All right, let's get started. Good morning. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Greg Williams. I work at TD Cowen, covering the cable, wireless, towers, and telco space. Joined today at this session by Steven Vondran, EVP and President of U.S. Tower Division for American Tower. Steve, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.
Thanks. Happy to be here.
Maybe before we get started into my questions, just one question I'm getting a lot from investors is your exposure to UScellular. You know, there's chatter that they have strategic alternatives, and they just wanna know, you know, what the term risk for you guys could be.
Sure. Our total business with UScellular is less than 0.5% of our global property revenues.
Okay. So minuscule amount. Okay. The big topic we wanna talk about is just this U.S. 5G slowdown. The US tower 5G deployment slowdown clearly seems to be harsher than expected. You know, we saw Crown with their lease guide down. You also took your services revenue down, so it feels like to me that the industry was surprised to an extent. You did raise your service, your property revenue guidance to at least 220, if you wanna mince the words from 220. Can you help us with the disconnect between American and the other TowerC os of how you could sort of raise your property revenue guide and others are cutting?
Is it just MLA mechanics and the MLA protection in your guide, or maybe the activity is just less of an impact in your footprint?
Sure. Look, I can't comment on what my competitors have, and their numbers don't know exactly what's in their guide. But what I would say with American Tower, you know, we do have our comprehensive MLAs, they do tend to protect us from some of the ebbs and flows of activity that are out there. So, you know, I think partially what you're seeing is some of those MLAs at play that do insulate us a little bit there. In terms of the slowdown, it's happening a little quicker than we thought it would, but it's no different than what we anticipate at this kind of stage in a deployment. If you think about the way each generation of technology is deployed, you have an initial push of activity, that's the coverage phase.
5G has been a little steeper ramp up than 4G was, because in 4G, the carrier staggered their starts in deploying the technology. While you had one carrier that had a little bit of a head start in 5G, for the last couple years, you had three carriers deploying very quickly.
Yeah.
That services business is inherently less predictable than the property business is. If you think back a couple of years ago, we raised our guidance about $100 million in the year 2021, this year we've seen it taper off a little bit faster than we thought it would this year. That's the.
You mentioned that it was maybe quicker than expected. Why do you think it was quicker? Is it probably because you kinda answered it, is because they ramped up steeper than expected as well?
I, I think that's a little bit of it. Again, the, the services business is just, y ou just don't have as much lead time when you're projecting the business, and so your visibility is more in terms of, you know, weeks and months versus of a year at a time.
Yeah. you know, we're trying to size the magnitude of it and the duration of the pause. you know, there's one fear out there, that there's an inability for the carriers to monetize 5G. you know, fixed wireless is kind of a, the afterthought way of monetizing it and not a great way to use spectrum to add. Does that concern you at all? 'cause the other side is, well, they gotta put the spectrum to work at some point.
Let me address that in two places.
Okay.
First, I'm not sure I'd call it a pause.
Okay.
If you look at our revised guidance for services this year, it's still 2 x what the average services revenue was.
Yeah, good point.
P rior to the 5G. We're certainly still seeing the carriers be active and, and deploying on sites.
Yeah.
When it comes to, to 5G and the, the monetization of it, you know, I don't lose a lot of sleep over that. When I think about the deployment of 5G, you know, first of all, they spent $82 billion on spectrum. They're gonna deploy the spectrum. Second, just to be competitive, you have to be up-to-date on the latest technologies. The carriers need to deploy 5G. If you look at some of the recent analyst expectations for mobile data growth, they're still projecting a CAGR over the next several years of 24%.
Okay.
While that's a little bit lower than the 30%-40% we saw, it's on a much larger base.
Yeah.
The carriers need to deploy 5G just to keep up with the existing demand on the existing kinda glide path we're on. Those projections don't incorporate any kinda killer app. They don't anticipate some big uptick in usage from some new technology that's out there. I, I think 5G will be deployed.
Yeah.
Again, I think if you look at the, what we're calling a pullback, it's the normal cadence of the way those networks are deployed.
Right. In your opinion, when do you think we hit sort of the bottom of this, you know, I would want to say pause, but-?
Right.
Slowdown?
