In telco space at TD Cowen. I'm joined today in this session by Steve Vondran, President and CEO of American Tower. Steve, thank you for joining us.
Thanks, Gregory. Thanks for the invite.
Great. Steve, maybe you can just talk about your role as CEO that you took on earlier this year. Now that we're over halfway through the year, can you just talk about strategic priorities, objectives for the company? You know, anything you're sort of doing differently or putting your DNA on the company?
Sure. Well, look, I, I've been with the company for over 24 years. I've been part of the executive team for the last almost six. So long term, you should see a lot of continuity in terms of our strategy. Having said that, our kind of near to midterm priorities are you know first and foremost, sales, driving organic growth on our assets throughout the globe, and that will always be a top priority for us. Second, is complementing those sales with selective investments where we can earn the highest risk-adjusted returns. And we talked a little bit on our second quarter earnings call about some of the strategic pivot that we've made to increase our investments in the developed world and decrease those in the emerging markets a bit. And that's not a new thing.
We've been doing that over time, but we're just a little more explicit about that strategy. And there's actually a development on that you may have seen recently, but there was an announcement between IHS and MTN-.
Sure
That some of the relocation sites are expected to go to American Tower-
Mm-hmm
Are going to be retained by IHS. And we view that as a very successful conclusion to some negotiations there. And so we'll still support MTN, which is a Tier 1 MNO in Africa, on about 2,100 sites there. And the exciting thing for us is a much larger percentage of those will be co-locations on our existing assets versus new builds-
Oh, great
That we originally
Field.
Yeah, exactly. And that's just consistent with the strategy we laid out at the quarter call about kind of going capital light in those emerging markets, but still driving growth there. So sales, selective investments, predominantly in our developed markets and CoreSite.
Mm-hmm.
Then you couple that with a fierce focus on cost control. And, you know, we've been controlling costs this year. Our SG&A will be about $35 million less than it was last year, and we can continue to focus on driving best-in-class margins throughout the organization. We're using some of our globalization initiatives to look at how can we take costs out in the direct cost line? So
Mm-hmm
Things like site maintenance, land rents, things like that. And we'll continue to do that to try to expand that gross margin over time as well. So you take those kind of three items, then you add to that our investment-grade balance sheet, continue to fortify that. We're very focused on getting our leverage down to our stated range of three-five times . We believe that having an investment-grade balance sheet and having liquidity and the lowest cost of capital that we can sustainably have will be an advantage when enough M&A opportunities come up in the future. And if those opportunities don't present themselves, we'll be able to derive incremental shareholder value through, you know, dividends, share buybacks, and internal CapEx program. And then, kind of the fifth item that we're focused on is our board refreshment.
That's something we've been doing for a few years. We've had three long-standing board members that didn't stand for re-election. Over the past two years, we've added one new board member, Neville Ray. So we're searching for new board members there, and you'll continue to see that refreshment taking place. And we just changed all of our committee chairs, and that's part of our dedication to having the right people sitting around the table with the right mix of kind of historical perspective and kind of fresh eyes in the business. But those are really kind of the five things we're focused on in the near to midterm.
Great. That's, that's five things to chew on. Hopefully, I'll have time to address all of it today, but we can start with sales. You know, and I guess U.S. carrier activity, you know, last year when we were speaking here, was subdued, and it seems like it's sort of continued that pace, but you did note that some activity is picking up. So maybe, you know, compared to where you're seeing activity this year, where was it compared to last year at this point?
Well, we're certainly seeing an uptick for the second half of this year from what we saw in the second half of last year. And, you know, we had guided for our services business to have an acceleration this year compared to last year. And we had a lot of questions about that and what, where the volume was coming from.
Sure.
And so for us, our Q1 application volume from our customers was about 70% over Q4. Now, Q4 was low, and then we saw another incremental increase in Q2, and we expect to see kind of solid activity from our customers for the balance of the year that enabled us to reiterate our services guide for the year. And, you know, in our business, the services volume is directly correlated-
Yeah
... to the activity. Now, the property rental performance is a little bit decoupled from activity because of our comprehensive MLAs.
