SBA Communications Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SBA fourth quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a quick session. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star then zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mark DeRussi, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.

good evening and thank you for joining us for sba's fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call here with me today are jeff stoops our president and chief executive officer and brendan kavanaugh our chief financial officer some of the information we will discuss on this call is forward-looking including but not limited to any guidance for 2023 and beyond in today's press release and in our sec filings we detailed material risks that may cause our future results to differ from our expectations Our statements are as of today, February 21st, and we have no obligation to update any forward-looking statements we may make. In addition, our comments will include non-GAAP financial measures and other key operating metrics. The reconciliation of and other information regarding these items can be found in our supplemental financial data package, which is located on the landing page of our investor relations website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Brendan.

Thank you, Mark. Good evening. We finished up an outstanding 2022 with another very strong quarter. Our fourth quarter results were ahead of our expectations and allowed us to finish at or near the high end of our full year 2022 outlook for most metrics. Total GAAP site leasing revenues for the fourth quarter were $609.6 million and cash site leasing revenues were $600.5 million. Foreign exchange rates represented a benefit of approximately $800,000 when compared with our previously forecasted FX rate estimates for the quarter, and a benefit of $2.2 million when compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. Same tower recurring cash leasing revenue growth for the fourth quarter, which is calculated on a constant currency basis, was 5.1% net over the fourth quarter of 2021, including the impact of 4.2% of current. On a gross basis, same tower recurring cash leasing revenue growth was 9.3%. Domestic same-tower recurring cash leasing revenue growth over the fourth quarter of last year was 8.5% on a gross basis and 5% on a net basis, including 3.5% of terms. Domestic operational leasing activity, or bookings, representing new revenue placed under contract during the fourth quarter was not as strong as the third quarter but still solid. we saw meaningful and balanced contributions from each of our largest customers. Full-year organic leasing contributions to domestic site leasing revenue ended up in line with our outlook provided on our prior earnings call. During the fourth quarter, amendment activity and new leases each represented 50% of our domestic bookings. The big four carriers of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and DISH represented approximately 95% of total incremental domestic leasing revenue signed up during the quarter. Domestically, we again experienced less churn than we had projected due to timing of merger-related decommissioning being later than we had previously estimated. We still expect to incur this churn and have incorporated our reduced 2022 domestic churn amounts into our outlook for 2023. Internationally, on a constant currency basis, Same Tower cash leasing revenue growth was 5.4% net, including 7.6% of churn, or 13% on a gross basis. International leasing activity was very good again, with similar results to our strong third quarter. 2022 was one of the strongest years in the company's history for international gross leasing activity, or bookings. In addition to strong customer activity levels across many of our markets, we continued to see healthy contributions from inflation-based escalators. In Brazil, our largest international market, we had another very strong quarter. Same-tower organic growth in Brazil was 13.2% on a constant currency basis. Similar to the third quarter, and as anticipated, international churn remained elevated in the fourth quarter due primarily to carrier consolidations and Digicel's previously announced exit from Panama. During the fourth quarter, 78.5% of consolidated cash site leasing revenue was denominated in U.S. dollars. The majority of non-U.S. dollar denominated revenue was from Brazil, with Brazil representing 15.1% of consolidated cash site leasing revenues during the quarter and 12.1% of cash site leasing revenue, excluding revenues from pass-through expenses. Tower cash flow for the fourth quarter was $485.9 million, Our tower cash flow margins remain very strong as well, with a fourth quarter domestic tower cash flow margin of 85%, and an international tower cash flow margin of 69.4%, or 90.9%, excluding the impact of pass-through reimbursable expenses. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $460.7 million. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 68.1% in the quarter, Again, impacted slightly by outsized services revenue. Excluding the impact of revenues from pass-through expenses, adjusted EBITDA margin was 73.1%. Approximately 96% of our total adjusted EBITDA was attributable to our tower leasing business in the fourth quarter. During the fourth quarter, our services business had another very strong quarter with $76.5 million in revenue and $19.3 million of segment operating profit. We finished 2022 with our most successful services year in company history, as measured by both revenue and profit by a very wide margin. Services backlogs remain very healthy at year end, although off the record highs hit earlier in 2022. Our fourth quarter services results were again primarily driven by T-Mobile and Verizon. Adjusted funds from operations, or AFFO, in the fourth quarter was $340.7 million. AFFO per share was $3.12, an increase of 11% over the fourth quarter of 2021. AFFO results finished ahead of our prior outlook, but were still negatively impacted relative to our outlook assumptions by our early refinancing of $640 million of secured tower revenue securities in November, at a higher interest rate than the retired debt. During the fourth quarter, we meaningfully expanded our portfolio, acquiring 2,642 communication sites for total cash consideration of $736.7 million, which includes 2,632 sites acquired from Grupo Torre Sur in Brazil for approximately $725 million. During the quarter, we also built 162 new sites, Subsequent to quarter end, we have purchased or are under agreement to purchase 31 sites, all in our existing market, for an aggregate price of $23.2 million. We anticipate closing on these sites under contract by the end of the second quarter. In addition to new towers, we also continue to invest in the land under our sites. During the quarter, we spent an aggregate of $15.9 million to buy land and easements and to extend ground lease terms. At the end of the year, we owned or controlled for more than 20 years the land underneath approximately 70% of our towers, and the average remaining life under our ground leases, including renewal options under our control, is approximately 36 years. Looking ahead now, this afternoon's earnings press release includes our initial outlook for full year 2023. Our outlook reflects continued year-over-year growth across our leasing business, including an increase in organic leasing revenue contributions from new leases and amendments, largely due to the strong new leasing activity we experienced during 2022. We also forecast significant revenue growth contributions from non-organic additions, primarily as a result of having the assets acquired from GTS in Brazil in our results for a full year in 2023. In addition, our leasing revenue outlook contemplates increased impacts from customer churn in 2023. Domestically, the increase is mainly in connection with anticipated sprint-related decommissioning, some of which we had previously expected in 2022. Due to the timing shifts of some of these decommissionings, including during the fourth quarter, we are now including an estimate of $25 to $30 million in sprint-related churn in our full-year outlook. Our previously provided estimates of aggregate sprint-related churn over the next several years remain unchanged. Internationally, our outlook includes increased churn as well, including carryover impacts from Digicel in Panama and carrier consolidations in Central America. In addition, our international churn includes approximately $10 million associated with an agreement we have entered into with TIM Brazil to address their consolidation of a portion of OI Wireless. This agreement has accelerated certain turn impacts with us in exchange for longer-term business commitments from Tim, and we believe positions us well for a long, mutually beneficial relationship with Tim. Our 2023 outlook does not include any other turn assumptions related to the OA consolidation, but if, during the year, we were to enter into any further agreements with other carriers related to this that have an impact on the current year, we would adjust our outlook accordingly at that time. With regard to our services business, our full year 2023 outlook reflects a year-over-year decline in revenues and adjusted EBITDA contribution, but starts ahead of where our 2022 outlook started. If not for the phenomenal 2022 services results, our outlook for 2023 would represent the best year for services in our company's history. As I mentioned a moment ago, we continue to have very healthy services backlogs. And as a result, we expect another very strong year for this business. The outlook does not assume any further acquisitions beyond those under contract today and also does not assume any share repurchases. However, we are likely to invest in additional assets or share repurchases or both during the year. Our outlook for net cash interest expense and for ASFO does not contemplate any further financing activity in 2023. but it does assume we deploy excess cash into repayments of our outstanding revolver balance. Under this assumption, we would end the year with leverage in the mid six times area, but we project that we would still incur approximately $36 million of increased net cash interest expense compared to 2022. Finally, our outlook for AFFO per share is based on an assumed weighted average number of diluted common shares of 109.6 million. which assumption is influenced in part by estimated future share prices. We are excited about 2023. Our customers remain active, and we expect to produce very strong results as we help them to achieve their network build-out goals. Before turning the call over to Mark, I would like to take just a moment to discuss the succession plan announced this afternoon. I'm truly honored to have been entrusted with the leadership of this tremendous company. I've had the privilege of spending the last 25 years at SBA and spending all of those years working closely with Jeff as the company has grown significantly under his leadership. Jeff has been a great friend and mentor to me. I look forward to continuing to have his counsel as chairman of the board. I'm very excited about the future of SBA. We have an amazing business that is part of a great and still growing industry. Our financial strength and very talented leadership team position us well to be a critical support to our customers and to capitalize on many future opportunities. I greatly look forward to working with the rest of the SBA team to continue rewarding shareholders and building upon the company's great legacy. With that, I'll turn things over to Mark, who will provide an update on the balance sheet.