Look, I, I don't know exactly what their plans are gonna be. I'll leave it to the carriers to talk about their CapEx. If you look at their CapEx projections over the next several years, they're still robust. I still think you're gonna continue to see the investment in the networks. Again, that cycle, you know, you have the initial coverage phase. That second phase is really optimization. You're looking at the networks to figure out where do you have holes to fill in, where do you need to, you know, augment some, you know, some of your, your capacity in the network. You know, not everyone has a 5G phone yet. We're just now starting to get devices in the hands of people who use it, so the uptake on that network will happen. You know, is it next year?
Is it 2025? I don't know. I think that you will see that normal cycle take its place, and you'll see the uptick.
Got it. You answered some of this question, but maybe you can flesh it out. The difference between the 4G cycle and the difference between what you're seeing in the 5G cycle. You mentioned that 5G is a lot more in unison, up ramp and quicker, but...
Other than that, I think you're seeing a very similar approach to the deployment. Again, just to kind of reiterate, you go through this coverage phase, where you're trying to get to a certain number of PoPs, overlaying your existing network. When you hit that kind of magic number of PoPs, then you go back and look at your network and look at the quality of your network. You have quality sites to infill, where you might not have the best propagation, and then you start looking at capacity demands on the network. We're seeing that same dynamic play out in 5G that we saw in 4G.
Right. And to that same point, can, can you maybe frame the company's expectations for 2024, at least qualitatively? I know you're not giving guidance here, but, but maybe just frame up that, that dynamic.
Sure. We'll give guidance in February. I would just remind you that we do have comprehensive MLAs in place, and that we've reiterated our guidance for 2023, and we've reiterated our long-term expectation for 2023 through 2027, of at least 5% Organic Tenant Billings Growth on average.
Yeah, on average.
What we would expect for 2024, is that we'd expect to see activity levels that are supportive of that long-term guide.
Right. And, in the last few months, you mentioned how 90% of this year's guidance was baked in with MLAs, and by the time you guys hit the second quarter, I think it was 100%. How much of 2024 you think is locked in? How much visibility do you have there?
I'm not ready to give you a percentage today.
Okay.
What I would say is, when you think about these comprehensive MLAs, over time, the visibility becomes a little bit less. What we've said publicly is that we have 75% visibility into that long-term guide.
Okay.
Started 2023 at the 90%. You can expect it to be a little less each year then.
When do you expect to pivot from coverage to densification materializing? I mean, it's happening in pockets here and there, but, you know, at Connect(X), I think we talked about like a halftime pause, but I think the coverage still had a long way to go, even back in May. I'm just curious of your thoughts on, you know, Verizon, AT&T still have mid-band coverage for the next many quarters, right?
Yeah. I think what we said publicly in Q1 is about half of our sites had C-band deployed on them. You could expect that to be a little bit higher because, you know, deployment activity is continuing, but it's again, when you think about this cycle, they get to a certain number of PoPs, and then there's a long tail to cover the rest of the PoPs, and it does happen over time. There's still coverage work to be done, and we expect to see that continue to play out over the next several years. On densification, you are seeing some of it now, and it comes in two flavors. The first flavor is fill in, where you may have some propagation differences between the mid-band spectrum and some of the prior deployments.
The second is where you do have heavier usage, for example, where fixed wireless is being utilized on the network, you might see some densification starting to occur on that as network utilization gets higher.
Right. You mentioned that 50% of your footprint has mid-band pop. The... I'm sorry, mid-band coverage, right? You won't get to a full 100%. We just had Verizon on moments ago. They say they're gonna build out where their AWS and PCS spectrum is, and put C-band on that. Where do you think the 50% goes to? Like, 80% of your towers or something like that, just generally?
I'll leave it to the carriers to predict where they're going to end up on that.
Okay.
What I would say is, over time, you're gonna want a true 5G experience everywhere. I'm expecting to see the mid-band spectrum deployed where it's economical to do it.
Mm-hmm.
Pretty much anywhere you can get fiber to the tower, because you need the fiber to deploy the 5G. I'm suspecting.
Right.
be the vast majority.