Sure.
But we are seeing healthy activity from our customers. It's pretty broad-based. It continues to be, mostly amendment focused as they're rolling out 5G further and further out in the networks, but we are seeing some pockets of distribution as well.
Got it. And what's the timeline from applications to actually seeing the revenue? And can you just remind us of that? So when you're seeing the activity now picking up this year, you know, how long till we actually see that as this revenue?
Yeah. Well, again, with the ones that are under our comprehensive agreements, those are decoupled.
Right. So it's sort of the-
That kind of smooths it out. You know, the activity doesn't matter so much on those-
Mm-hmm
... but we do have one major customer that's not in the comprehensive agreement now. We have our kind of vertical market segment. So typically, for a new co-location, you can think application to a lease signed being in that 3-6 months timeframe, depending on the carrier-
Mm-hmm
... and their internal processes. Amendments move, you know, take about a third of the timeline off of that-
Okay
... for amendments.
Yep.
In the comprehensive agreements, because of the administrative efficiencies we get there, you can go from an application to signed lease within a few days.
Right.
But you still have permitting and that type of stuff that you have to go through, but it definitely shortens that timeline.
You mentioned amendments are, you know, a little more heavy in the mix with this activity. Does that suggest then you're still in coverage mode, do you think? Because, you know, last time we spoke, it was phase one versus phase two, and are we going to move more towards co-location later at some point towards densification?
We definitely will. We'll see both.
Okay.
You know, if you just look at the ways that the carriers are built in the prior Gs, the first push is coverage for a certain number of pops. When they get to that, there's a little bit of a slowdown, then they come back and push that coverage out further out in the network. And so I think what we're seeing today is the carriers continue to focus on coverage, getting that mid-band 5G out further and further into the network. You will see some densification happening, you know, probably in more urban areas early, and that densification actually comes in both amendments and in leases.
Okay.
'Cause that, that first network that gets overlaid is really a coverage network. You don't have many people using the network at that point.
Yeah.
So we'll see amendments just to densify as they add more spectrum to those sites as well. And, you know, the handset penetration for mid-band 5G handsets, I think the last number I saw at the end of Q2 was about a little over 50% in the U.S.
Mm-hmm.
As that handset refresh rate continues to drive more and more people using it, there'll be more traffic on the networks. The densification phase will come.
Right. And you're guiding $180 million-$190 million in U.S. new leasing guidance, but you've tracked about $90 million in the first half of the year. So, you know, simple math says you're on the low end of that, but, you know, will you maybe come into the middle of it because you've noted, you know, your service revenue is going up, so that's a leading indicator and activity is picking up. So is that how we should think about it, or are you thinking maybe tracking towards that lower end?
So look, the way to think about that, we've also said we don't see a lot of variability quarter by quarter, so that would imply that we're going to be at the lower end of the guidance.
Mm-hmm.
One of the variables, though, is that we do have one of our carriers that's not under comprehensive-
Yeah, sure
... agreement. So the timing of when those leases commence and the activity levels that we're seeing there could provide some variability in that timeline.
Mm-hmm. Got it. As we start to look at 2025, maybe remind us of your level of visibility. You know, given your holistic MLAs that you have, and you know, how does that visibility compare to 2024?
It's too early to give guidance.
Right.
I know that's what you want.
Right.
But when I think about 25, the way to think about it is we're starting the year with kind of a similar level of contracted new business that we had previously in 2024.
Mm-hmm.
But the swing factors to think about is we do have a carrier that's not under a comprehensive MLA.
Yep.
So the variations in the volume and the timing of that volume is a swing factor there as well. There's also the potential merger between T-Mobile and US Cellular. So if that gets approved and closes, there could be some additional churn on that.
Mm-hmm.
Our overall exposure is pretty low.
Yeah.
It's less than 1% of our U.S. revenues, less than 0.5% of our global revenues.
Mm-hmm.
But if there is some churn associated with that, yeah, that could be a swing factor as well.
Sure. And you mentioned there's one carrier out there you do not have a holistic MLA with anymore. Can you describe the near-term opportunity to have a holistic agreement in place with all of your large customers, then?
