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spk00: Greetings and welcome to Radius Global Infrastructure fourth quarter 2021 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. And I'd like to turn the conference over to your host, Jason Harbs, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
spk07: Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone to the RADIUS Global Infrastructure Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. On this morning's call, Bill Berkman, our CEO and co-chairman, will provide an overview of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 results, followed by a more detailed update from Glenn Breisinger, our Chief Financial Officer. After these comments, we will open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that many of the comments made today are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in our earnings release and filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ from those expressed. These statements speak as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation publicly to update or revise these forward-looking statements. In addition, on today's call, we may discuss certain non-GAAP financial information. You can find this information together with reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in this morning's earnings release and the supplemental financial information available on our website. at www.radiusglobal.com. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill. Thanks, Jason.
spk06: Thank you all for joining us today for our fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I am pleased to report that our strong growth continued in the fourth quarter, and we achieved several noteworthy highlights. On October 5th, we commemorated our first anniversary as a publicly listed U.S. company. We now own over 8,100 lease streams on over 6,200 digital infrastructure sites in over 20 countries with an average property right term of approximately 60 years as of the end of 2021. During the fourth quarter, we increased revenue by 44% year-over-year to a record $29 million. We also deployed approximately $114 million of acquisition capex continuing the trend of accelerated capital deployment that began in the fourth quarter of 2020. This capital investment resulted in the acquisition of $8 million in additional annualized rent in Q4, increasing our total year-end 2021 annualized in-place rents to a run rate of $118 million, a year-over-year increase of 40% for our diversified portfolio of high-quality, primarily triple-net and inflation-protected cash flow streams underlying our wireless and other communications and digital infrastructure-related sites. Since the inception of Radius's AP Wireless subsidiary in 2010, we have increased the pace of annual investment of acquisition CapEx by 45 percent annualized which has allowed us to grow the portfolio of annualized in-place rents by 54% annualized through the end of 2021. As we have shared with you previously, we're continuing to broaden the scope of properties we seek to acquire to a wider pool of digital infrastructure and related assets with similar attributes to real properties we presently own underlying wireless towers and rooftop cell sites to include rents generated from indoor wireless distributed antenna systems, or what's referred to as DAS, and fiber aggregation points. In addition, we are always seeking to identify other similarly situated potential assets to further widen our total addressable market of acquisition opportunities. The digital infrastructure assets that we seek to acquire are predominantly long-duration triple net rental streams where our primary tenants are the world's largest mobile network operators and other types of communication infrastructure companies, including tower companies. These rental streams underlie strategically located properties and sites, which are difficult and expensive to move or replicate and that are essential to the delivery of their network services that all of us depend upon and would struggle to live without. Including the capital raised from our January 2022 debt issuance, our financing activities for the year produced $1.2 billion, and today we have approximately $880 million in cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet. The vast majority of this cash is available to deploy for additional acquisitions that meet our disciplined underwriting criteria, where we target attractive risk-adjusted levered returns for our shareholders. In addition, I would also like to point out that we reduced our weighted average cash cost of debt from a fixed rate of 4.02% to 3.5%. Note that all of our outstanding debt is fixed rate or capped, which we believe adds a level of protection to the company from the impact of higher interest rates. With regard to the 2022 pace of originations, We remain optimistic about our ability to continue acquiring assets that I have described earlier for at least the next several quarters based on our current pipeline of acquisition opportunities. As mentioned on our last earnings call, we continue to target the deployment of 400 million plus of acquisition capital expenditures for 2022. This continues our pacing of approximately 100 million of capital to be deployed per quarter that we have accomplished and reported for the past five quarters. I would emphasize that this is an average, and there may exist some variability of the actual dollar amount of asset acquisitions in any one quarter, resulting from the timing of closing of larger transactions. In June, our stock was added to the Russell 2000 and the Russell 3000 indices. Since then, we have expanded our equity research analyst coverage by 50%, We believe these developments, combined with the cash settlement of all of our outstanding warrants over a year before their scheduled expiration date, has raised our visibility in the investment community and enhanced the liquidity of our stock, which in turn should help us to attract additional shareholders who believe in our long-term value creation strategy through disciplined capital deployment in digital infrastructure assets. To sum up, I'm extremely proud of what we've achieved in 2021, thanks to the dedication of our more than 300 team members globally. We invested nearly half a billion dollars to acquire nearly 1,000 lead streams from communication and digital infrastructure sites around the world, which we continue to strongly believe will help us achieve greater economies of scale across our portfolio as we seek to generate attractive long-term returns for our shareholders. As many of you know, most of the senior management team has worked together for over 30 years. Wow. We believe our decades of experience building, operating, and investing in communications infrastructure, along with the team and proprietary databases we have built over the past decade, is an important source of our competitive advantage. As we survey the enormous addressable market of over a million sites just in our current markets, Combined with our expectation to continue to expand to new markets, we believe we've only scratched the surface of the digital infrastructure and related real property aggregation opportunities. Lastly, as a reminder, insiders own over 20% of the equity of the company, and the management team is incentivized to create shareholder value over the long term. Against the backdrop of the unfolding multi-year global 5G investment cycle, and the increasing criticality of communications infrastructure in this digital age. We believe these and other factors will continue to enhance the strategic value of our rapidly growing portfolio. Glenn Breisinger, our CFO and a member of our club of 30-year team members, will now provide an overview of our current holdings and financial results in more detail. Glenn?