Vast majority. You mentioned infill. It seems like it would provide more upside for infill because that means more cell splitting, and cell splitting needs more, more colocation. Is that the right way of thinking about it versus amendment?
Yeah, that's what I would think, is when you start filling in holes in the network, it's typically a, a new site.
Yep. I just wanted to talk about just carrier activity, just in general. You know, they're all rolling out their 5G in different forms and fashions. Maybe, can you tell us, like, how much, like, AWS or PCS spectrum is on your towers for carriers in general? Like, is it 80% when you say vast majority?
I don't know exactly.
Okay.
It's most of them.
I tried. How about dual-band radios? Are you seeing any activity? Is that another leg of growth? It doesn't sound like you're seeing much in terms of dual-band, but that, that could be another, you know, step up, I think, in.
Dual-band radios, you know, they've been around for a while in some of the older technologies. There's some newer band, newer radios coming out with some of the newer bands in it, and those would be part of the technology path that we've anticipated when we do our comprehensive MLAs. If you think about when you're doing a, a multi-year comprehensive agreement with the customer, to set up that agreement, what you're doing is you're looking over that period of time and any, any equipment that's going to be deployed in kind of that relevant timeframe is already in the pipeline. You know it's there, it's being tested, and you've got an idea what's there. You could expect that those types of technologies were contemplated in these, these comprehensive agreements.
From American Tower's perspective, it won't make a big difference, positive or negative, if those technologies are deployed.
Right. Okay. It's a lot of it's baked in the MLAs?
Yeah.
Okay. You mentioned the 5% organic billings growth to 2027. Is there, like, a mix of how much of that is densification built into that figure? I mean, you get that cute.
When, when we looked at that longer-term guide, we looked at what was already baked into our agreements and what we expected the carrier activity to be over that period of time. There's an element of densification that's baked into that.
Mm.
Having said that, if the activity is more robust than we anticipated, there could be some upside there. If, you know, usage is higher, if uptake is higher, if they need to do more than we anticipated, then there could be some upside from that.
Right. And carrier CapEx is coming down for a lot of the next year for different reasons. We had Verizon up here moments ago, talking about how their C-band CapEx is going to be buried now within their business as usual CapEx. It's interesting, but the spending still seems healthy. It's gonna be 5% long-term organic growth, maybe up, down, sideways at some point. Does that mean the correlation from carrier CapEx and tower spend is kind of broken?
I, I wouldn't say that. If you think about when you're deploying a new generation of technology, in the first couple of years, a lot of that CapEx is going into things like the core fiber, you know, other elements of the network, and those are the things you deploy right up front. If you think about that ongoing CapEx, we're expecting the CapEx for the next several years to be about $5 billion more than it was in 4G. We still expect it to have elevated levels of CapEx from what it was previously, but it won't probably touch the high-water mark of $42 billion we saw last year.
Right. That's super helpful. You're pretty much saying that there could be CapEx coming down, but it could come from other areas because they spent on core and they spent on fiber, and maybe that sort of goes away, or the tower spending could be-
I'd leave it up to them to give you the, the details, but yes, that's generally how we look at it.
Okay. You know, your carrier customers have this toxic lead cable situation. I know AT&T was rather dismissive, and Verizon was, you know, cautious that they can navigate through it, but optimistic they can navigate through it, rather. Has the topic come up, like, in your conversations with, with the company, and has there been messaging there?
I haven't lost a second of sleep about it. I'll defer to them to talk about there.
Okay. Yeah, I haven't lost much either, to be honest. I know you don't speak about customers specifically, but I just did want to mention.
But-
You know, DISH, or an O-RAN cloud-native provider that would, you know, be building a network. They're obviously gonna be a contributor going forward. I think you mentioned, like, it may be 100 bps of your 5% organic growth. I'm just wondering, you know, could, how do you see DISH activity just playing out without being too specific? Literally two hours ago, they mentioned that they could get to their shot clock goal at another $2 billion of spend, which was lower than we all expected. Sounds like you're protected with MLAs. I'm just curious how you sort of see that playing out.
Again, I'll defer to them on what they're gonna plan to do on that. But with our comprehensive MLA, we feel like we're in a good position to capitalize on whatever they do with that.
Yeah.
