Hi. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to the 51st annual TMC Conference from JP Morgan. My name is Philip Cusick. I follow communications media space here. I am happy to welcome Rob Schwartz, CEO of Anterix. Rob, thanks for joining us.
Thank you, Phil. Great to be here.
If anyone online has a question. In fact, there is a question on the line already. You're welcome to put it into the system, and I'll ask that. First, Rob, starting at a high level, can you provide investors with an overview of your asset base and a quick history of the company.
Sure.
How this evolved since the FCC process?
Happy to do so. Anterix, founded by the founders of Nextel to really focus on providing a very important service that really no one knew about until including ourselves, until we discovered it through our process. We set out almost 10 years ago with an idea of identifying an underutilized band of spectrum that we acquired from Sprint and utilizing that spectrum to provide a very unique service, which is helping the utilities of our nation. Electric utilities, as everyone knows, are, you know, spread throughout the country with very specific requirements, but historically had been relying on what I think of as legacy communications.
As we, as Anterix focused on bringing modernized communications, broadband communications, private networks to be able to enable these utilities to support what we now know as really mission-critical requirements. As the grid, the electric grid that we all rely on every day, is becoming more susceptible to risks of changing weather situations, decarbonization requirements to connect up energy storage, solar, wind, other factors, also for cybersecurity requirements. Really to sum it up, Anterix is focused on providing broadband resilient communications to our nation's electric utilities and well beyond into other critical infrastructure.
It all started from a regulatory founding of us getting our broadband licenses just about three years ago after a landmark ruling from the FCC. We've been on a pretty solid tear from our standpoint since then, now with utilities licensing our spectrum in 14 states throughout the nation.
Okay. Talk to me about the pace of customer contracts that have been coming in over the last few years.
You know, we started right out of the blocks after our FCC ruling, with, well, an industry leader, thought leader, a utility named Ameren. You know, we're uniquely a confluence of the telecom industry. People understand spectrum, we own this nationwide spectrum asset on our balance sheet, that's kind of one side of it. The other side of it is the utility space. I started to explain kind of the demand characteristics of this evolving utility landscape. As we've presented the understanding of the power of modernizing communications to support all of these requirements of the utility industry, over the past three years, we've signed on Ameren in Illinois and Missouri, Evergy, their neighboring utility in Missouri and beyond. We've got San Diego Gas & Electric.
We've signed on Xcel Energy, and then most recently, Lower Colorado River Authority just last month. It's a new kind of customer for us. They're actually, unlike the other utilities. They're a public utility, set up the state of Texas to both be the [audio distortion] of the Colorado River through there, so they generate hydropower through their facilities on that river, but also are provide water management. They also manage park systems. They're also providing all kinds of other evaluated services to that community, bringing electricity, but all on a wholesale basis. They're selling to municipals and co-ops throughout Austin, way out into western Texas as well.
We're seeing as we evolve the kinds of customers through this since we first got our licenses now going back three years ago, we're seeing a really expansion of the use cases of these networks. No different than the phones we're carrying in our pockets that we got at one point to make phone calls and send text messages, and now we've got, you know, this diversity of applications from, you know, hailing taxis to watching videos and doing other things. Utilities are the same way. Utilities have always used private networks. This is not a new idea for them. Their legacy networks that are being replaced here can be 20, 30, even 40 years old.
Now they're modernizing them to do all the things that we have the capabilities in LTE, but taking LTE as the global technology in a private way to do the customized things that they wanna do in a growing list of valuable use cases.
We've always talked about investor-owned utilities as the primary customer. Why is Lower Colorado River, LCRA, why is that a different type of customer? Why would it be a different customer than just sort of a regular utility?
Sure. The other utilities we talked about are, you know, classified as investor-owned utilities. These are public companies. You know, you can buy stock and they, and they put out, you know, debt as you know. This is a Texas-started entity, part of a different sector called, you know, public utilities. They have much broader needs, very different needs. They generate power and they transmit power, but they don't distribute it. They don't sell to the end users like you and I. They're instead selling that wholesale power to other distribution companies, typically municipals and cooperatives in their broad region. They're also adding all these other use cases that I was referring to. I mean, for example, they're the stewards of the Colorado River. They have to deal with flood management.
They have historically had sensors along that Colorado River that used to cost them, I think, $8,000-$10,000 a piece, and they didn't have a lot of them because of the cost. Now, as they adopt the standard technology of LTE, sensors are cheap. You know, you can get sensors for hundreds of dollars instead, and the ability to deploy a lot more of them, systems. That's just one of the many use cases we're seeing. Other interesting use cases, I mean, take, you know, San Diego Gas & Electric, one of our other early customers. Their primary use case when they first deployed was wildfire mitigation. They're looking at how they can not just detect fires, which is what most systems were doing before, but how they can prevent them.
By deploying a system where they can monitor, when a, when a line breaks, whether it's a storm or a tree falling on that line, they measured it takes about 1.4 seconds for that broken line to hit the ground. If they can turn off the power on that segment before it hits the ground and prevent a wildfire from starting, that's a priceless application. As you know, you know, there are other utilities in California that utilities gone bankrupt as a result of that. These all add up to being very valuable use cases and really go into the rationalization for the significant expense of deploying these private networks. The more use cases that they're rationalizing, the more value bringing in LCRA as an additional, you know, user of these kind of networks.