spk04: Thanks, Bill. We continue to grow the portfolio at an elevated pace in the fourth quarter, taking advantage of investment opportunities across our expanding global footprint to deploy capital. As of the end of 2021, as Bill mentioned, we own real property interests in over 6,200 sites with over 8,100 lease streams, represented by a tenant base comprised of 37% tower companies and 63% mobile network operators, the vast majority of which are investment-grade. With respect to our 117.9 million of annualized in-place rents as of December 31st, 45% are denominated in euros, 18% in British pounds, 17% in US dollars, and the remaining 20% in other global currencies, including Australian dollars and Canadian dollars. Approximately 85% of our rents are located in developed markets, with the remainder predominantly based in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. I would like to specifically highlight that nearly 80% of our portfolio has annual contractual rent escalators that are based on inflation or a similar mechanism, which provides us with meaningful protection against the impact of rising inflation while also muting the impact of rising interest rates. The other 20% of our portfolio has annual escalators that are generally fixed at 3%. Geographically, these fixed escalator rents are primarily located in the US, Canada, and Australia. Revenues were up 44% to $29 million in the quarter, and gross profit, or what we refer to as ground cash flow, rose 40% to $27.9 million, resulting in a gross profit margin of approximately 96%. We deployed $114.3 million for acquisition CapEx in the fourth quarter, compared to 118.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, representing a 3% decrease. This level of capital deployment added 8.2 million in annual rents across 232 new lease streams. We anticipate that these new lease streams will generate a fully burdened initial cash yield of approximately 6.5% on a net growth spend basis, which includes 12.8 million of origination SG&A that we spent in the quarter. Please note that this 6.5%, when compared to previous years, does not reflect same-store sales. At each quarter, we are acquiring assets from a different mix of countries that have different acquisition cap rates due to many factors that vary by jurisdiction. For the year, we generated 3.4% revenue growth from a combination of our contractual escalators and the revenue enhancements, which was partially offset by 1% of gross churn. resulting in net organic revenue growth of approximately 2.4% on a year-over-year basis, which compares to 3.7% net organic revenue growth in 2020 on a constant currency basis. This is due to a more modest benefit from revenue enhancements, such as uplift in rents, resulting from lease renewal negotiations, at lease expirations, lease up of our vacant unleased space, and other factors. Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity, During the quarter, financing activities produced approximately $343 million of capital to support our acquisition strategy through a combination of debt issuances and cash proceeds from warrant exercises. In December, we received $189 million from the issuance of 16.4 million Class A common shares resulting from a cumulative cash exercise of 49.2 million outstanding warrants. All outstanding, unexercised warrants were subsequently redeemed for a penny as our share price met the $18 mandatory redemption trigger over a year before the warrants were scheduled to expire in February 2023. As a result, the company no longer has any outstanding warrants. Also in December, we raised 154 million from a drawdown of 97.2 million euros and 33.7 million GBP from our international senior facility, which has a fixed annual interest cost of approximately 2.84% for the euro-denominated debt tranche and 3.78% for the GBP-denominated debt tranche. In January 2022, Radius borrowed 225 million euros out of 750 million euro new financing facility that the company entered into in December 2021. The initial borrowing of 257.5 million USD as of the funding date has a fixed annual interest cost of approximately 3.2%. This new borrowing matures in January 2030. Inclusive of this incremental drawdown as of December 31st, Radius had $1.6 billion total gross debt outstanding and net debt of $725.5 million. All of our outstanding debt is interest-only, fixed rate or capped, and carries a weighted average cash coupon of 3.5% and a weighted average term of 6.3 years. As a result of the $1.2 billion of debt and equity financing that we completed in 2021, in January 2022, The company had approximately $880 million of liquidity available for incremental investment as of January 22 on a pro forma basis. Please refer to the supplemental materials posted to our website yesterday after the market closed for additional details. Bill?
spk06: Thank you, Glenn. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the call for questions. Thank you.
spk00: Thank you very much. At this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove yourself from the question queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. We have a first question from the lineup. Rick Prentice with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk08: Thanks. Good morning, everyone.
spk06: Good morning, Rick. How are you? Great.
spk08: Glad you guys are doing well. A couple of questions. You hit a couple of them, but I want to dig down a little deeper. Obviously, rates versus spread as far as what you're able to borrow at versus what you're able to buy at. It seems like you're still able to tap the market at attractive rates. How should you think about as you're tapping the market into the future, how you guys are thinking about that difference between what you're borrowing at and what you're buying at and the ability to continue to earn that spread.
