Steve Ouzts is the experienced professional you want on your side when you are selling your tower portfolios, rooftop sites, or leases. When brokering tower deals, Ouzts, Managing Member at Tower Advisors, LLC, a boutique tower brokerage, prioritizes a personal approach.
“I won’t stop working until the value of my client’s assets is maximized,” Ouzts told Inside Towers. “I work with tower owners throughout the United States and will travel to their locations.”
Ouzts developed his skill for M&A analysis working for a company where he assisted with the brokering of home medical equipment companies, sleep labs, and infusion pharmacies. About 12 years ago, a friend who partially-owned a tower company told Ouzts about the market activity and offered to hire Ouzts to do acquisitions. He liked the idea, but also wanted to harness his entrepreneurial spirit, so he struck out on his own and formed Tower Advisors, LLC.
“I was attracted to tower brokerage because it’s an exciting, active market with high yields and values,” Ouzts said.
Services
The majority of Tower Advisors’ business consists of brokering towers, with the remainder being rooftop sites and leases, each having their own nuances. Ouzts oversees the process, start to finish, from site evaluations, preparing the offering package, contacting potential buyers, coordinating the bidding process, reviewing purchase documents and completing due diligence. Ouzts visits every site and spends time getting to know the seller and the portfolio before preparing a bidding package.
“I have always collected all the due diligence information on the front end before I ever put out a bidding package,” Ouzts said. “Not only does it reduce the amount of work for the client later down the road, but it allows me to check and double check every piece of information in the package to ensure it is accurate before I present it to the buyers.”
Before creating the bidding package, he compiles all of the lease information, regulatory and environmental documentation, title evidence, physical documentation on the tower and a year’s worth income and expense receipts to establish the tower’s cash flow.
The Differentiator
For new business, Ouzts receives referrals from previous customers as well as repeat customers that call him for advice when they are building a tower, developing a portfolio, or reviewing leases. He completes site evaluations free of charge. Those interactions keep him closely connected with his network.
Ouzts has a lot of respect for the people who own the towers when approaching them about selling. “I’ll do my best to give them an assessment of where the market is, but I am not going to strong arm someone to sell,” he said. “People who call me consider their towers as an investment that they need to review on occasion. If they need to monetize the tower(s) for growth or investment diversification, then we can cross that bridge when they’re ready,” Ouzts said.
Ouzts believes in providing straight talk when tower owners ask about the potential multiple of a prospective tower sale. While values are generally high for a tower at auction, he is troubled by some of the misinformation that gets repeated about sky-high multiples. “We hear insane numbers that are taken out of context. Without context, it’s a meaningless number. There are so many different factors involved, such as the number of tenants, the age of the tower, zoning protection, the residential growth in the area, and the lease terms,” he said. “I think it’s important sellers speak to someone with their finger on the pulse of the market to find out how multiples are generally trending.”
Ouzts strives for positive working relationships with buyers as well. Although Ouzts is working for the seller, he believes his main responsibility is to get the deal done, which means both parties have to be satisfied with the outcome.
“Buyers know that my information is accurate. They also know that I’m not going to come back and start hassling them for more money after they’ve already given me their best offer. From a buyer’s standpoint, these factors reduce some of the risk in a deal and certainly can result in higher bids than some would otherwise get.”
Although brokering leases is a smaller part of Ouzts’ business, his involvement can have a big impact. He tells Inside Towers he has brokered four sites in Arkansas where one of the public companies offered the landlord a “maximum” of $260,000 a site. He ended up brokering the deal at $400,000 per site. In another deal, he brokered leases on sites in Michigan and got 30 percent more than the buyer was offering the landlord directly.
When dealing with sellers or buyers, Ouzts sets high ethical standards for himself, believing treating customers with honesty and respect will drive his business forward. Plus, he takes great pleasure in getting more money for an asset than the owner thought they would get. “There’s nothing more satisfying than doing what I tell people I can do,” he said.
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By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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