Yeah. Look, you can assume that we're always negotiating with the customers. The ink doesn't even dry on the paper before you're starting to talk about...
Right
... about that kind of new network iterations. You know, we've actually only had two years in the last decade where we were under a comprehensive agreement with all the carriers.
Mm-hmm.
That was last year in 2021. We've been successful under a variety of structures. Typically, when we have a one of these holistic agreements with a carrier, and we get to the expiration, if we don't extend it, it's because we're negotiating. It's usually about what we think their expected activity is going to be and what they think it is.
Sure.
There's usually a little bit of a mismatch there. And so you've seen us go for a period of time without one. You've seen us get back into one of the carriers. The key for us is making sure that, that we're capturing that long-term demand. And so whether it hits this quarter or next quarter, we're going to get the business at some point—
Mm-hmm
... because they need to do the activity on the site. So we're very comfortable operating without one. All things being equal, we'd like to have one-
Sure, for the visibility.
Well, the visibility-
Market
... the administrative efficiencies, it's just best, better for both parties. But at the end of the day, we're going to do whatever we can to make sure we capture our fair share.
Got it, and, and you mentioned in your call that, you have one carrier that's over 80% of their sites are deployed to 5G. Another carrier is a little over 60%, but there's a third carrier that's, quote, "A little bit, further behind." So is it fair to assume that that third carrier is going to begin to upgrade their network more aggressively, in order to sort of catch up to the leader?
Let me clarify. It's mid-band 5G.
Mid-band 5G.
We've all had 5G for years.
Right. Right, right.
Those are lower bands. Look, I'll let the carriers talk about their own specific deployment plans, but what I would say is for 5G deployments, we expect all of our carriers to get close to 100% 5G mid-band overlays. And the reason we think that'll happen is the efficiencies they get on that spectrum allow them to produce gigabytes of data much, much cheaper than 4G.
Right.
When you think about the demand driver for our industry, it's the 20%-30% increase in mobile data usage that's happening every year. It's projected to happen for the next several years, probably as long as we can count.
Mm-hmm.
That means our customers have to produce more gigabytes of data, and to keep their margins, they have to do it cheaper.
Right.
5G is enabling them to do that. So we think they'll continue to roll out 5G ubiquitously across the U.S. until they get close to 100%.
Right, and we just spoke to Verizon's chief network operator last Friday, and they said sort of similar things. They said they're going to roll out their C-band on a vast majority of their 70-odd thousand sites, mostly by year-end 2025. So that jives. I'm curious, you mentioned, you know, DISH, you have very little exposure. I think you said, you know, less than, was it 1%, or?
That was UScellular.
I'm sorry. Oh, U.S.-
US Cellular.
U.S. cellular. Okay, but moving on to DISH, then-
Yeah
... in terms of another one that you have very little exposure to, maybe you can help us with, you know, with their shot clock looming on the horizon, have you had conversations, you know, in general, on their build out, and, you know, 'cause as you sit right here, they've got a long way to go. I'm just curious, your thoughts from where you sit.
Yeah, so with DISH, our exposure to DISH is it's less than 2%, or it's about 2% of our U.S. revenues and about 1% of our global revenues. It's, it's pretty modest exposure. But we've been there with DISH from day one as they deployed this network, and we've watched them stand up a team and do a great job going to meet their timelines.
Yeah.
I'll let them talk about specific plans moving forward, but-
Mm-hmm
... but what we're seeing with them is a continued level of activity that we think is supportive of what they're saying publicly, their plans are.
Yeah.
I would just remind you that our agreement with them is a comprehensive agreement with Dish.
Mm-hmm.
What we have baked into our longer-term guidance with Dish is a contractually guaranteed minimum levels of new business with them.
Right.
So from our perspective, whether they go fast or slow, it doesn't make a big difference in terms of that property revenue.
Yep.
You will see it in our services guide as well.
Yeah. I mean, even on their earnings call, also was on last Friday, they did say they're doing a lot of things behind the scenes. They said they can really, they really seem confident in meeting that shot clock. You know, we take them at their word, then sure enough. Do you think that, you know, maybe they're in the middle of a big bondholder agreement, and they gotta settle these November maturities, maybe they get that cleared? You know, that maybe that could be something that could help them unleash and just go back to business?