Thanks, Brendan. We ended the quarter with $13 billion of total debt and $12.8 billion of net debt. Our net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 6.9 times, which is below the low end of our target range. notwithstanding our significant Brazilian GTS acquisition during the fourth quarter. Our fourth quarter net cash interest coverage ratio of adjusted EBITDA to net cash interest expense was a very strong 4.7 times. During the fourth quarter, the company, through an existing trust, issued $850 million of secured tower revenue securities, which have an anticipated repayment date of January 11, 2028, and a final maturity date of November 9th, 2052. The fixed interest rate on these securities is 6.599%. The net proceeds of this offering were used to repay the entire 640 million principal amount of our 2018 1C Tower Securities, which had an anticipated repayment date of March 2023, as well as to pay certain amounts outstanding under the company's revolving credit facility and for general corporate purposes. Subsequent to quarter end, we continue to use cash on hand to repay amounts outstanding under the revolver, and as of today, we have $585 million outstanding under our $1.5 billion revolver. The current weighted average interest of our total outstanding debt is 3.1%, with a weighted average maturity of approximately four years. The current rate on our outstanding revolver balance is 6.0%. The interest rate on 93% of our current outstanding debt is fixed. During the quarter, we did not repurchase any shares of our common stock as we allocated capital to repay amounts outstanding under a revolver as a result of the GTS acquisition. We currently have 504 million of repurchase authorization remaining under our $1 billion stock repurchase plan. The company shares outstanding at December 31st, 2022 were 108 million. compared to 109 million at December 31st, 2021, a reduction of 0.9%. In addition, during the fourth quarter, we declared and paid a cash dividend of 76.7 million or 71 cents per share. And today we announced that our board of directors declared a first quarter dividend of 85 cents per share payable on March 24th, 2023 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on March 10th, 2023. This dividend represents an increase of approximately 20% over the dividend paid in the fourth quarter. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Jeff.

