Crown Castle Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Q1 2025 Crown Castle Learnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Hinson, Vice President of Corporate Finance and Treasurer.

Please go ahead. Thank you, Darcy, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we discuss our first quarter 2025 results. With me on the call this afternoon are Dan Schlanger, Crown Castle's Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, and Suna Patel, Crown Castle's Chief Financial Officer. To aid the discussion, we have posted supplemental materials in the investor section of our website at crowncastle.com that will be referenced throughout the call. This conference call will contain forward-looking statements which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, and actual results may vary materially from those expected. Information about potential factors which could affect our results is available in the press release and the risk factor sections of the company's SEC filings. Our statements are made as of today, April 30th, 2025, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, today's call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Tables reconciling these non-GAAP financial measures are available in the supplemental information package in the investor section of the company's website at crowncastle.com. With that, let me turn the call over to Dan.

Thanks, Chris, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin, I'd like to thank the board for placing its confidence in me to lead the company during this interim period as they work to identify the next CEO. I'm grateful to have this opportunity, and I'm excited we're on a path to becoming a pure play U.S. tower company. I believe the decision to sell our fiber segment positions each of our tower, small cell, and fiber solutions businesses to be highly successful going forward while unlocking substantial value in our tower business. To help realize that value, while in this role, my top priorities are facilitating the successful and efficient close of the small cell and fiber solutions sales, delivering on the company's financial and operating objectives for 2025, and positioning the tower business to maximize value for shareholders on a standalone basis. We are off to a good start by delivering strong first quarter results, giving us confidence in our full year 2025 outlook. Additionally, although we are in the early phases, we are making good progress towards separating our fiber solutions and small cell businesses so that we can close the sale in the first half of 2026. Going forward, I believe we have a unique value creation opportunity as the only public, pure-play tower company focused exclusively on the U.S., which we continue to believe is the best market in the world for tower ownership. Since the early stages of 5G network deployment in 2020, mobile data demand in the U.S. has grown substantially. To maintain network capacity and quality, our customers have invested over $35 billion annually in their network. resulting in more than 5% average annual organic growth in our tower business from 2020 to 2024. Looking forward, we believe that continued growth in data demand will drive durable growth in our business. As you can see on page 4 of our earnings materials, history demonstrates just how durable U.S. tower demand growth has been across market cycles and macroeconomic conditions. Over the past two decades, the U.S. has experienced two recessions, and 10-year treasury yields have fluctuated by almost 4%, while cash, site rental revenues, and our tower business have grown consistently. Further underscoring the strength of the U.S. tower business model and the resiliency of the demand for our assets, tariff policies do not impact our full-year 2025 outlook. In addition to benefiting from the durable and healthy market dynamics we enjoy in the U.S., we believe that being a pure-play tower company will allow us to unlike value by focusing on customer service operational excellence, and improved profitability. We believe these areas of focus will drive both higher top and bottom line growth by positioning us to win additional revenue opportunities, improve operational efficiency, and deliver for our customers and shareholders. We're complementing the attractive cash flow profile from our U.S. tower business with a capital allocation framework that balances predictable return of capital to shareholders with financial flexibility and balanced sheet strength. With limited sustaining capital expenditures, variable costs, and growth capital required to drive incremental revenues, the tower business generates significant cash flows, giving us flexibility in our capital allocation. As announced last quarter, we will first look to return capital to our shareholders via a quarterly dividend set in any given year at a rate of about 75% to 80% of anticipated AFFO excluding amortization of prepaid rent. Consistent with this framework, the Board has indicated that it intends to reduce our annualized dividend per share to $4.25 beginning in the second quarter of 2025. Additionally, after the close of the sale transaction, we expect to spend between $150 and $250 million of annual capital expenditures net of prepaid rent received. This capital spend primarily includes modifying our towers, purchasing land under our towers, and investing in technology and systems that will enhance profitability. Lastly, we expect to repurchase shares. Currently, Crown Castle's board intends to implement a share repurchase program of approximately $3 billion in conjunction with the close of the sale of our fiber solutions and small cell businesses. To support our capital allocation framework and balance sheet strength, we plan to manage our debt balance to maintain an investment grade credit rating. With this in mind, after closing the sale transaction, we expect to use approximately $6 billion of cash proceeds to repay debt. We believe this balance between debt repayment and share repurchases positions us well to drive future value creation. To wrap up, first, we are excited to be on the path to becoming a pure play tower company, and we are making good progress separating our fiber solutions and small cell businesses, keeping us on track to close the sale in the first half of 2026. Second, We are pleased by our strong first quarter results and are confident we can deliver our full year 2025 outlook. And third, we are focused on driving operational improvements while implementing our balanced and disciplined capital allocation framework to enhance shareholder returns over time. Finally, I'd like to welcome Sunit Patel, who started as Chief Financial Officer at the beginning of April. Sunit brings extensive industry and leadership experience. Although he has only been CFO here for a short time, Sunit has already provided great insights that have helped me tremendously in my interim role. It's great to have him on the Crown Castle team. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sunit to walk us through the details of the quarter.