I think you've got to ask them that.
Yeah.
I'll get in trouble faster-
Sure
... for commenting on things like that.
Fair enough. So just moving on to India, you mentioned on the second quarter call that approval from the competition committee is in the final hurdles, and you can close the sale. You know, I think it would come four-six weeks later. Are there any other hurdles that we should note or should be aware of?
We actually got approval from the Competition Commission last week.
Okay.
Um-
So-
So we're-
So that's-
Four weeks from now? Well, I'm not gonna call it yet.
Right, but-
So, look, there are customary closing conditions that have to be made in any transaction. So we are saying that closing we anticipate happening in the second half.
Mm-hmm.
There aren't any other regulatory hurdles on it; it's just customary closing conditions then.
Got it. On the second quarter earnings call, you mentioned that you expect higher SG&A and maintenance CapEx in India prior to close. So can you provide any additional color on the magnitude of these higher costs and the drivers behind these increasing costs?
Yeah. It's about $15 million in SG&A and about $15 million in maintenance CapEx, and that's really just related. As we're getting closer to closing, there's just some things that we need to do to kind of get there, take care of the teams, and make sure that we're getting everything done that we need to. On the maintenance CapEx, we just identified a few things that needed to be done as part of the closing costs.
Okay.
They're relatively small in the overall scheme.
Okay. And as it relates to the international portfolio, regarding American shifting its discretionary capital, as you know, towards developed markets and away from emerging markets, maybe help us with that rationale and you know, help us understand the definition really of a developed market versus an emerging market for American Tower.
Sure. For us, the developed markets are the U.S. and Canada, including CoreSite and Europe. So you can think of our emerging markets being Latin America, Africa, and then India was the vast majority of APAC. We have Bangladesh and Philippines, those would be emerging markets as well. And, you know, the pivot we made was actually a few years ago. We haven't done an M&A transaction in an emerging market in several years now, and most of the capital we've deployed has been in the U.S. and Europe, you know, CoreSite in the U.S., Telxius in Europe. And you've seen us also take our internal CapEx program and shift that more. So the amount that we're spending in Africa this year is dramatically down from what it was three or four years.
The reason we've made that shift is the macroeconomic conditions that are kind of affecting the globe have an outsized impact on the emerging market.
Right.
The challenges we've seen there... When you go to these emerging markets, you're trying to overcome operational challenges, but also financial challenges.
Yeah.
But the team has done an amazing job on the operational front. I mean, it's so difficult to operate in some of these environments, and our teams are the best operators in every geography. But the challenges we're really seeing are more economic challenges, and so we've had. FX has been a particular challenge in Africa.
Sure.
We've had a little bit of carrier consolidation that we worked through, largely through most of that.
Yeah.
And then in Latin America, it's really been a carrier consolidation as well.
Yeah.
And so in particular, we have Oi in Brazil. That's about half of the churn that we're seeing in Brazil is from that Oi transaction, and that churn is gonna continue for a few years there. So as we kind of looked at where we can put our capital and the opportunities we had, we think we're gonna drive better long-term shareholder value by pivoting to our developed markets, where we have a lot of great opportunities to invest. We have build-to-suits in Europe, where we have great day-one NOI yields. We have CoreSite in the U.S., where we're underwriting mid-teens yields-
Yeah
... on the new capital we're deploying there as well. And so we think those are just better places to grow our capital right now, given that kind of umbrella of activity.
Yeah, sure. I mean, even with the IHS MTN deal, yeah, I guess the narrower pressures over the last couple of years and the opportunities you have in front of you, especially in the data centers, hopefully we'll get to, you know, it seems like there's more there. But as you look at the international portfolio, you know, which markets or regions would you be most bullish in? 'Cause you mentioned Europe would be part of the developed markets and over the medium term, and what are the drivers behind that view?