Thanks, Mark, and good evening, everyone. The fourth quarter was a strong end to one of the best operational years in our history. For the full year 2022, we beat the midpoint of our original full-year guidance for revenue by almost 8% and for AFFO per share by 5%. We grew our tower portfolio by over 15%. including entering into a new market in Tanzania, which has gone very well. We had a very strong year for lease-up, including one of the best ever internationally. Our services business had its best year ever, beating the midpoint of our original outlook for services revenue by 46%. And we grew and expanded our relationships with our largest customers worldwide, setting us up for a bright future. During the fourth quarter, our domestic same-tower leasing revenue growth was the highest of the year, All of our largest U.S. customers remained busy during the quarter with relatively balanced contributions from each of them as they continued adding equipment to sites in support of the deployment of new spectrum bands. As evidenced by our full year 2023 outlook, we expect the contribution to revenue growth from domestic leases and amendments to be good again this year. And we expect all of our largest customers to stay relatively busy with additional network deployment during 2023 although perhaps at levels slightly below the peak periods of activity we experienced in 2022. Each of the largest U.S. carriers still have significant remaining network needs, so we are confident we will see solid activity on our domestic power portfolio for years to come. Internationally, we ended the year with another very strong organic leasing quarter. During the fourth quarter, 60% of new business signed up in the quarter came from amendments to existing leases and 40% gained through new leases. International leasing activity was ahead of our internal expectations and led by strong contributions from Brazil, South Africa, and Tanzania, our largest markets. In 2022, Brazil had, in particular, a very strong year. Lease-up in Brazil for the year was well ahead of internal expectations, and we also had a larger-than-anticipated contribution from CPI-based escalators. We realized material portfolio growth in Brazil, primarily as a result of the GTS acquisition, for which the integration is going very smoothly. The foreign exchange rate fluctuations have stabilized over the last year and were actually a slight tailwind to our 2022 results. As Brendan mentioned, we recently entered into an agreement with one of the three major carriers in Brazil to address oil consolidation issues in our broader long-term relationships. and we may do something similar with our other major customers in that market. We believe there are great opportunities for future growth in Brazil, particularly with recent 5G spectrum auctions as the driver. One item we are watching in Brazil is OEM's recent filing for injunctive relief from some of their debt payments. We currently expect that OEM must and will continue to pay their operational vendors, including rent and tower providers, and to date we have had no collection issues. Our financial exposure to OI is much reduced given the recent sale of most of their wireless operations to the other three mobile carriers in Brazil, with OI representing approximately 3.5% of our total international revenue. Our sites are critical to the operation of OI's network, and we have very long-term leases. As a result, we will likely see little impact from this latest filing. However, we will, of course, continue to monitor the situation closely. moving on now to our balance sheet we remain in a very strong position during the fourth quarter in order to address a nearing maturity date we completed a new five-year abs offering and while the interest rate was higher than we would have liked we were very pleased with a significant level of demand for our offering we continue to be a preferred issuer with extremely good access to capital while we have good access to additional debt capital we will be very thoughtful this year when considering issuing incremental debt in the current rate environment, which would only be done for a compelling use of capital, similar to our Tanzanian GTS acquisitions in 2022. With completion of this refinancing, we now do not have any debt maturities until October of 2024. We finished the year with 93% of our debt fixed, keeping us largely insulated for the time being from significant interest rate fluctuations. Even with the GTS acquisition, we ended the year with a net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio of 6.9 times below our target range. The strength of our operations and balance sheet and the steady growth in our cash flow allowed us to once again announce an increase of nearly 20% in our quarterly dividend. This increased dividend still represents only approximately 27% of our projected AFFO in our 2023 outlook. leaving us substantial capital for additional investment in portfolio growth, stock repurchases, and revolver payments. The strength of our business and capital structure was recently recognized by the rating agency Standard & Poor's. Since our third quarter earnings release, S&P increased our corporate rating to BB+, only one notch below investment grade. While a good development, we do not, however, have the specific goal of being an investment grade company. Should we continue to use AFFO to pay down our revolver and reduce leverage, that would be a tactical choice to generate a guaranteed return in a higher interest rate environment compared to other uses of capital and not a change in our long-term views on the use of leverage. We would be building capacity and biding our time for the next opportunity to issue incremental debt at more attractive rates. We believe the stability and financial strength we offer provide shareholders strong opportunities for additional value creation. I want to end on our succession news. The board and I have been working on succession planning for several years. We appropriately considered the pros and cons of an external search versus the appointment of an internal candidate as our next CEO. Brendan has for many years been groomed as the leading internal candidate to be our next CEO with increasing internal and external responsibilities. We are confident we have made the right call. Brendan is an extremely talented executive, equally adept with internal or external matters, strategy, and shareholder value creation. His knowledge of SBA and our industry are without equal. He's well-known and respected in the investment community. SBA has an extremely bright future in its hands, and I get to remain very involved and invested in that as the future chairman of the board. So a little bit about my decision. It's been very difficult. as you can imagine, given my love for and involvement with SBA for more than 25 years. But the reasons are very simple. I turned 65 this year, and I've reached a point in life where I want to do some things while I still can, but I can't do while running SBA full-time. Things like spending more time with family, a growing number of grandchildren, travel, spending more time at our home in South Carolina, and charity work. Very basic reasons that I believe we all consider at various times in our life. With these things buying for my time and attention, it became clear that now is the right time to turn over leadership to Brendan and the next generation of our exceptional leaders. As you can see from our fourth quarter results in full year 2023 outlook, I am retiring at a time when SBA's financial health and prospects are extremely strong. I want to thank all of you on this call or otherwise that have played a role in SBA's success over the years. We have accomplished a lot, and it certainly has taken the work of many. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to lead such a talented group of individuals as we have at SBA, and to have been able to interact and build relationships with a much larger group of customers, constituents, friends, business partners, and others who have all contributed to our success. And with that, Eric, we are now ready for questions.

And, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press 1 then 0 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the 1-0 command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, you may press 1 then 0 at this time. And our first question comes from the line of Rick Prentice with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. Rick. Rick. Hey. First, Jeff, congrats. Grandbabies are fun. I know you're going to have fun with them, as I am. And, Brendan, looking forward to working with you in your new role. Thank you, Rick. Thanks, Rick. You bet. Two questions, if I could. First, as you think about carrier spending for wireless, obviously they need to make sure there's revenue and demand out there. What do you all think are the most exciting 5G applications that are coming And when do customers actually start to get what 5G means? That's the first question.

Yeah, I think that is the seminal question, Rick. And I think, you know, to be honest with you, I can't name a 5G application that exists today that is kind of in the got-to-have category. And I think that's what, you know, the whole ecosystem of wireless is waiting on today. And when that happens, and I believe it's a question of when, not if, you're going to see a heightened sense of needing to invest and make sure that the competition doesn't get too far ahead. But until that comes along, I think it's sensible for our customers, particularly ones that have some promises to the street, on free cash flow and things like that, I think, to moderate. And based on all the commentary and what we heard from Erickson yesterday, I mean, that's what's going on.

And then a little more boring question for the second one. How should you think about the site leasing revenue growth pacing into the years? It's going to kind of be front-end loaded versus rear-end loaded. And it looked like there was a couple major – Revenue bridge items for other, $12 million in the U.S. and $8 million for international, so maybe unpack that a little bit about what those are.

Yeah, Rick, so the pacing this year we would expect will be higher growth in the first half of the year with a slight step down in the second half of the year. That obviously is dependent somewhat on how leasing activity goes in terms of signing up new business here in the first half of the year, but The first half is pretty much locked in for the most part based on the success of the leasing activity we saw at the end of last year. Your second part, you were breaking up just a little bit. I think you were asking about the other on international.

And U.S. It was like $12 million U.S., $8 million international. What should we think those are?

Yeah, so it's a variety of things. In the case of international, there's some increases to pass-through expenses. which is the main driver. And then in the U.S., it's a mixed bag. There's some other what we kind of call cash basis revenue that we've assumed will come in the first half. So it's things like that. That's really just our estimate of the year-over-year change as opposed to an absolute change. As the business gets a little bit bigger, those things tend to grow.

Again, congrats, Jeff, and enjoy the time of the grandstands. Thanks, Fred.

And our next question comes from the line of Phil Cusick with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Congratulations to both of you. Jeff and Brendan, well-deserved. Thanks, Phil. Thank you, Phil. I wonder if we could just talk about the sort of pace that you assume of either acceleration or deceleration among your carrier customers this year. It seems like through last year, you were sort of looking for somebody to pick up and maybe they haven't yet, while others, their set of expectations will be slowing down this year. What kind of visibility do you have today?

Well, we've got decent visibility. As I just mentioned to Rick, generally we expect things to be declining in terms of the growth rate from the first half of the year into the second half of the year. You know, the mix varies by carrier. We had a couple of carriers that were extremely busy last year. We expect them to still be busy this year, but perhaps not at the same pace. So I think that's probably the main driver. Those that are picking up will really just be dependent on the timing of when we see that accelerate. So I think if you look at last year and you look at the pace at which it increased throughout the year, it's probably a little bit more of a modest decline this year than it was an increase last year.

And I'm just curious.

We still see several or more than one, let's say, picking up. And really it's just the delta between, you know, what decelerates versus what accelerates. But they're not all moving. As you know, they're not all equal in terms of their build-outs and what they've accomplished. So the ones that are furthest ahead, you know, are likely to have – more on the deceleration side, and the ones that still have a long way to go will be accelerating.

Jeff, we've been through years in the past where you've been pretty cautious to build in that acceleration in your guidance until you see the orders coming through. Is it fair to say that you're fairly cautious on that acceleration in the current guide?

