As the year comes to a close, it’s a good time for us to look back and take stock of what we achieved in the last 12 months. By the end of 2022, Everest Infrastructure Partners will reflect on its highest annual growth ever.
Everest will have added more than 500 tower sites to its U.S. portfolio, pushing it over the 1,000-site mark. “It will be, by far, our most successful year and probably one of the more successful years across the industry,” according to Matt Newton, CEO of Everest.
While Everest is increasing its internal development activities, as well as partnering with like-minded developers, the majority of the company’s growth continues to come from M&A activity. Although acquisitions can be very expensive with multiples at elevated levels in brokered transactions, according to Newton, Everest’s industry-leading acquisitions platform uniquely identifies opportunities in the portion of the marketplace that remains independent and unconsolidated among small tower owners, mom and pops, and companies with ancillary tower holdings.
“We buy many of our towers from companies where the tower is a non-core asset,” said Christopher Davis, Chief Development Officer. “These acquisition targets are most often originated internally through our direct marketing efforts to the owner, and require a bit more creativity and flexibility to close.” Everest has been successful in unlocking substantial value for these owners, while also acquiring the sites at attractive valuations for our investors.
Two Big Deals
With that said, 2022 was highlighted by two acquisitions that were brokered. In September, Everest completed the acquisition of a portfolio of cell towers from Inland Cellular and Weis Towers. The towers are located in high-growth corridors of the inland northwest region of northern Idaho and eastern Washington, which is one of its fastest growing regions for new wireless infrastructure.
In October, Everest completed the acquisition of a portfolio of cell tower assets from PT Holding Company LLC, PeakNet LLC, and PeakNet Services LLC. The tower assets represent premium locations in Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina with the tenant rents derived from investment-grade wireless broadband tenants.
More Than Just Geographic Expansion
Everest’s portfolio footprint is not the only area where the Company has seen substantial growth. To keep up with the volume of activity, it has doubled its staff over the past 18 months, adding professionals across all key functions of the business. While more than half of the staff work directly in the acquisitions program, the highest number of people were added to support Everest’s leasing and operations efforts. These teams are built around developing and maintaining customer focus, and meeting timelines with deliverables to get clients’ sites on the air as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“We’ve built an incredible culture. At Everest, we have a really dynamic office environment,” Newton said. “We also have a number of our team that work remotely, but the company culture has really come together during this period of recent growth as we’ve built out our core facility in Pittsburgh. And it has been a really enjoyable time.” Additionally, Everest now has 12 employees in the subsidiary of the company pursuing acquisition and development of wireless communications infrastructure located in Australia and New Zealand. “This team is growing their market presence quite well since we launched the effort in 2021. We recently announced our intention to enter the Malaysian telecom infrastructure market in the next several months and we expect significant growth in this business in the years ahead.”
Locked and Loaded
So, where does Everest go from here, after its best year ever? The Company says more acquisitions are on the horizon. By the end of 2022, it will have secured half a billion dollars in additional funding to fuel new site acquisitions and tower development opportunities that will become highlights of the next several years. The new capital is coming from its current debt and equity sponsors, including Peppertree Capital and a leading university endowment. Everest’s management team is also invested in the company.
“Our investors have all reinvested multiple times at this point,” Newton said. “So, I think they have a very long-term horizon for working with us to develop and grow the portfolio. We see a generational opportunity with 5G infrastructure, and we expect to keep our focus entirely on scaling Everest for the foreseeable future.”
Even though the tech industry is still working out how 5G fits into the coming digital transformation, Everest worked hard in 2022 to keep up with customer demand, quickly integrating newly acquired sites into the portfolio and attaching new equipment to existing sites. In the coming 12 months, with a pipeline full of leasing applications and more than sufficient funding for more acquisitions, you can expect more of the same.
For more information, go to https://everestinfrastructure.com/.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
Reader Interactions