Yeah. I'll just touch on all three, 'cause-
Sure
... they're, they have different reasons to be excited about them. So in Europe, we're seeing some healthy growth in Europe. It's primarily being driven by 5G, and while they've got a combination of mid- and low-band 5G deployed pretty ubiquitously, there's still a good runway for mid-band 5G to be deployed there. And we're also seeing a dynamic in Europe, where the governments are really pushing for more rural coverage. So you're seeing some incentive plans going in place that are promoting additional builds beyond kind of the city centers that were originally built there. That's creating opportunities for both new builds and co-locations on the existing portfolios. And we also have the new market entry in Germany of 1&1....
which is also something that was, you know, not as much on the view shed when we were acquiring the Telxius assets. So all those are adding up to a higher growth rate from new leases and amendments in Europe. And we're excited about that going forward. We think those, those trends are gonna continue.
Right.
Now, if I look at Africa, we had the FX challenges, but the demand for assets in Africa is huge. We're writing new business in Africa at near record new levels of business every quarter in some of our geographies. And though that demand driver there is, it's helping us weather some of the offsets that we're getting from the FX.
Right.
But there's no reason I think that's gonna change anytime soon. If you think about the continent of Africa, they're so dependent on wireless technologies, their banking system, they do telemedicine there.
Yeah.
Like, they need to deploy more and more infrastructure. So those sales are gonna continue.
It's just a higher hurdle rate.
It's a higher hurdle rate to overcome the macroeconomic challenges there.
Right.
It's not a demand issue. In Latin America, we're gonna have escalated churn for the next few years, but once you get through that, you'll have fewer carriers. They'll be healthier, have better balance sheets. And again, demand is spiking there. You're seeing similar growth rates to the U.S., and in some cases, even higher.
Mm.
So they have to invest in those networks to meet that demand. So we think that Latin America will return to a growth rate that's accretive to our overall growth rates once we get through this churn period.
Got it. I guess there's two questions there, and thank you for that. One is on 1&1 you mentioned. What's the visibility on 1&1, you know, going forward?
Look, we continue to work with them to deploy their network, and Germany is a challenging market. We've had some of the same challenges that other folks have had with-
Mm
... permitting, you know, getting power connected and things like that. That's where having a global scale is coming in really handy. We've got some really good people across the globe-
Mm
... who can parachute in and help fix some of that. We've definitely hit our stride there, and we're one of their top vendors, delivering more sites than, I think, anybody else right now.
Okay.
And so that's a good pace, and we see them continuing to build that network to meet their regulatory commitments as well.
Got it. Going back across the Atlantic, what's your visibility on the Oi churn?
So, Oi makes up about half of the churn that we're seeing this year. So if you look over the next few years, there are two different categories of churn. They've got a wireless business and a wireline business. The wireless business was sold to the three incumbents, and we would expect to continue to see churn for the next several years from that. We'll retain a lot of those leases, but they'll continue to be churned at similar levels to what we saw this year on the wireless side. On the wireline side, there was a judicial recovery process where we entered into an agreement with them, where we gave them some discounts, and that's in our churn this year. We're also deferring some payments in exchange for getting some assets. Then, we shortened the term of that agreement to 2027.
So we'd expect to see wireline churn in 2027. So if you think about the kinda headwinds we see in Latin America, you can expect us to be in kind of the low single-digit growth rates through 2027. Then after that, we should see that market returning to a nice, healthy growth rate.
Got it. That's helpful. As I think about the emerging markets again, you know, we saw India evolve. You know, are there any other markets that sort of have similar characteristics to India, where, you know, maybe it made sense at one time, but now it's evolving and, you know, contemplating, you know, exiting?
Look, the board and my management team review all of our markets all the time, and I can tell you, we don't see another India on the horizon.
Okay.
India has some dynamics that made it unique.
Yeah.
We've talked about them. I'll just hit a couple because we've talked about them at length. But, we were stuck with a 2% escalator-
Yeah
... instead of CPI. We have CPI pretty much everywhere else.
Right, way higher.
You have captive tower companies that are well-funded there. You also have a regulatory scheme that does not prevent any type of build-arounds.
Mm.