In the aggregate, yes, with respect to certain um individual u.s carriers i mean we we know that there will be uh some acceleration in 2023 okay but again it's and then it's the guy the guide is to the aggregate not to an individual carrier thank you and then if i can one more just how do you think about the math on buybacks now right last quarter you made clear that borrowing money at the current rates and

And buying stock where it was then just didn't make a lot of sense in terms of accretion. I thought your comment today about sort of waiting for better opportunities was interesting. Do you think that either the private markets are going to start coming around given where rates are, or do you anticipate that the sort of ratio between the current stock price and the current borrowing rates will change?

Well, with the revolver, you have a guaranteed return of 6%, right, to pay that back. And the corollary to that is a 16 times, at least on today's AFFO accretion, a 16 times acquisition or stock repurchase. We're always going to be stock repurchasers, Phil, and it's really a question of picking the right time against the right cost of debt capital. And there may be very well opportunities to do that this year, and we will do that. In terms of acquisitions, I do think the market is starting to narrow the gap a little bit, but there's still a gap. And if we see opportunities like we did Tanzania or GPS, we'll take a hard look. We're very financially driven, and something will have to look better short, long, medium term than repaying our revolver. We do think that interest rates will come down over time. We are going to be betting on the side of the Fed that they reduce inflation to 2% over time, and we know what effect that will have on interest rates. And when that plays itself out, we will have put ourselves in a great position to access incremental debt at prices that will be much more, you know, accretive to what we're doing. And we're happy to do that and wait for that time.

Great. Okay. Thank you. Congratulations again.

Thanks.

And the next question comes from the line of Simon Flannery with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening and congrats to you, Jeff and Brendan. On leverage, I think you've noted a couple of times 6.9 below the target leverage level. So it sounds like even though you referenced perhaps getting to mid-sixes, there's really no change despite the rate environment in your long-term target of 7 to 7.5. Just wanted to clarify that. And then One of your peers noted on their earnings call in January that they are only seeing the big three carriers adding mid-band spectrum to about half of the towers in their portfolio. It would be great if you could just comment on what you're seeing with your activity from those companies.

Yeah, what you said about how we're thinking about leverage is absolutely correct, Simon. This is a period of time that we're tactically steering. And we may not. We may see an acquisition tomorrow that looks much better than paying down the revolver at 6%. And if we do, that's what we will do. But if we don't, the natural result of the cash flows that we generate will be deleveraging but it will only be temporary until such time as we believe incremental debt at the price is then available will create additional value. And that's what we will do. Yeah, and then on the carriers adding mid-band to only half the sites, you know, I can't speak to what the others were talking about. I think it's our belief and expectation that they will add it to the vast majority of their sites. That's comment may have been related to where they are today, which for each area varies. And there's still a long way to go, I think, is the overarching message here. A lot of our sites have not been touched yet, but based on backlogs and communications with our customers, we expect that that will come over the coming years. Yeah, and actually, if you're speaking today, Simon, We actually think that we're a little bit less than that on the aggregate for all three. So there's a lot of work left to be done. But it ties into the question Ricky asked first, that what is going to cause the carriers to really spend everything this year to get there? And I think we have to see the killer 3G app that is going to provide the impetus to do that.

Sure. And just to clarify.

I said 3GF, 5GF.

Right. So this is probably not a year where you necessarily will hit that 5% to 10% portfolio growth. You were strong last year. But if the opportunity is there, you'll do it. But you're not going to just do it to keep up that sort of target.

No, no. And if you look at what we've done over the last 10 years on that metric of portfolio growth, I think we're north of 10%. Sure. It's not every year necessarily. This may not be the year that we do that, but we did 15% last year. So I think overall our views around portfolio growth and leverage have not changed.

Great. Thanks a lot.

And the next question comes from the line of Greg Williams with Cohen. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions and just echoing the congrats to Jeff and Brendan. Just wanted to revisit the M&A landscape question. I mean, there seems to be two camps on where multiples are headed in the private assets. One is, you know, some believe private capital is going to, you know, that's on the sidelines eventually going to dry up and private multiples could come down a bit. The other camp notes the scarcity of assets, especially U.S. assets, and the tower multiples should stay elevated. It sounds like you're waiting for rates to come down so the multiples will stay higher. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on those views. Second question is just on service margins. I mean, your service revenue is coming down, understandably, from record levels, but how should we think about the type of service activity and the margins year over year? Thanks.

Well, I mean, rates versus multiples, if you look at any kind of traditional economic analysis, there should be a relationship between one and the other. We didn't see a lot of that over the last couple years. As rates have gone up, multiples really did not drop the way they should have, at least using our math. That's starting to change a little bit, and we'll have to see. We'll have to see whether the amount of private capital on the sidelines will long-term push returns down in the acquisition market. you know, across the board. We're not prepared to invest with those returns. We've got higher goals, and we pick and choose, and, you know, so far I think we've been pretty pleased with the capital that we've invested versus the return that we're seeking. But I think it remains to be seen. Yeah, and Greg, on your services margin question, our outlook, assumes a slightly lower margin for services work this year. And that's based on primarily just a slight shift in the mix of whether it's construction or SIDAC type of work. So the construction stuff is usually a little bit lower margin. Also a mix on the types of work and who we're doing the work for has some impact. But from a big picture standpoint, it's a fairly small margin. drop from what we had last year, and we'll see how it shakes out. If it ends up being the same, we'll have slightly better results than we projected.