We're somewhat insulated from the absence of that activity. Look, we saw them stand up a good team and build a good network. We were a good partner for them in that. I think they certainly have the capability to, to do whatever they need to do to meet the requirements.
If a carrier had to meet a shot clock in 22 months, just in general, just say any, I'm not trying to, what's the lead time that they would need to spend? Is it like five months, 17, is it 6 months? I'm just trying to understand when a typical carrier had to ramp up their spend to meet, you know, a milestone.
Look, what I would say is, there's a lot that depends on the way they engineer the network and the way they deploy the network.
Yeah.
The first phase is leasing, but you can lease and hold. Then your construction timelines depend on your location, your equipment availability, you know, zoning, permitting, those types of things. What I would say is, you may have already seen some spending.
Mm-hmm.
- toward that milestone. It just isn't fully constructed yet, so it's hard to predict.
Okay, fair enough. DISH's shot clock is PEA based, this one, as opposed to last one, which is pops covered. I'm just wondering if that benefits American more, since you've got like a little more rural footprint, because now they've got to hit 75% of Arkansas and et cetera, right? I'm curious
I'm from Arkansas, you know.
Okay. Yeah, fair enough.
I
You know, good coverage over there. Thanks to their PEA shot clock. I'm curious if I'm overthinking it or not, it can actually overindex to you guys.
I don't know if it's overthinking it. What I would say is, it's a combination of our portfolio and our comprehensive agreement, to position us well to get at least our fair share, if not more, of their business.
They mentioned there's a lot of chatter out there, like an MVNO with Amazon, and there's other MVNOs out there, Cable and Verizon. Just, MVNOs typically don't help the towers too much because it's just, r ight, the prime carrier is still filling up the traffic. Just curious.
Yes, indirectly they do, because they provide network traffic on the, the sites as well.
Mm.
They can add to those capacity adds that the carriers need to deploy. Also, anything that puts money into the pockets of our customers is beneficial for us.
Yeah. Okay, all boats float, sort of.
Exactly.
I wanted to shift gears quickly to AI, because it's one of the common themes at the conference today. Probably a lot more so in the data center world, and I'm trying to wrap my head around how AI can really benefit on the tower side. You know, maybe in small pockets, but nothing transformational is the way I'm thinking about. I, I'd just like to hear your view on any AI opportunities, you know, on towers or tower demand.
Sure. I'm also going to take the opportunity to talk a little about our CoreSite with that as well.
Sure. Absolutely.
When it comes to AI, let me start with CoreSite, because that'll, that'll transition over to the tower site. You know, we're an interconnection hub, we're not, we're not a hyperscale facility, we're not doing wholesale. If you think about the, the learning models that are behind generative AI, most of that's going to be hyperscale, the large learning model farms, and that's not an area that we would necessarily play in. Those large learning model farms need to source their data from a lot of different sources. It does create opportunities in a highly interconnected facility like CoreSite, because that's where they're going to gather their data.
Right.
to train those farms.
Yeah.
We do see some opportunities there. Then the other piece of that is the, the inferencing models, and it's more of the interaction with the end user that creates a need for some lower latency, and that's an opportunity both for CoreSite, and we think it could be a possibility eventually for tower sites on the edge. As you need to get closer and closer to your end user-
Mm-hmm.
and those, those latency requirements go down and the data requirements go up, it may be that AI is one of the use cases that will promote edge computing.
Meaning the edge as far as, equipment at the base of a tower, then?
Potentially at the base of the tower or certainly near.
Right.
You may see some aggregation centers that are probably ideally located, you know, near towers.
Right. You know, we can talk about data centers. There's a concern, not a concern, it's just you're not taking advantage of this huge, you know, opportunity. As you mentioned, LLM farms are, you know, going out and building a ton of data centers. You know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts of, you know, do you, are you gonna need to spend more than $300 million-$360 million CapEx in the CoreSite world and really seize that opportunity?
We're, we've said very publicly that we continue to operate CoreSite along the same lines that we operate as, as a public company.
Mm-hmm.
We're focused on yield.
Yeah.