You've also got a very low ARPU market, so the carriers-
Sure
... are very focused there. When you look at the rest of the geographies, those conditions are different. We have CPI-linked escalators. We don't have robust captive tower companies that are well-funded, that are competing with us.
Right.
The regulatory schemes prohibit build-arounds. You know, we just had a judicial process in Nigeria that kinda highlighted that, where they have a regulatory scheme where you can't build sites near each other. So we don't see another India out there. Now, having said that, you know, we've got some markets that are subscale, and we've got some businesses that aren't kinda core to our business, and if we got the right price, we might look at doing something with those. But we've been able, through our kinda globalization efforts, to support those from different markets, so they're not a distraction. They're cash flow positive, so there's no pressure in that either.
Got it. Moving on to data centers, how would you describe the health of the enterprise buyer for data center capacity? Are you seeing that elongated sales cycle within that vertical?
We're really not seeing an elongated sales cycle.
Okay.
We had tremendous demand for our assets from the enterprises, and we don't see that tailing off anytime soon. You know, CoreSite's business is really keyed around people who need to connect to the cloud.
Sure.
There's a large number of businesses that either still have computers in their offices, they went cloud native, or they all cloud, and it was too expensive, and so they're looking to these hybrid cloud deployments. That's our bread and butter.
Right.
Those customers have done nothing but kind of accelerate their plans. Even when the economy was looking a little shaky, that's when they step up their efforts to automate and, you know, use machine learning and things like that.
Right.
So we see that demand cycle continue to accelerate. CoreSite has had... You know, we had a record year of new business last year. I can't yet say we're going to this year. I'm pushing the team. It's gonna be close.
Right.
We're having another great year this year, and, you know, we're building twice as much inventory as we ever have in the past. So the demand drivers there are just they just continue to accelerate.
Right. And as I think about the CoreSite data centers or all your data centers, and, and the GenAI opportunity-
Yeah
... obviously very topical. A lot of the data center opportunities seem to be, like, training data centers now, as they build these en masse, and then they'll evolve to the inference nodes.
Yeah
But you know, of course, that's more of the interconnect facility. So just wondering, how do you see CoreSite benefiting in the GenAI opportunity?
Well, there's two ways we're benefiting today. The first is, there's so much demand for compute for AI that's taking up a lot of the available capacity of the market.
Mm.
That's creating favorable supply-demand dynamics, so pricing's going up.
Yeah.
And so that's going up across the board, so we're able to still secure the business with those key customers that we want to, those enterprises, at higher rates, because the market rates have gone up. The second area is there is demand for inferencing in a data center like CoreSite.
Okay.
Because once you've generated all that data, you've got to talk to people. So you need a distribution channel, and we're the perfect partner for that. So we have seen a lot of interest in inferencing in CoreSite. We've written some agreements with customers for that.
Okay.
We're also being very selective.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we curate our customer mix because we want to make sure we have the right people, we're not taking any counterparty risk on kind of a startup that doesn't have a-
Right, so one of the-
You know
... big hyperscalers that have the inference.
Yeah, or just somebody that we feel good about being there for the long term. So we will see more business coming in from inferencing, but we're benefiting across the board from... And actually, like, this is the third place, I would say, is the enterprises that are using AI. A lot of them are in these hybrid cloud deployments, so they're adding AI into their stack-
Mm-hmm
... there as well. So I guess-
Oh, right, yeah, yeah.
Yes, it's, it's driving the enterprise demand as well.
Right, so it's a flywheel, the hyperscalers and the enterprise themselves, right?
Yeah, it's all of it.
And then talking about power, I mean, it's become power constraints, a huge focus in the U.S., and it's only a growing headwind to growth. Are you running into any issues procuring additional power? And as part of that, how do you think about securing access to incremental power in your current markets over the long term?
The good news is we have power secured for everything under development today, and for a large part of our forward-looking development pipeline. Just like everybody else, we're in some markets where power is constrained, and we've got a great team that's always had a long view on that, and they've been planning it for, yeah, at least 10 years in advance for a long time.
Yeah.
You know, a couple months ago, I approved a substation for a site that won't be built for 10 years.
Okay.