spk06: Well, I think that is really the core function of our business is to be able to capture a terrific spread between what we're borrowing at and what we can invest at. I would point out that oftentimes when we're investing, we have untapped inflation limits revenue streams. So the other thing we always watch is the spread to the local in-country sovereign-linked inflation-linked bond. You know, as an example, in the UK, last I looked, it was like minus one. And you would imagine we have an incredibly healthy spread there in what we're buying. So it's not just our cost of debt. It's also the actual spread from a risk perspective. And then on top of that, of course, we do think about Two critical things are organic growth, which gets driven by lease renewal negotiations when leases expire. And then, of course, any additional lease up on top of the inflation escalator.
spk08: And as you think about seller expectations, has there been any change? Typically, sellers are slower to react to any changes in the marketplace. But what have you seen as far as seller expectations?
spk06: ask and also the pacing maybe of them coming to the table well I think yeah I think we've said this many times sellers sell when they need money and as you know we can work on a seller or contact with them over a couple years and sometimes they'll reach out to us and say hey I need capital I'm ready to sell other times they'll be reached out to by a tower company and who typically doesn't want to buy them. They want to effectively pressure them into accepting a lower rent because when they can do that, it's an infinite return to them because they put no capital out. In that situation, we try to come into the white knight and say, you know what? Don't accept the lower rent. We're going to acquire you. So you have all these different forces in the market, but I don't think anything's changed. Now, look, with what's going on in Ukraine and Russia and the fact of what Putin said about nuclear weapons, you know, anything can happen, I guess. But right now, it's sort of been business as usual.
spk08: Yeah, here's hoping that things calm down for sure. Final question on my side is, obviously, you've got a large percent that are tied to CPI. That's a good place to be. I think, Brian, you mentioned 80%. We've had reports from American Tower last week, SBAC last night, that showed some pretty noticeable increases in their guidance for CPI escalator movements on their tower portfolios. Help us understand where we should be modeling and thinking about 22 and even 23, maybe, as far as what CPI might be able to do to your numbers.
spk06: Right. Look, it's a great question. I'm going to let Glenn take you through the detail. But as you can imagine, at just the high level, the escalators can be quarterly, can happen twice a year, can happen twice. once a year, every five years, you know. So, Glenn, do you want to take Rick through sort of what the breakdown of that is and how he should be expecting it? Because there is a lag of when it comes in.
spk04: Sure. To Billy's point, there is a lag. Obviously, all rents are paid in advance with the majority of the rents being monthly and quarterly. But, however, the way to think about it, I think, on a macro basis, go forward would be if you look at our annualized in-place rents, and take 45% of the analyzed in-place rents and think about European inflation, and then take 18% of the rents and think about inflation in the U.K., and the other 20% think about inflation in LATAM, and the USD is the 17% that's pretty much fixed. That's the way I would think about it. However you want to handicap what you view inflation to be is how you should think about how our portfolio escalates.
spk06: Just from a timing perspective, Rick, it can be six months to a year before we'll see it, or in some cases a quarter. I don't have the actual breakdown on the timing at my fingertips. Maybe Glenn does. Okay. I don't.
spk08: Great. Well, that helps. Appreciate it, guys. Stay well. Sure. I'm sure we'll talk to you later.
spk05: Yep.
spk00: Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Sammy Badri with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, Sammy. How are you doing? Hi.
spk05: Hey, doing well, doing well. First question I have is, what drove the increase in origination SG&A as a multiple of rent acquired? It rose to 1.6 times from 1.1 times at the start of the year, and is that mostly wage inflation, or maybe you could just tell us what else is going on?
spk06: Do you know what? I always felt like we did ourselves a disservice, and maybe I've said this before when we even include it. At the end of the day, to me and Glenn, it's always part and parcel of just our growth capex, our acquisition capex. And so we try to just look at the all-in yield that's coming out. And just to remind you, those yields aren't same store because our mix of where we buy always varies quarter by quarter. Sometimes the SGA can vary because we're buying a larger portfolio and then the SG&A can be less. Sometimes we're buying many more individual assets where the SG&A can be higher, you know, things of that nature. Glenn, would you add anything else to that?
spk04: Yeah, I would say, you know, as you think about the assets that we have and the markets that we have, we tend to look ahead and we want to hire some folks in certain areas for growth. So you're seeing some of the SG&A spend a little bit ahead of the realization of acquisition capex, but year over year, It's been year over year a benefit from a scale standpoint.
spk06: Remember, we always view it as you're getting to tax deduct 10% of your purchase price because we get to actually deduct that SG&A. So it's kind of bizarre, but we love it.
spk05: Got it. I want to go back to the inflation escalator. Glenn, I think you actually mentioned the word inflation escalator or the word inflation in your prepared remarks earlier. a little bit more than you have historically. And Bill, just weaving in and nesting in kind of what you answered to the prior question, which is you're not really sure if it's one quarter, six months or a year.