We're focused on driving the, the kind of industry-setting yields that CoreSite was able to achieve. You know, right now, we have a little bit elevated CapEx from what CoreSite was typically spending, again, success-based. If you look at our last earnings call, we, we disclosed some of the record bookings that we have. A lot of the CapEx that we're spending is not at risk. We actually have pre-sold into some of that development, and we'll continue to, to deploy success-based capital there. In terms of the kind of those large, you know, hyperscale facilities, that's just not the business that we're in.
Right. Right. Much more in the interconnect.
Sure.
It shows through your renewal prices and your yields, et cetera.
Exactly.
Just going back onto the, you know, maybe huts underneath the tower and that opportunity, because you were trialing 1 MW and 2 MW huts for the past couple of years now. I'm curious if, you know, anything's materializing, any compelling use cases, and, and when does this actually become a, a needle mover?
Yeah. Look, it's still very early days for the edge.
Right.
You know, we've owned CoreSite for a little bit less than two years now, and it's certainly given us a different view of that ecosystem. It's given us the opportunity to interact with the large enterprises and cloud players that are gonna drive that space. It's still very early days, so I don't know exactly when it's going to or whether it's going to. When there's more to tell in terms of the economics, we'll, we'll tell you guys.
Okay.
What I can tell you right now is we do have some good partners. We're trialing some, some interesting things. It's still an evolving part of the, of the business. We'll stay disciplined in deploying capital. We're not gonna go do a lot of things on spec. You know, we're gonna continue to do the proof of concept and make sure that we know what we're getting into before we.
Right. Is there anything in AI that could help benefit American Tower internally?
We already take advantage of some machine learning.
Okay.
Not necessarily generative AI, but some of the earlier versions of that. We've looked at generative AI. We've got a handful of folks that are looking at that, saying: Is it something that we can do? There may be some opportunities, you know, maybe around contract drafting, some data abstraction, things like that.
Yeah.
It's, it's small. It's.
Got it.
not gonna move the needle.
Right. Right. contract drafting. I'm looking at report draft myself right now. switching gears to your.
I hear performance reviews are actually really good on it. I haven't tried it myself, but.
Right. As long as they're good.
It can write good performance reviews.
Just moving on to your services business. Obviously, that was impacted with the carrier slowdown. You know, Crown's now discontinuing their installation services altogether, then you guys, in turn, cut your guidance from $200 to $135. Just help us understand your services business. You know, is it more permitting and zoning and less construction in the install side, say, for Crown?
We've traditionally focused on higher-margin businesses, which are acquisitions, zoning, and permitting, and engineering.
Okay.
We do have a small construction management business, and it's really carrier-driven. It's what our customers would like for us to help out with their builds. We manage that part of the business largely through vendors and contractors, so we can scale it up and down as there are variations in that business. You'll see us continue to be focused on kind of all the services we offer, and the construction services piece of it, it's a very small piece of it, if it grows a little bit or shrinks a little bit, that's really carrier-driven, it's not because we're preferring or not preferring that business.
Right. Right.
Our main focus is the higher-margin business.
Is it a leading indicator, as I think about 2024? Could it impact, y ou know, if the, the services are going down now, are we gonna see year-over-year growth or bookings, you know, slow down? Is that overthinking it?
Well, again, with, with us, we have a lot of insulation from those ups and downs in our property business because of those comprehensive MLAs. I'll also say you can't there's not a direct read-across necessarily, because the, the leasing process can come pretty far in advance of construction.
All right.
In some cases. It may be that there's leased-up capacity that's gonna get built next year, that's, that's not being indicated by the services revenues as well.
Right. Anything to talk about in terms of equipment or labor? You guys didn't seem to have much of a problem during those hay days anyway, but anything coming up? You know, is there, is there a worry of, like, BEAD money comes along and chases the same labor pool?
The, the labor pool's been tight in wireless for a while.
Mm-hmm.
It's loosened up a little bit, but it, it's never really been a huge concern of ours. If you look, you know, over the past two years, we had kind of record levels of activities in the industry. We were always able to source what we needed to, when we needed to, at the right price.
Yeah.
So-
I'm wondering, is there actually an opportunity in labor? 'Cause if there's a, if there's a carrier slowdown, maybe you can, you know, hire labor, maybe keep your costs.