You know, 'cause we're, we're looking forward to that.
Yeah.
There are some constraints out there. We think we have it well in hand. There are some deployments we'd like to accelerate if we can, so we'll be looking for alternative power sources for bridge capacity and things like that.
Okay.
But at the end of the day, we feel good about the power we've secured to date, and we think we have a solid pipeline, future power. I would just mention, one reason that we feel really good about that is our Northern Virginia campus is not in Loudoun County.
Okay.
We're in Reston, and so we're not subject to some of the same limitations that they have there.
Okay, that's good to know. And how do you think about potential to expand your geographic footprint at CoreSite?
Look, our first priority is investing in our campuses. That is the lowest risk investment we can do. At the end of Q2, 60% of everything we had under construction was pre-leased.
Nice.
So that's just a, that's just a low-risk investment for us. But we do see opportunities to do some tuck-ins.
Mm-hmm.
We bought a small data center in Miami, and you might see us do a couple of small tuck-ins like that.
Okay.
The reason for that is, we think that we might have an opportunity to create a campus-like effect there as well. Now, those take years to grow, so there's not gonna be a, you know, huge campus in Miami in a couple years.
Right.
10 years from now, there will be.
Right.
You know, so you may see a couple of those. We also have leveraged the partnership that we have with Stonepeak to be opportunistic here in Denver, and we're building the E3, which is the, we have two small, smaller data centers here. It's not quite a campus effect. The E3 will be our first purpose-built data center here, and by utilizing the partnership with them, it helps accelerate that as well.
Okay. And, you know, you started the conversation with your five priorities, and we'll bring it back to capital allocation. You know, you just mentioned, I think, the last one was deleveraging and focusing on that. But, how do you think about your capital allocation strategy, you know, when the company gets below five times leverage? More delevering versus buybacks. You just mentioned possible tuck-ins, so how do you balance it all?
So, Rod and I are both very math-based. We're both very focused on long-term shareholder value. So when we get below the five times, every incremental dollar of capital has to compete. And so if you think about the uses we can do with it, we can further delever, we can increase the dividend, we can do share buybacks, we can increase the internal CapEx to program, or we can look at M&A. And every dollar that we allocate, we'll look at all five opportunities, and whatever creates the most long-term shareholder value is where that money's gonna go.
Right.
That, that's just kind of what we've committed to and where we'll be looking opportunistically.
The discipline spreadsheet aspect to it.
Very much.
Right. And, and when you look at the M&A landscape, have you observed any notable changes in seller expectations over the last year in U.S.? And then we can talk about Europe and-
Okay
... international.
Look, the short answer is no. There's still a dislocation between private and public multiples. We've seen some of the private multiples tick down a little bit on certain transactions, but some of them are still kind of up in a higher territory. So at this point, there's nothing that we're seeing in our M&A pipeline across the globe. And we look at everything. My teams, M&A people like to buy stuff, so they're gonna look at everything that comes across the transom there. But there's nothing that we're seeing that's compelling enough to take us off of our path of delevering and focusing on that.
Okay. Why don't we pivot back to just the tower space in the U.S. about the earlier conversation about densification, and the coverage amendment that we're talking about?
Sure.
If we're assuming the steepest ramp of densifications in 2026 and 2027, I mean, first of all, would you push back with that assertion when you think densification would happen?
I don't think I would push back on that. I think it all depends on, again, the handsets getting in the hands of users. We're seeing that 5G handset users are using twice as much data as 4G.
Mm-hmm.
So I think that that's a pretty good timeframe to start seeing some needs to densify them. That sounds reasonable.
Do you see a correlation between increased adoption of AI and the need for additional mobile infrastructure? I mean, we're just trying to think about how AI is going to the edge and maybe then the micro edge. Is that something? I'll stop there, and maybe we'll ask about use cases or anything-
Yeah
to think about.
Well, let me start with the first one, which is the demand on the wireless network.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's a little early to know what AI is gonna do.
Yeah.
I think it depends on what the usage factors are. I know the way I use my phone, if I'm talking to ChatGPT, it's text or maybe a photograph right now.
Yeah.
