Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.
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| Statement |
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| And so what we see is a huge opportunity |
| That's good for us |
| And so we believe we are creating competitive advantage every day by continuing to get better and better at small cell builds, get more and more ingrained in our customers, have them trust us more and more because we deliver on what they say what we say we're going to do for them and make it harder for third parties to compete with us |
| So we continue to invest because we see very good growth at very good returns |
| We've done -- we've had periods of time in our history where we have investment like we do now that has outpaced the EBITDA generation of the underlying business, like it's going on now, where our leverage went up and we were able to have confidence in the future of the cash flow generation of the business that allowed us to know that over time, we will bring that leverage back down to where we expected to be in that 5x range, which gives us confidence that in any period, if it's -- if our leverage is a little higher than our target, that's okay |
| And I'm as excited as I have been and probably more so about the future of our small cell business and our tower business than we've seen in a long time, just because it's a great business that is underpinned by very sustainable growth drivers which we'll get into |
| So feel really good about where the business is, where it's going |
| And it gives us a lot of confidence that the thesis we have and the investments we make are going to prove to be right because every incremental data point is more supportive of that thesis and more supportive of that thesis |
| We've been through lots of upgrade cycles, consolidations, macroeconomic events, and the tower businesses continue to grow and continue to generate good returns, increasing returns over time |
| So we're excited about the opportunity |
| We think that, that would result in good growth for us through the cable companies |
| And therefore, we expect to see very good growth going forward, both on our towers and small cell business and think that that's going to be an underlying driver of great value creation for Crown Castle and shareholders over a long period of time because, again, the underlying driver of our business is data demand growth in the U.S |
| And we have significant growth that we think is driving great value for us in the U.S., which we still believe is the best market in the world for wireless services because of the combination of higher average revenue per user, higher investment and more technological advancement, which is good for us |
| So we think that we have a lot of room to continue the sustainable, substantial growth that we've seen in our dividend historically going past 2025 |
| And I think it's been a very good contract for us and a very good outcome for Crown Castle |
| I remain excited about the future of this investment because it's exactly playing out like we would have expected |
| And you saw the effects of that on Crown Castle's results with our tower growth being higher than our historical averages, so being over 6% and our dividend growth being 9% to 11% through those periods, which was higher than what we expected as well |
| The returns are coming in what we expect, and it's really an attractive place to be and a differentiated place to be, and like I said, I'm excited about it |
| So we took advantage, and we're very pleased with that outcome |
| We're not going to update that on a quarterly basis, but it's around that number, which means there's a lot yet to do on towers, which, again, gives us a lot of confidence that our business is positioned really well |
| It also puts us in a very strong position in terms of the number of towers that DISH equipment is on |
| We believe we have an outsized number of Crown Castle Towers, which puts us in a much better position with DISH because we're much more important to them than anybody else is |
| We're excited to be able to do so |
| As fixed wireless consumes so much more of the data capacity or network capacity in the U.S., we believe it's just another use case that has data demand to that 20% to 30% growth that, we think, will be very beneficial for us over time |
| And we still believe that investing in our small cell business is the allocation of capital to drive the highest long-term value creation |
| And it's something that we're excited about and remain excited about |
| And we would anticipate the acceleration of growth from 4.5% going into 2024 to something higher than that because we believe that through 2027, our tower business will grow at 5% on average, excluding that Sprint share |
| And as you compound that, we believe that even with $200 million of reduction in revenue, we will still be able to grow based on the growth we expect out of our tower and small cell business for the most part |
| And as they did so, their network quality got better, and there are other mobile operators in the U.S |
| We've done both and believe we will be in a sustainable period going forward as our business continues to grow |
| Statement |
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| We had a, I think, one of your peers used the word abrupt slowdown in carrier CapEx |
| It was -- the period in 5G of the surge was exacerbated from historical periods for 2 reasons |
| I think some people were surprised given that you still have that second element of Sprint churn to come |
| One, there's interference between the 2 assets from a physical standpoint |
| At some point, it is insufficient for a tower to supply all of the demand around it |
| What we've run into is demand constraint |
| Through Sprint getting access to the 2.5 gigahertz spectrum through -- or T-Mobile getting access to Sprint's 2.5 gigahertz spectrum through the merger or AT&T and Verizon spending on C-band, there was more total capacity and more total spectrum added than at any other time, which I think put a lot of pressure on our customers to try to get a lot of that capacity on to towers so that they could benefit their consumers so they could actually make money out of it |
| And even though we have events that, at times, consolidation can reduce our revenue, because that data demand growth continues to put pressure on our customers' networks, they need to continue to invest, which gives us more revenue |
| But what happened was just like everything was happening all at the same time going up, everything happened on the same time going down where everybody stops spending in about the same time |
| Just like there are periods where our leverage is a little lower than our targets because we know investment is coming |
| We believe that's coming down a little bit, and interest rates are rising, and therefore, interest expense is rising, which mutes some of that top line growth as you get to the bottom line, and that's basically our [guide] |
| They said there will be a lot of activity on in 2025, but they reduced their activity in the middle |
| For context, in 2023, we are expecting around 5.3% growth in the tower business, so a deceleration going into 2024 |
| And the reason we wanted to give that input was largely for what you brought up is that I think a lot of people were expecting that in 2025, we would have lower growth because of $200 million of Sprint churn |
| And I think other people see, yes, there's an opportunity, but we also don't know enough, so there's risk there as well |
| So the peak wasn't as high for 4G, and the trough wasn't as low |
| So it was in kind of middle into this year, middle of 2023 where it happened early in 2022, and it happened and drove a very big change in the level of activity we've seen on the tower side of our business, which is part of the reason that we're going from what I described earlier, of over 5% growth in towers in 2023 to 4.5% growth in towers in 2024 is this slowdown in activity |
| Obviously, if we're in 2024, growing at 4.5%, at some point in the future, we have to see an acceleration to get to that 5% |
| We just believe that the growth we saw in the revenue of those businesses that have come to market did not justify the prices being paid, so the returns just weren't good enough |
| And it led to a -- one of our peers saying an abrupt change |
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