SBA Solid

SBA reported fourth quarter earnings for 2014, and analysts confirm they were solid across the board. Seeking Alpha reported, “SBA Communications pointed to organic growth in a fourth quarter that saw revenues beat expectations, though it guided slightly lower than analysts for the coming year. Revenues were up 20.7%; by segment: Site leasing, $361.4M (up 23.5%); Site development, $43.3M (up 1%). Operating income was up significantly (+62.5%), but so was interest expense (up 21.1%), which brought net income close to breakeven.” During the last quarter, the company purchased 1,703 communications site for $520.5 million, including 1,641 from Oi SA in Brazil, and they built 175 towers. Jennifer Fritzsche, Senior Analyst at Wells Fargo, noted, “Solid Q4 beat across the board for SBAC – the last of our tower companies to report Q4 results. We look for color on leasing trends seen in its domestic and international segments, as well as commentary on Big 4 wireless carrier activity in the U.S. Similar to comments made by AMT, management noted T has slowed its network activity starting in Q4 2014, and continues to lag its pace seen in 1H 2014. SBAC expects the slowdown to only be temporary, and pointed to T’s AWS-3 spectrum licenses as telling the company will need to invest to deploy it in the future.” SBA expects total revenue for the first quarter of 2015 to be $403-415 million and they expect to spend $509-529MM discretionary capex in 2015, up from $215-235MM prior, including 575-595 new tower builds.