spk06: I think when people hear the words, they're all different, but they're all in caps.
spk05: Yeah. Yeah. So I guess when investors think about companies that are insulated from inflation, they want something a bit more tactical or surgical in nature. Could you just give us an idea on just how surgical and tactical you guys actually are about this? Just because the market is looking for companies that can really adjust fast to the fluid dynamics that are ongoing. Could you just give us an idea or a characterization on how you guys can respond and at the speed at which you can do it at?
spk06: Yes, I mean, I think it's one of our critical, I guess, theses. It's been that way for a long time. The other thing I would add is that when you're buying an uncapped CPI-linked escalator for the period of time that we're buying for it, which in our mind is perpetuity, we always believe that, you know, it's very difficult to value that. It's like valuing a call option on something for that long a duration. Black-Scholes or Monte Carlo approaches really break down when you're talking about multiple decades. So that's the first thesis. The second time is even though there's a lag to implement it, it always means we do get it. It just may be lag before you see it hit the numbers because it's getting measured and then it gets implemented and then it gets paid by our tenants. So to us, the place where you don't get the CPI uncapped escalator would be the U.S., which you know very well because it's a system that's based on fixed percentage escalators. I think the other thing that gets us most excited is when we think about us in comparison to some of our tower brethren, especially in Europe, the uncapped, I can't stress enough how valuable that is because oftentimes they do have inflation escalators. But if you look closely, they're capped at three, they're capped at two, they're capped at four. Selmex would be an example. Vantage would be an example. So I hope that answers your question.
spk04: And I would say, Sammy, right, just structurally within the business, right, We get the escalator. It's a matter of how it comes through on the gap revenue, which is basically a year lag, right? Because the way the accountants book the revenue, you're getting paid in advance and it's booking it and projecting it forward for the whole year. But the fact of the matter is we do get the escalator. So there's going to be some variability on a quarter-by-quarter basis because of the fact the matter is 70% of our rents escalate annually. Some of them escalate over a term. So all that variability is going to mean that the revenue escalations in our gap financials are a little bit behind reality. But we do get the value of the inflation protection in the portfolio.
spk06: Yeah, it's not if, it's just when. Not if, it's just when.
spk05: Got it. All right. Thank you.
spk00: Thank you. We have next question from the lineup. Nate Crossett with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hey, Nate. Hey, good morning. was curious to know, I mean, we're getting closer to the end of the first quarter. Just wondering if you could provide a little color on maybe what you close so far this year. Um, and then just the pricing assumptions, I guess, for that 400 million, should we be kind of modeling that six and a half ish range?
spk06: Well, I'd answer two things. The first is it's not – our general counsel would kill me if I gave any color for the first quarter, but I think as we said in our release, at $400 million plus, there can always be variability quarter by quarter based on when we close. But the Intoxics business is usual, so I hope that gives you a little sense on how I'm framing it. In terms of your second question, which I'm thinking I'm having a senior moment –
spk01: Just the yield down to $400 million, that we should be kind of assuming.
spk06: Thank you. It's just about the mix of countries we're buying. And so we had purposely moved away from emerging markets. But if you saw us buy down there, we typically try to buy shorter property durations. And, of course, they have a much higher cash yield. So that could influence the yields you're going to see on an aggregate basis. If you're buying more in Europe, you know, where risk is less as a premium to the U.S. equity risk premium, which is how we think about our world, the yields would be less than, of course, Latin America. So if you think then about the mix, we have been very focused on more developed nations, and I would say less for the moment. But other than that, again, it's business as usual, and we're hoping to keep I guess, hitting the targets that we establish internally for each of these countries. Because really, if you think about it, and we've said this before, it's a rules-based business, and we're always reviewing our rules. They are dynamic, but they combine both what's our threshold IRR for each country we buy in, based typically on the spread to the U.S. We also, as I mentioned earlier, always look at the spread to the local and country markets. sovereign inflation-linked bond or debt. And then on top of it, we're always reviewing, do we want to buy a shorter property right term like in Latin America, because we know we always have effectively an embedded ability to go back to that landlord and tack on extra years. In Europe and all the rest of the places, we may buy much longer duration, as you well know.
spk01: I hope that answers your question. Yeah. Yeah, that's helpful. I had another question, just renewal leasing spreads maybe in the quarter or in the year, if you can give us what that was. Sorry, keep going. The other one was just on competition. If you guys are seeing anything new percolating, some of the tower guys are starting to buy more of their own, the land underneath some of their assets. Any update on just while you're being in the way of companies?