Got it. Thank you.

And the next question comes from the line of Michael Rollins with Citi. Please go ahead.

For the first question, I'll preface this if I say that I realize it hasn't even been two hours since you've given the full year 2023 guidance. But a question that keeps coming up is if the second half of 2023 in the US business decelerates, what does that mean for growth in 2024? And Jeff, I realize you made some comments both in the release and on today's call. about some of those prospects, but just wondering if you could put more color on how you'd like investors to feel about this multi-year transition and leasing opportunity, if you could put some guardrails around it. And then just secondly, if you can give us an update on what the build-to-suit opportunities might look like more broadly over the next few years, and is there a way to accelerate that program? to get greater portfolio growth?

Yeah, I think the way we think about leasing, Michael, is there is a lot of work left to be done on our assets domestically and internationally to deploy 5G. Multiple years' worth of work. But ultimately, how far that goes and at what pace will depend on how much and how fast carriers want to spend money. So we're confident it's going to occur. It's just a question of when and at what pace. But the physical work that is yet to be done is tremendous. There's just a lot left to be done. Now, I guess you could take the... Because if you were a naysayer, you could take the position that, well, they're just never going to deploy all that spectrum that they spent all that money on, but that seems to be a bit foolish. So, you know, those are the guardrails that we're looking at. And, you know, right now, and this could certainly change based on... you know, pickups and activity, that we're going to have a very strong 2023 where the first half is weighted more heavily than the back half. And in terms of build to suits, you know, we're pushing that business line both in the U.S. and internationally. We continue to be financially driven in the investments that we make in that area. So not every build to suit is necessarily, at least in our view, an appropriate return on capital. But we're going to seek out and try and take all the ones that we think do fit those goals.

And just out of curiosity, where are year one returns for the build to suit program?

We're looking for 9%, 10%, 11% cash-on-cash returns, and that's not every opportunity that's out there. That's multi-year. Year one will obviously vary depending on the specific situation. Frankly, Mike, the analysis around new build opportunities is not that different than it is for M&A. A lot of these opportunities are competitively bid like the M&A deals are they're just competitively bid with typically with carriers handing out those opportunities so you know we do our best when we're able to find strategic opportunities to build but but the volume there is obviously less on the build to suit opportunities you know we're making a financial decision so we would certainly like to continue to boost our portfolio numbers but it's all about the financial returns and so will be selected there just like we are on the M&A market. Thanks.

And next we'll go to Brett Feldman with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thanks, and I'll just echo everyone else's congrats, both Jeff and Brendan. Two questions. the sda looked a little higher than we thought i wasn't sure if that's a step up related to some of the assets you acquired in the quarter if maybe there's any inflationary pressures that are flowing through the p l that we need to be thoughtful about as we model out next year or this year and then you know you pointed out that the dividend pad is still a very low percentage of your affo i'm just wondering where are you in terms of the payout relative to your your taxable income and you know do you anticipate that the payout is going to be able to remain at a relatively low portion of your AFFO, or could something on the tax component of that change quickly over the next few years? Thanks.

Yeah, just so on the, I'll do the dividend one first. We have pretty significant NOLs still. I believe the number's somewhere around 585 million of NOLs as of the end of the year. So that gives us a decent runway, and we should be able to keep our our percentage of ASFO at a manageable level. And although it will grow certainly each year, if we continue to grow our dividend at the same pace we have been, I still think we've got many, many years left based on how we model it out. On the SG&A side, you know, going forward, we did include certain bigger increases in our outlook that are largely around inflationary-type costs. Most of our SG&A is people-related costs. And on average, we're giving bigger increases to people this year than we have in past years. Just cost of living is increasing and also to be competitive in the marketplaces that we're in. So it's mostly that. There's nothing in particular, I think, to call out on it otherwise. Yeah, but I would echo you ought not assume that that's going to be the same pace of increase over a multi-year period, Brett. Right.

Thank you.

And the next question comes from the line of Nick DelDio with SVP Moffitt Nathanson. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. And Jeff and Brendan, again, I also want to echo the other's comments and congratulate both of you on the upcoming changes. Yeah, I guess first, you noted in your prepared remarks that revenue placed under contract in Q4 wasn't quite as strong as in Q3 and your backlogs had ticked down a bit. Are these changes of a magnitude you consider, you know, kind of typical in the course of business and to be expected? And can you share anything about what you've seen year-to-date in 23 along those lines?

