Slow Spending in 2Q—What Now?  

Well it’s not entirely breaking news that carrier spending had slowed during the second quarter, but how did this affect the carriers and the tower companies? Jonathan Schildkraut of Evercore ISI said, “Similar with 1Q, we believe carrier spending remained largely subdued in 2Q with Verizon and T-Mobile driving the large majority of activity. Checks indicate that AT&T remains on the sidelines (presumably until its acquisition of DTV closes); and sporadic activity from Sprint (despite the supposed approval of its NGN build-out).” Schildkraut also noted that the firm is confident that activity from AT&T and Sprint will accelerate in the second half of this year. “We are less confident that the increase in activity can support meaningful improvements in the full year outlook. We expect investor focus to begin to shift to 2016, where we expect all four carriers to be aggressively deploying capital,” the analyst wrote.