spk06: So in a renewal leasing spread, you know, as you know, there's no, all of our leases, there's no X percent are expiring every quarter. It varies because every lease duration varies. So there's no, what's the word? It's not always 5% are expiring every quarter. So that's just very mixed. And as a result, if one quarter, a ton are expiring and they happen to be below market rents, we do seek to get an uplift. Some quarters you'll see a lower amount of what we would call organic growth driven by lease renewal because we get fewer leases expiring, and other quarters you'll see a lot more. I hope that makes sense. It's just hard to – it's not a – what's it called? A perfect linear line. In terms of competition, yes, tower companies are, quote, unquote, our biggest competitor. I know when I looked at American Towers 10K – They acquired about 215 million of properties in 2020 and they did about 242 million in 2021. In Selnick's case, and this is just to give you an example, they always tried to go first to reduce the rent. So they'll reach out to 3,000 people and say, hey, please reduce your rent. And if you don't, we'll consider moving the site. Now, whether they would move or not, who knows? That's their decision. You know, we, as I said earlier, love to come in as the white knight to save that person. When I looked at their numbers yesterday, if I'm not mistaken, they advanced about 60 million to landlords in 2021, if I have my year right. And that's different than buying, that's just for a period of time. And they bought about 80 million euros worth of property. So in total, actually 71 million they advanced. They had about 151 million euros in total that they put out. in their investment. And then, of course, they were successful in reducing rent for some of the landlords. So I hope that gives you a sense of some of the competition out there. But we definitely see them, and as Richard Goldstein, our COO, always reminds me, you know, we've been the only guy in the market for so long. Yes, no one wants to have competition. But the counterintuitive fact is that when they come to the market, it also – helps catalyze people who never would have thought about doing this to think about it more because you have more parties reaching out to them, meaning us and the tower company.
spk01: Okay. That's helpful. If I could just ask one more quick one. Yeah. The last quarter, I think you did your first data center. Just curious if there's any more of those in the pipeline and, maybe how should we kind of size that piece of the TAM for you guys?
spk06: I think there's definitely more in the pipeline. I can't comment, you know, if and when we get to closing because you have a very big pipeline and funnel. And of course, what falls out, what you close on, you don't know until you close. I think it's one of the reasons we call this a social business because it's effectively, you know, many, many small M&A transactions. But it's absolutely an area we're focused on, you know, We haven't actually done enough work to size the opportunity. Not yet. We are definitely trying to triangulate and figure out the best way to do that. But, you know, I think in a general sense, it's not small. It's just a lot easier, of course, for us to size how many cell sites and rooftops there are, you know, just from a real grabbing and getting the access to the data, if that makes sense.
spk01: Yeah, it makes sense. I'll leave it there. Thank you, guys. Of course.
spk00: Thank you. We have next question from the line of Walter Pisek with LightShed. Before we take Mr. Pisek's reminder to participants to ask questions, please press star 1. Mr. Pisek, please go ahead and ask your question.
spk06: Okay, Walt, we were a little long this time. Sorry about that.
spk09: I know, you were. You went over by like 60 seconds.
spk06: I know, I know.
spk09: um yeah i think you can cut a little bit out out of um of glenn's comments i'll give you some yeah i was too slow so um you know one of the things the metrics we look at and it's not obviously perfect because it's kind of acquisition capex per new site and it looked better this quarter sequentially so in the past when it was when it was going higher you gave a thoughtful kind of response in terms of duration, right? And also maybe there's some geographic mix that you, I don't think you report that on a quarterly basis anymore. But when I looked at the duration in the fourth quarter, it actually went up again. You know, Europe went up, North America went up. So the durations are going up, but your cost per acquisition are going down basically. So what, what is happening there in terms of the deals that you were doing this quarter that you were able to be, you know, I think, better in terms of price and yet still seeing a lengthening of the duration?
spk06: You know, I mean, it's because not all assets are created the same. You have a very good observation that their pricing are different by country. And, of course, in Europe, as an example, we'll buy longer duration. But most importantly, as an example, if we're buying an indoor DAS rent stream or if we're buying a fiber aggregation point, just larger size deals right so you may have done fewer deals and have a bunch that are larger which then when you aggregate it all together it can skew with the average asset prices per deal which i think was like 150 000 if you were just to divide it by everything it just doesn't tell you that much and maybe at some point we'll break out the alternative adjacent assets are I guess we haven't wanted to because what we haven't wanted to do is to say that they're any different than our wireless assets because half the time it's the same exact counterparty or tenant paying us for something that's mission critical. And we wanted to try to keep things as simple as we can. And, you know, we think our business is simple, but there are of course nuances and you know what happens. We're trying to, uh, I guess, keep it simple for all the shareholders to understand. That's why we haven't broken it out.
spk04: Sorry, it's the next part, Walt.
spk09: Yep. So you also mentioned in the comments and, you know, obviously stating facts that the last five quarters, over $100 million. Obviously, when we're talking deals, any deals, there can be variability. But is $100 million kind of like you're bogey baseline at this point, or could it dip when we look at the variability from quarter to quarter over the course of 22, could we have like an 80 million quarter and then like 130 million quarter? Like how do you see that?