I mean, they're clearly part of the cycle of wireless deployments over the last 20 years, Nick. We actually were looking at charts, internal charts today about, you know, the pace of activities on a quarterly basis. And this period of time really was one of the longest that we've seen going back to before the 3G to 4G upgrades. So it's not unusual. And deep down, there's two things that our customers really care about. Are they losing ground because there's some kind of great competitive pressure coming from somewhere, and what's their free cash flow, and what have they promised the investment community. And what I think is going on now is simply a balance of that, but I would steer people to the comments we made earlier about this being a temporal thing because the physical amount of work yet to be done to bring 5G, at least to our assets, there's still a lot left.

Okay, okay. And then I also want to drill down a little bit into the agreement you reached with Tim. I think you said there would be about 10 million in churn from that in 2023. Does that take care of all of your expected OI churn from Tim? Are there any benefits to SBA aside from the term extension? And just think about OI more generally. I think in the past you said you expected about 20 to 30 million in total churn. With this deal done, should we assume, you know, call it 10 to 20 million from the other acquirers or, you know, able to tighten that up some?

Yeah. First, yes, this would account for all of the oil consolidation-related turn with him. There should not be any more based on the agreement that was struck. The total remaining would be in the ballpark. I would say that it's a little bit higher because of the GTS acquisition, if you recall. So, I would call it 23 to 33. I'm sorry, that's the total, 23 to 33 minus the 10. So, yeah, I mean, I think we'll see where things go with the other carriers down there as we have conversations. So those are to be seen. But for Tim, this should be it.

Nick?

Oh, yeah, sorry. And then aside from the term extension, nothing else to consider from your side of the deal?

Yeah, I mean, there are some other things. There are some other business commitments that are part of the agreement as well. And there's a variety of smaller things. But the main gist of this is some accelerated discount to their leases, long-term commitments across the entire portfolio. including non-OI-related agreements and some future business commitments.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of David Barden with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. This is Alex on for Dave. First off, just wanted to send our congratulations to you both, Jeff and Brendan. Maybe just first on the international leasing, just flat year over year, just the expected cadence for that. Should we see that kind of ramp up through the year and exiting 2023? And then I know you just kind of touched on some of the carrier dynamics in Brazil. Could you maybe just touch on the spectrum auction as well as the recent presidential election last year? Thanks.

The international leasing revenue cadence should be fairly balanced throughout the year, unlike in the U.S. When we talked about it, a decline that's really U.S.-related. Internationally, we'd expect it to be pretty steady throughout the year. And then on the other carriers in the 5G auctions, those auctions have put spectrum into the hands of these carriers. With the consolidation now of OIU, We believe it's going to actually be positive long-term once they kind of get beyond these synergies. There's some work to be done here in this first year or two post-merger. But I think as they get beyond that, in order to compete, as we believe they will now, much more on network quality and 5G services, we expect that to be a big driver of leasing growth going forward. And just as it happens here in the U.S. and in other markets, the need to put that spectrum to work is the only way to get that investment to pay off. So we believe there's a lot of opportunity longer term now in Brazil as a result. And in terms of the political landscape, you know, Lula obviously took the presidency, but the Bolsonaro group took the rest of Congress. So you have what you have similar to the United States, which is a split Congress and When that typically happens, it's the same that occurs here, which is it's very hard to get anything done there materially, and that ultimately, I think, inures to the benefit of existing businesses. So we don't, in the current landscape where you have that kind of a split representation, we don't anticipate anything material coming out.

Thank you. Aaron, next question comes from the line of Brendan Lynch with Barclay. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you, and congrats to Jeff and Brendan on the new developments. There's a lot of questions on M&A. Maybe you could discuss potential new markets and give us an update on the Philippines and Tanzania. And then secondly, Brendan, if I heard you correctly, there weren't any collections issues related to OI, but accounts receivable did tick up about $67 million quarter-over-quarter recently. Maybe you could provide some color what's behind that. Thanks.

Yeah, on that last one, the pickup is really actually just a timing issue in terms of collections because of the year end. It's as simple as where the holidays fall and where payments were made, plus there was some services-related AR that we expect will actually come down over time. Yeah, and in terms of M&A, I mean, we continue to take an opportunistic approach to new markets. We will go into a new market based on our demographic and operational analysis as well as country stability, risk, taxation, currency. So, you know, with certainly some exceptions that we would never look to go into under current circumstances, any country that we're not in today, you know, is a potential opportunity. And Tanzania is doing very well. Tanzania is ahead of our internal projections and the modeling that we did at the time of the acquisition. It is a dynamic country that is growing, and we're very optimistic about the future in Tanzania.

Great.

Thank you. Next question.

Next question comes from the line of Vatya Levy with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Congrats to both. A couple questions. First, on the domestic churn, you've been pushing it out throughout the last year or so. Is it truly just timing, or do you think that some of that decommissioning activity that the carrier anticipated is actually not going to pan out, or is it a mixture of both? And to the extent that you see activity from carriers where they support fixed wireless service, have you started to see some incremental amendment activity in that region, or is it too early to tell? Thank you.