We're not seeing that today.
No.
But eventually, maybe.
Okay. Interesting. wanted to switch just gears on fixed wireless and cable. Is there any opportunity there? You know, Verizon just spoke again at this right up here, about an hour ago, and we talked about CBRS deployment. Charter's deploying with Nokia. I'm just wondering, Verizon and T-Mobile could maybe augment their capacity for fixed wireless. Doubtful, but just wondering if there's a way where fixed wireless and cable, at, at some point in time, could add up to another carrier in, in total together, it's just too small?
I think it remains to be seen. Look, we've certainly seen the carriers lean into fixed wireless. They're deploying it, they're monetizing it, I think it's an exciting growth area. I think it remains to be seen whether that's gonna continue on a path that's gonna lead to a whole new set of, of, of sites for them.
Right.
Right now, they're typically handling that within their existing brand centers.
Yeah.
If they continue to expand, you know, maybe there's an opportunity there.
Yeah. Do they put CBRS on macro towers, or is it more of a small cell play? Have you seen CBRS being deployed on your towers?
Yeah, we have. We've seen CBRS. It's, again, it's not a huge driver today, but it is, it is a driver of, of some business. We see it, a lot of our fixed wireless customers from, in the WISP category.
Mm-hmm.
deploy CBRS, and we've seen some from the major carriers as well.
Right. And do you see millimeter wave, maybe on your rooftops, 'cause you're over indexed for more rooftops, and I'm just curious if you see any from there, from Verizon or even T-Mobile?
Not very much.
No.
It's spotty.
Okay. How about CBRS on, on rooftops?
It hasn't been a big driver. I would say it's similar to the macro sites. You see CBRS installations where they have a little bit less spectrum.
Yeah.
Spectrum hasn't been cleared yet, or there's some kind of trial markets where they're looking at it.
Right. How do you think about O-RAN these days? You know, Dish is deploying O-RAN in a meaningful way. Do you, do you anticipate a meaningful O-RAN deployment? Does it, does it really matter what, what, what equipment's on there, as long as it's equipment for you guys?
It, it really doesn't matter, and to the extent that deploying O-RAN may lead to more equipment being on the tower versus at the base of the tower in the shelter, that's actually a net positive for towers, if that's what it leads to.
Yeah. I'm wondering if it could be a benefit from your network services, 'cause it, it adds more complexity. If it adds more complexity, it's, you know, maybe more handholding on your on your behalf?
Potentially. We haven't really thought about it that way.
Okay.
It's a potential.
Does this cloud-native solutions impact, like, the tower business? I mean, in one respect, there's more equipment in the cloud and less at, at your base stations, et cetera, and it could be a hurtful impact. I'm just curious your thoughts there.
We haven't seen that. It's very similar to when CRAN was deployed. You took a lot of the baseband units off of the tower sites, but it didn't negatively impact our rent streams there.
Mm-hmm.
In fact, in some cases, it requires more equipment on the tower to take advantage of the remote base, baseband units.
So there'd be-
So-
there could be more equipment on the tower. say that again, sorry, because, because the remote baseband units, because I always thought that, you know, you kinda just go to the cloud and let the cloud take care of a lot of your complexity.
You do, but it may require more equipment on the towers.
Uh-huh.
as well.
Yeah.
You may need some amplifiers, you may need other equipment on the towers that was traditionally carried in.
Yeah
The baseband units at the base of the tower.
Okay.
As you-
Oh, oh, on the actual tower, the steel itself.
On the steel itself.
Interesting. Then you guys have an indoor DAS business to an, to an extent, and, you know, you veered away from small cells for the most part. You do have this DAS, and is, is, is that what CBRS available in there? Could this be an opportunity for, you know, as, as indoor DAS sort of develops, you know, maybe just talk about that, that conversation because you and I, of course, said as well, and, you know, this is another way of kind of playing the edge in a, in a way.
Sure. You know, we're, we're one of the largest operators of indoor DAS systems, and we do have some trials underway with things like Wi-Fi 6, CBRS, some other technologies, but we haven't seen those widely adopted yet.
Right.