spk06: I think that's what I was trying to say, which is that's about the timing of when we're closing deals. So, so anything's possible like that. Um, I think our other thing that we're really focused on and you'll note it in our earnings releases, we did open two new countries. So when you open new countries, that hopefully is going to help us grow, and it takes time for the flywheel in each country to get going. And even while we're opening those two that we just announced, you would imagine we're working on others, but they take time because you've got to not only find the right team to do it, you've got to build your proprietary database and, you know, really get a business plan together for every new jurisdiction that we enter. You know, I hope that makes sense. And the last thing I would say that we haven't really reported, but I would like to just mention, we are in the nascent stages of building a build-a-suit tower development business. It is very nascent. We have won a bunch of small contracts. And the only thing I can say is I'm really hopeful that we can really grow that nicely. We were in the business when we were a private equity partnership. Like most of the tower companies, we loved the business. So long as we can win the right contracts up front from, you know, counterparties that we think are terrific.
spk09: Got it. And then the last thing was a similar type of topic. I mean, when we started this, you know, looking at you guys and you coming out, like your acquisition CapEx was what, sub 50? And now you're doing over 100. So clearly you delivered on the pipeline. Yet at the same time, you know, again, going back to the prepared comments, you're talking about looking at Dash and looking for other types of things. When I think originally the concept was, look, we've got these X number, I forget the exact number, X number of salespeople doing the blocking, tackling, finding the guy who was going to sell at that time, because not everyone wants to sell, right? They like getting that revenue. Is there some change in that pipeline that you would go after DAS? And then similarly, when you look at a DAS deal, it just, and maybe I'm wrong in this, it feels like with DAS, there's other buyers out there, names that people on the call knows. Yeah, go ahead.
spk06: Yeah, so let me come back to DAS first, if that's okay. It's a different type of structure in the European countries where we're actually, let's take a hospital, just to remind you, we're not buying the DAS network. They get paid rent by multiple MNOs, network operators, to rent space to put a DAS in. It's either three DAS or they all share one. We're buying the rent stream that's paid to the hospital. So it's a little, you know, it's not like the U.S. That's not exactly the model that happens in the U.S., but we find it really attractive, right? So it's not really a different business, same tenant, still about wireless. It just happens to be indoors, which, as you well know, is where the bulk of most wireless traffic happens.
spk09: But do you think the competitiveness of going after those assets is different when compared to, you know, ferreting out somebody that owns land under a tower?
spk06: You know, so far, I think we've done a really good job and we haven't really seen the competition, but it's not if it comes, it's really when and who. We know what's going to come, but I think our goal is just to, A, have a good reputation in the market, B, continue to open additional markets, and C, to make sure we have separate teams pursuing indoor DAS, because I think we can do things in parallel. It's not like things have changed for our wireless site business, you know, When we were private, we were capital starved because we were at the end of a life of a private equity firm transitioning. Now that we're public, you're seeing us raise more capital for two reasons. One is the old adage, you raise it when you can. The second is we really think between our core business, the adjacent assets that we talk about, and then having extra capital for opportunistic larger acquisitions We want to be well-positioned because, at the end of the day, scale is everything. The greater the scale we have, we can drive our cost of capital lower. You're going to laugh. We see more deals from bankers and the like because we've become a bigger player in the market. And, you know, we're in a market where scale, in terms of competitors, is quite, quite large. You know, American Power, Selmix. I mean, you know this better than I do. Hope that's helpful.
spk09: Got it. Okay, thank you.
spk06: You bet.
spk00: Thank you. We have next question from the lineup. John Peterson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hey, John. Hey, guys. How are you doing? Doing well. Great. You know, you've kind of alluded to maybe some increased competition, maybe from tower companies or whatnot. I mean, if you just do a Google search and say you have a tower you want to sell, I mean, there's definitely companies out there that will buy it from you. So I guess it's just against that backdrop and you guys talking about your 30 years of experience. Maybe if you could shine some light on how many bidders there are on these transactions you're doing, how the competitive environment has changed. And also, I don't know how often third-party brokers are involved, if that's an emerging pocket that needs to be lined in these transactions. So anything you could say on that?
spk06: Look, it's a great question. And the usual answer is every country is different. And you know this as well as we do. In Europe, as an example, we've seen over the last three years a lot of shedding or selling of towers by the mobile network operators, the MNOs, to tower companies. Prior to that, most mobile network operators, and I'm going to generalize here, they haven't taken the time and deployed their capital to go try to buy property underneath their towers that they owned. Once it gets in the hand of the tower company, then they either do what Cellnex does, which is first focus on rent reduction, if they can do it, because it's an infinite return. And then if that's not available, then they'll try to either advance some capital or buy the actual property. So do we see them? Of course, we now see them because they're now tower companies that own the towers instead of M&Os. I think the market is large. There are many times we don't see them, and sometimes they don't see us. It's just, you know, the law of numbers and averages. The place where there's other quote-unquote aggregators like this for the most part is the U.S. It's really, again, the tower companies who we view as our main competitors in almost all the other countries.
spk10: But I guess how often in negotiations is there competition? you know, maybe a couple rounds of bidding? Or is it mostly off market, you guys all, everything's kind of sorted out between you and the counterparty and there isn't anybody else involved?
