American Tower Corp. and SpectraSite Holdings Inc. reported positive operational results last week for the first quarter ended March 31.
American Tower said it constructed 375 new towers, acquired 238 wireless towers and one broadcast tower, and removed 175 sites from its active marketing list, for a total tower count of 10,158 wireless towers, 317 broadcast towers and 950 managed or lease/sublease sites.
American Tower added 948 broadband equivalent tenants, net of build-to-suit anchor tenants. This is equivalent to an annualized lease-up rate of 0.40 broadband equivalent tenants per tower, the company said.
The company also said the first 275 towers from its Alltel acquisition closed as expected in early April. American Tower expects the majority of the remaining 1,918 towers to close in periodic installments.
“We continue to expect a solid year’s performance from our tower rental and Verestar segments, and while we have widened our range of expectations for services, we still believe this group can perform to the higher end of the revised range given the right set of circumstances,” said Steve Dodge, chairman and chief executive officer of American Tower. “We plan to continue to grow our asset base through new construction and acquisitions, perhaps modifying the mix to take advantage of current positive trends in acquisition pricing.”
SpectraSite reported 952 tower adds in the first quarter, increasing the number of towers it owns by 19 percent to 5,982. Of the 952 added towers, 251 were newly built and 701 were acquired from wireless carriers, including SBC Communications Inc.
SpectraSite also added 500 new colocation tenant leases, which equates to an annualized lease-up rate of 0.40 broadband equivalent tenants per tower. The average monthly rent for these new tenants was $1,515, a slight increase from the fourth quarter, the company said.
Steve Clark, president and CEO of Spectrasite, said 95 percent of the company’s leasing revenue came from established wireless carriers. Clark also said the SBC integration is progressing smoothly. At the end of the first quarter SpectraSite had acquired a total of 1,371 SBC towers, and expects to acquire an additional 1,879 towers by the end of the year.
SBA Communications Corp. reported its first-quarter operational results two weeks ago of 449 additional towers, 182 of which were newly built and 267 of which were acquired.
