and we think it’s an opportunity to be more competitive.”
For more information, visit www.everestinfrastructure.com, or call 412-482-3420.
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