spk06: I can't give you a pattern or percentage because it's not steady. You know what I'm saying? Every country is different. Every opportunity we find is different. And when you have, we own 6,200 sites globally. And as we've said, there's likely about a million sites in our country. total addressable market who aren't at 1% or 2% a year, and that doesn't include Greece as an example, which is one of our new markets. And so, yes, you're going to come across them, but sometimes you're not going to come across them. And remember one other thing, which is that in a market, one of the MNOs may have sold their towers, but some of the MNOs have not. So then those are some of the sites that we go after because typically the tower company hasn't tried to target just buying properties underlying one of the MNOs who still owns their own tower. So that's why there's just no rhyme or reason or no rules you can apply. We're just doing as good a job as we can. Imagine it with your visualizing your arms are out trying to grab as many opportunities as we can actually execute on. That meet our underwriting criteria.
spk10: Gotcha. I guess switching to the internal growth, your net organic growth this year, You got on slide six here. You know, 2021 was lower than 2020. That was mostly, it looks like, revenue enhancements being lower. You know, I guess, you know, any expectations into 2022 on where the revenue enhancements can go? You know, I don't know what kind of opportunities maybe you could lay out there. And then how do we think about, I guess, specifically, we've talked about the escalators, but how do we think about the revenue enhancement in light of inflation and whether or not you have more... you know, ability to ask for higher rents on renewals.
spk06: Right, and so you nailed it. The biggest piece of our revenue enhancement is when a lease is expiring. And each of these leases, there's no rhyme or reason. They were set, you know, many years ago when they got initially done. Some quarters more are expiring. In this quarter, less were expiring, as you pointed out. But every time we go into that negotiation, the first thing you think about is, is it below market rent? And if it is, we, of course, know what market is. We try hard, A, to be a good landlord, but we also want to be paid market. So we will get an uplift from that. So I guess let me summarize it. It's how many leases are expiring, how many of those leases are very below market. That would be a driver of revenue enhancement. Now, on top of that, in some places we're finding – They need extra space at a ground-based tower or even on a rooftop to put a generator or a battery system in for backup. Or if you're at a ground-based site that needs what they would call augmentation because they want to add another tenant and they want to extend the height of the tower if they're permitted by zoning, sometimes they won't do a lattice tower. They'll do a guy wire tower. And as you well know, the guy wires which go diagonally out from the tower are may need to go on property they haven't leased, which is outside the perimeter of what they have leased. So that would be an example of a lease up. And there are many more nuances like that, but it is quarter by quarter. And again, it's one of those where we can't necessarily always predict it. We do know, of course, when our leases are expiring, we know which ones are what we think are below market. But sometimes when you are negotiating you don't get it done right away. It could take you a month or two months of haggling. It's like any other negotiation that you've been through, including renting an apartment in New York City. What a joy.
spk10: Yeah, tell me about it. So, okay, last question. I guess considering your kind of stock performance and I guess how important your cost of capital is to acquisitions, you know, one lever you guys might be able to pull at some point is a REIT conversion. We've seen multiple expansion post-inversion for a lot of other companies. Any thoughts or have you guys been putting any thought into that as an option?
spk06: I think, you know, we've said it every quarter and we just had our board meeting. We do talk about it all the time. The board hasn't made a determination of whether we should be converting or when we should convert, but we definitely have, we are re-qualified grants. So we can have that flexibility to convert. I think we have a bunch of other tools in our toolbox if and when we need to raise more equity capital, so to speak. In the meantime, with the $880 million of cash in the balance sheet, we do have, if you notice in our deck, the U.S. domestic senior debt, which is coming up in 2023. That's a place where if we were to target first for refinancing, probably you would look to that and our hope would be refinance at a better rate and perhaps upsize a bit because, you know, we naturally be lever each year because of the escalators and everything else. Right. So you always want in our mind, we want to keep it steady leverage, which after two or three years, if you've gone from an eight times lever down to seven, you want to get that one multiple point back up. So that'll be one of the things we'll seek to do with a U.S. refinancing strategy. you know, should we make the decision to do that? So that's the first place I think we look to for additional cash when we need it. But at the moment with 880, we feel comfortable that we can, of course, take care of any of our needs in 2022 on the usual basis, as well as have extra for should we exceed our expectations or other things that may opportunistically come up.
spk10: Sounds good. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
spk06: You bet. Call anytime.
spk00: Thank you. We have next question from the line of Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you very much.
spk03: Morning Bill. So on the public market valuations of common infrastructure have obviously come in quite a bit on the rate fears and inflation. How does that translate to the private markets? We've obviously had a tightening of spreads. Are you seeing any more an opportunity perhaps to see some of the better value deals in the private markets, or I think one of the tower companies said it's like a six-month kind of adjustment process from public to private. But any color there that this just might get a little bit less intense given the longer-term financing requirements. And then on the organic growth. You talked about revenue enhancements. Anything we should be aware of about the potential churn in 2022 or is it going to be still staying at that sort of 1% level the last couple of years?