Those aren't data-intensive.
Got it
... kind of applications. You start seeing video, you know, if you're able to start-
Sure
... you know-
That's-
If I see you in a TikTok-
Yeah
... where you, you're dancing with Beyoncé, I'm gonna know it's AI-created.
Yeah. But possibly not.
But I think that's where you're gonna see the heavier data usage coming from it.
Yeah.
But we also don't exactly know how AI is gonna be embedded in the phones yet. We're hearing-
Sure
... we're hearing that, that's coming.
Yep.
And so you don't know what the bandwidth demand is gonna be on the network till it actually starts happening.
Yeah.
I think there's opportunity there.
Yeah, there's a lot to chew on, I guess.
Yeah
... if the AI is in the hardware with Apple's, you know, talking and, or if it's, you know, out in the cloud.
Yeah-
The video
... I do think the video will come.
Yeah, but the video is interesting. Just because AI is creating video, are we gonna be watching more video? There's only so much doom scrolling we do today, and just gonna be created by AI, not by a TikToker.
Look, the mobile data usage is going up 20%-30% today-
Yeah
... is predominantly video.
Yeah.
It's video or those traditional kind of channels. It's social media, it's Netflix, it's all the usual suspects that are driving it today. So we're watching more video, and we're watching more high-definition video today.
Yeah.
I think anything that drives more video usage is gonna continue that demand and maybe even steep the curve on it.
Sure. Okay. And then, last few topics are just on the... One is Africa. You mentioned on your second quarter call that, you know, you're looking into using, the power as a service business model, in Africa for other markets. Help us provide an update, you know, regarding that comment, and have you exported the model to any other markets?
At this point, we haven't exported the primary power to any other markets. You know, Africa is a little bit of a different situation because we have an unreliable power grid there, so we have to provide primary power for a large portion of the day there. But we have a lot of learnings there. That team has become a real expert in both power storage and power generation, and they've also been able to take advantage of a lot of renewable power there. So as we're looking at that, and how do you export that to a developed market that has, you know, a more reliable grid-
Yeah
... it comes in the question of: Can you do more renewables, and can you actually store power so that you're not paying peak rates, you know, when you have power fluctuations in the grid? So we haven't done it yet, but we are continuing to try to work with our customers to see what appetite there is for that, what opportunities there are. 'Cause again, we've developed an incredible expertise there, and so it'd be a shame not to be able to use that in other places.
Got it. And the other opportunity would be, and we spoke about M&A in Brazil. A comment I wanted to ask about is it the company's underwriting new standards in Brazil, or is it not from the environment that Brazil is in? And how much of a factor does consolidation play?
Yeah, so we've raised our underwriting in all of our emerging markets, it's not just Brazil.
Okay.
So the way we've looked at it is we're trying to learn from the lessons-
Mm-hmm
... of the past. Some things that worked very well for us in our international markets, having CPI-linked escalators, being able to monetize amendments with the anchor tenant, being partnered with Tier One MNO, so the top one or two customers in the country, those are things that have worked really well for us. When I look at the things that haven't worked as well, you know, foreign exchange has been a challenge, so we need those CPI-linked escalators, and we may need some contractual mechanisms, like some dollar pegging, which we have in some of our markets. We also need to, when we've partnered with MNOs that aren't Tier One, that's where we've seen more carrier consolidation churn.
So across that entire emerging footprint, we've just looked at what's worked well and what hasn't worked well, and we've said, "These dynamics have to all be in the works well category, and nothing from the doesn't work well.
Mm-hmm.
Because there's some inherent risk in those economies, we've raised the hurdle rates-
Yeah
... because the CPI-linked escalators weren't fully offsetting the FX. And so we've done that across that portfolio.
Have you updated your sort of hurdle rates that you've articulated publicly? For example, in the past, you used to say that Mexico is X base above U.S., and then Brazil is X base above that, and then Africa was X above that.
Not-
India was in the past, but we'll just leave that off.
Not yet. I'm not ready to do that today, but-
Okay. Well, but that-
But I try.
That was a good try. Thank you. With that, we're out of questions, so thank you.
All right, thanks.