At this point, the business is still mostly traditional DAS, as we're seeing some of the 5G upgrades come through, and a lot of the venues that we operate are premium venues, and they're gonna continue to be DAS going forward. We do think there's some opportunity with CBRS lowering the overall cost of deployment, and we're experimenting with that, but at this point, we haven't seen those adopted at scale yet. It's still early days to say, "Is that gonna change the game or not for us?" We don't know.
Is it a way to play this private 5G or P5G or private networks opportunity?
You can, again, like I said, we're trialing some of those types of applications in a few of our venues. At this point, it's not a material driver for the business.
It's still early. What, what, when do you think maybe in your plans that, that's, that sort of opportunity could materialize in, in P5G and private network?
Look, I would say it's still a little bit up in the air, and, you know, a lot of the private networking we're seeing today is done by the major carriers.
Yeah.
It's typically using either their existing infrastructure or things that are on premises. We might see a little bit of activity from that in that in-building space, today, they're still pretty much focused on traditional DAS and Wi-Fi.
Yeah.
I'm not sure it'll ever be a big driver, and if it is, I don't know when.
Right. Right. Do you do any of that, and you do Wi-Fi services over your DAS network, or do you just do provide just the infrastructure and somebody else rides the services?
We provide the infrastructure. We do have some Wi-Fi as in conjunction with our DAS.
Uh-huh.
It's typically venue driven, and it's, it's typically operated by the venue themselves.
How big is your indoor DAS business in American Tower?
We have about 450 systems.
450 systems?
Yeah.
Okay. What does that come to, like, as a percentage of revenue in your U.S. market?
Oh, gosh, it's, it's small.
It is small?
It's.
Yeah. And are these?
Maybe 3%, 4%.
Got it.
Range.
That includes, like, like, casinos and stadiums, and do you do that sort of work as well?
Casinos, stadiums, we have, like, the MBTA in, in Boston.
Yeah.
Some shopping malls, things like that.
Are the economics similar, like 3% escalators and that sort of thing?
They're a little bit different. You know, the, the DAS business comes with some capital contributions up front.
Mm-hmm.
If you look at our earnings, we disclose the amortized revenue components. Then the recurring rent typically has an escalator as well.
Okay. You know, while we're on top of escalators, that's always been a topic in the last two years, is when you've got inflation, you know, in the high single digits, hopefully it's coming down now, later this year, just lapping it. Do the carriers, there's no pushback at their 3% escalator? Well, there was pushback when there was a 1% inflation environment. Now, I think they're loving it. Any opportunity for you guys, or you just sort of honor a deal as a deal, if you will?
Did you ask Verizon that before?
I did.
If they pay us more?
Yeah.
Look, I, I think that escalator has been something that's benefited us a lot over the past, call it, 15-year period.
Yeah.
You know, we, we've been very disciplined in retaining that 3% and not diminishing it. I think it's unlikely that our customers will be willing to go to a, a higher escalator.
Mm-hmm.
At this point.
Your philosophy on MLAs, can you remind us, like, when they sort of expire, over time? You know, your thought process on, you know, now it makes sense to do an MLA during a 5G upcycle, but, you know, resigning them, you sometimes get better prices on a la carte deals.
The way we look at our MLAs just philosophically, is we, we never discount to get those MLAs done. Whether it's in an upcycle or sometimes mid-cycle, and in 4G, you saw us do some comprehensive MLAs mid-cycle. What we do is we project what we think the business is gonna be without it.
Mm-hmm.
We think we're pretty good at this. We've been looking at these generations of technology from 3G to 4G to 5G, and we engage with OEMs and other people in the industry to get a really good view of what business as usual will be. Then when we talk with our customers, the goal is to streamline the process.
Yeah.
to take some of the variability out for both parties. That's why it takes a long time to get these done. It's not unusual for these negotiations to take a year, as you're right-sizing the expectations on both parties.
Yeah.
We typically will enter into these agreements that will have a comprehensive portion that's typically, you know, around five years. It's tough to look out too much beyond that sometimes because you've got to project what that activity level is gonna be, what the technology path is, et cetera. We do have, we have done some that are longer, and we don't really break out separately exactly when those are expiring, so.
Got it. Well, great. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.