spk06: I'll answer the second one first. I think our expectation is it'll stay at the same level because that's historically what it's been. Now with the Ukraine and everything happening and if nuclear weapons get used, you know, A, we have bigger problems, but B, you know, that's I think the thing that does It just worries us, not in our business per se, just about the world. On the first one in terms of – remind me again the first one?
spk03: Yeah, about the private multiples versus the correction in the public.
spk06: I was speaking to a large private equity infra fund, really, really large, and he was making the point to me that, He believes the private market values exceed the public market and it's not going to change because there is just such substantial money that is looking for uncapped CPI returns. And as an example, you know, I pushed back and said to him, but what about digital realty taking, you know, one of its portfolios public in Singapore where they accessed incredibly low cost of capital. He said, yeah, I hear you, but the private market, the amount that's being raised, and they've been calling it, I guess, like core real estate. There's now core infrastructure or super core infrastructure, which is maybe code word for they're willing to accept a lower return so long as you have inflation protection. I hope that answers your question. So maybe there's a six-month lag. I'm not even sure. As long as the inflation protection is there and it's uncapped, that you will see much change to valuations.
spk03: Makes sense. And then, you know, we heard SBA last night talking about the Philippines. You've talked about a developed market focus. Is that sort of hard and fast or do you think, you know, there might, you know, that's something that, you know, over the next few years you might look to some of those opportunities?
spk06: It's not hard and fast. I think if you're running a business, you always have to be flexible and willing to move as tectonic plate shift or if you notice something that you're revisiting one of your assumptions because you have to be willing and flexible to constantly revisit it. I think the first and foremost thing we think about is just rule of law. If someone doesn't pay us, how do we enforce and make sure they do pay us and what do we do? And so I know KKR made an investment in the Philippines and they must have gotten comfortable. So there's certain places that perhaps would be worth our while to look at expanding to. I think for right now, you would imagine we're not in the Nordics, we're not yet in Denmark, we're not in Czechoslovakia yet, notwithstanding the Ukrainian situation. So we have some places that are just sort of low-hanging fruit to go to, and we're not in Asia yet. We are in Australia. We're not in New Zealand. So you can see that there's a lot of ground to cover, so to speak, no pun intended.
spk03: Great. Thank you.
spk00: Sure. Thank you. We take the last question from the lineup. Rick Prentice with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk08: I appreciate the follow-up. It seems like you were going to be light on questions, so I got back in queue. I want to follow up on Simon's question a little bit there. Billy, we've seen American Tower tap the private equity space as far as bringing in capital for large deals in Europe. Your previous comments, does it make any sense for you guys to look at a private equity sleeve coming in to support your balance sheet as well, as you think about fundraising and earning spreads?
spk06: You know, um, it's a terrific question. You would imagine. And we talked to tons of people. Our largest shareholder actually is center bridge, which is a $30 billion asset manager. Um, our board hasn't made any determinations due to that, but I think the option is certainly available to us if, and when we think we need it. Um, But look, it's an astute observation. I know that besides American Tower doing it, Cellnex recently announced that they were thinking about, I guess, a similar approach to American Tower. So it's definitely on our radar scope. But at the end of the day, our board has to make a determination that that is a powerful path or an effective path for us to take.
spk08: And one other question to follow up on that. previous question as well. What is your visibility to closing a deal? I know it's going to vary, but as you think about sitting right here on March 1st, how much visibility on closings do you have? Is it 30 days? Is it six months as far as when they're going to close?
spk06: You may get three different answers if Richard, our chief operating officer, is on the phone. Glenn, how would you answer that?
spk04: Yeah, I would say it depends, right? It depends on the asset and it depends on the size of the asset. And, you know, the core business with respect to ground under towers and roofs is fairly predictable. And the other assets are much harder to predictable because they're larger and the timing could move significantly from quarter to quarter.
spk06: And that's why we always say that... I'm sorry, keep going. No, go ahead. I was just saying that's why we say that Here's our expectations per quarter, but one quarter could be 80, the next could be 125 or 130 just because of timing.
spk08: Right. And so is the ground stuff, the bread and butter stuff, is that literally like a 90-day, hey, we know it's in the pipeline, it's firm, and the other stuff as well? I'm just trying to gauge what is kind of the traditional on the ground side.
spk04: Yeah, I think that's a good way to think about it, Rick.
spk08: Okay.
spk04: Thanks for the follow-up, guys.
spk00: You bet. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I'd like to turn the call back to Bill Berkman for closing remarks. Over to you, sir.
spk06: Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. Of course, please know that if you have any questions, shareholders, any of the analysts, we're always available and open to speaking to anybody trying to explain our business and what we're doing. And I wish everybody a good 2022 and let it be a year of post-COVID. At least that's my hope. And hopefully the Ukrainian situation gets better. Thanks again, everybody.
spk00: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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