On the domestic churn, the timing, which is all Sprint T-Mobile merger related, is truly just timing. We expect that the total amount that we'll incur will be the same as what we've kind of guided to in the past. We just think it takes time. A little bit longer to get some of that done, but we don't expect any changes. Yeah, and in terms of the fixed wireless, we believe what our customers say, that it basically is a product that results from excess capacity that currently exists in the network after at least where they have deployed a lot of mid-band spectrum. That really just works off the existing macros, Pat, yeah? So we haven't seen anything that we would clearly and particularly identify as incremental, although there have been some reports where microwave millimeter wave spectrum would be broadcast off the macro sites to help with the fixed wireless initiative. We hope that comes to pass, obviously, but we haven't seen seen that happen just yet.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Brandon Nispel with KeyBank. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking the questions. Brandon, question for you. The guidance for leasing, I'm afraid I'm going to ask this just a different way than everybody else asks it, but the guidance for leasing for $72 million, You know, you exited at about 21 million this quarter on, on my numbers. So it seems to imply an exit rate in 23 and 15 to 16 million, I guess, is that right? Um, and then as we think about, you know, building our forecast for 24, if you're exiting around that level, um, you know, historically you guys have grown newly seen by, you know, the 40 to 50 million cap, what would be the swing factors? in terms of keeping that 15 to 16 million exit rate holding steady in 24 versus maybe trending lower? Thanks.

Yeah, that's in the right ballpark, Brandon, in terms of where we would think that we'll exit. That's sort of what's assumed in our $72 million numbers that it's in that range. What would swing it in terms of what happens after that is really dependent on what happens in terms of new booking signed up during the second half of this year. um the pace of that if it's you know ahead of our pace it's not going to have much impact on our assume pace it's not going to have much impact on 2023 but obviously it will drive what happens in 2024 so it's a little early to to be able to talk about that obviously but the biggest impact is going to be based on what's happening in terms of new business we're signing up the second half of this year i can just follow up on that you

Two of your larger customers have sort of guided us to lower capital spending in, you know, 23 and 24. So I'm curious what would drive, you know, the leasing number to ever be better than 72 million? Do we need to see another spectrum auction? Is there going to be another sort of massive round of densification of existing spectrum bands? Is it a new customer? Is it going to be a new 5G use case? Just trying to get a sense of sort of your thoughts around 5G more holistically in that regard.

Yeah, I think that it's really a function of how many of our customers are hitting on all cylinders at the same time. It's usually just concentration more than it is anything else. Our biggest lease-up periods throughout our history have come when all of our customers have been busy at the same time. Usually that's the biggest driver. If If you have them do it over time, it just basically spreads it out more, but it doesn't necessarily change the total. So that's probably the biggest answer. I mean, obviously, there are other things that are out there that are more specific. I mean, DISH has certain obligations in 2025 that, of course, could be a driver to activity levels with them. T-Mobile's got C-band spectrum that's clearing at the end of this year, as well as 3.45. They haven't really deployed any of that. So there's a variety of specific things that you could point to by carrier that could be drivers of accelerated activity at a given point in time. But that's really, you know, to be seen in terms of the timing. Ultimately, though, we expect all those things to drive incremental business to our sites. It's just a question of when that happens. Yeah, and I would just add, and this comment goes throughout all the comments, we've been careful with our guidance and with our commentary not to get ahead of our customers. I mean, ultimately, the answer to your question is how much money they decide that they're going to spend. Thanks. We're not going to change the amount of money they're going to spend. They're going to spend what they decide they need to spend under the current competitive capital and other dynamics.

Thank you.

And our last questioner comes from the line of David Guarino with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Okay, thanks. Two questions on your guidance. I'll ask them both up front. The first one on the escalation guidance for your international markets. I was wondering if you could just comment on why, given the higher CPI last year, why we're seeing flat growth in that number year over year. And then on your discretionary CapEx guidance, I'm assuming there's no acquisitions included in there, but It looks like it's going to be up pretty significantly versus last year. Is that some data center investments, or is there any other type of capex that's driving that higher in 2023? Thanks.

Yeah, so on the international escalations, the dollar amount is flat. The CPI was certainly elevated during 2022. We are projecting it to be lower in Brazil, which is by far our largest international market in 2023, but it's While it's lower next year, the timing of when those escalations take place has an impact. So some of the higher escalations in 2022, some of that benefit carries over into 2023, and our assumed lower rate obviously then offsets some of that benefit. Plus, we have a little bit bigger base of business, of course, with the GTS acquisition in particular. When you put it all together, we ended up with basically about the same dollar amount of growth impact. But we are assuming that the CPI rates come down year over year. So that's offsetting what you might otherwise see as an increase. And on the discretionary CapEx, there is a small amount of contracted M&A in there, which we actually disclosed how much is under contract in our press release. But the balance of that is made up of assumptions we've made around new builds, around data center upgrades, around some DAS networks that we're investing in, basically everything else. The only thing that we don't include in there is an assumption around M&A because it's obviously lumpier and hard to identify what that's going to be sitting here today. But the rest of our discretionary investment plans, the guidance kind of reflects those assumptions.

Great. Thank you.

And we have no other questions in queue. I'll turn the conference back over to you.

Thank you, Eric. And thank you, everyone, for joining us. We look forward to advising you on our progress in 2023 as we move through the year.