We look at it as a nationwide network of networks, just keeps expanding the value and the demonstration of value use cases that utilities are generating from private 900 MHz LTE networks.
Okay. Help me understand the primary use for the customers you've signed on. I mean, we originally talked about that sort of, you know, active network, intelligent network, where you can turn off the power before the line hits the ground. But it seems like this is a much wider, more widely used product.
I mean, you really have to just think about it as fundamentally as sensors, right? In a world where electric utilities used to be barely aware of what happened from when the power was generated in one place and brought all the way down to the end user, the customer, you or I. You know, a tree fell on a line, they wouldn't have any awareness of where that happened. They'd roll a truck around the neighborhood to look for where that occurred. Think about a modernized network where you're deploying low cost sensors throughout that network, and that could be in their, you know, in the generation capabilities. It could be in substations, it could be along transmission lines or in generation lines.
All of these assets, you know, transformers, all the way out to the meters on the side of your house, need greater situational awareness for a lot of reasons. One is just fundamental capabilities. Having come from the wireless world, you know, when we built a wireless network, you know, you'd know this well, we could see everything, right? We had a network operation center that if any element in our network went down, we'd be aware of it 'cause we were a communications network. If you're an electric network, they had no awareness. They were running, you know, power down a line, and there was no communications on a lot of that.
The ability to have a much greater awareness increases the resiliency, which is really the important thing when you're measuring the capabilities of an electric network. It means should there be a problem, because there always will be, you know, things will happen, how fast can you bounce back and be aware of that problem to be able to fix that problem and bring the power back? You know, power is the, you know, the lifeblood of our economy, driving important things, but it's saving lives. You know, there's power in hospitals, there's power to people in their homes using it for home healthcare. The ability to keep resilience high, especially in an environment where we're having, you know, increasing storms, increasing weather incidences, increasing cyber events that are happening.
Being aware of all the things that are possibly happening at network and being able to respond appropriately, both in a manually, but more importantly in an automated way. The more of the sensors you have, you have the ability to respond to it. You know, the example of the wildfire mitigation is one of many of saying, "You know, I see something occur on an automated basis. What kind of response do I want my network to have to keep that network up and running as much as possible?
There's federal money to harden the utility grid, right? How does that impact you, and how much of the customers who've signed up, are they maybe taking advantage of that?
Yeah, absolutely we see it as a considerable tailwind for, you know, for the energy industry overall, but even specifically for the deployment of private LTE. We've had several folks who have applied for, several who've gotten encouraged in this process of the IIJA funding and the BIL funding, you know, the billions and billions of dollars that now are flowing through for multiple beneficial needs. Whether it's for, you know, better, you know, subsidizing the deployment of these networks, whether it's building some of the application layers on top of it, bringing broadband to rural areas. There's all kinds of use cases that at the end of the day are trickling through to drive overall what we call grid modernization, right? The deployment of broadband networks is not a standalone project for a utility.
It's part of a supportive investment to modernize these networks, to really manage what's a rapidly changing both production side and demand side of electric power, right? We used to have just large generation stations transmitting power down a line. Now we have distributed energy throughout regions. Both, you know, the renewable energies of solar and wind and battery storage, all the way down to residential locations. You need to have a level of awareness of. As you have all these new sources of energy being generated, you have to be aware of where they're being generated. You know, the old one-way network now becomes a two-way network, and that requires a level of intelligence. Communications is a critical piece of that.
Let's be more specific. What kind of money is going to these utilities who are signing up for you, and what's the level of support they're getting from the federal government?
The applications so far have not gone public, so I can't talk about the specific numbers of the ones we've seen. The first stages of government response to the initial concept papers was encourage or discourage. We've had several that have gotten encouragements to move forward into a full application process. That's kinda where they are from a stage standpoint. It's doing exactly what it's intended to be. It's stimulating. It's stimulus money to help drive it. The specific numbers I think we'll probably see soon enough.
Okay. Help me think about the spectrum clearing process. There's 10 MHz, and you have six, and somebody else has some. maybe use LCRA.
RA.
RA as an example of what that sort of clearing process happens, and they're contributing some of their own spectrum as well. What happens there, and what's the timeline for it?
Sure. As the FCC ruling was made, it basically says that the 6 MHz of spectrum at 900 MHz are unique low-band spectrum, which has... You know, it's kind of the beachfront property with the best physics of, you know, kind of across the band. In order for us to turn our narrowband channels into broadband, we have to do what's called retuning, which is there's incumbents within the band that are using it for narrowband uses, and we have to move them outside of that 6 MHz. There's another 4 MHz designated to be the place where we can move those incumbents. We find sometimes we go to these incumbents and they no longer use it because typically it was being used for two-way radio systems and narrowband communications.
As we know, narrowband is becoming less and less utilized as people are converting onto whether it's commercial networks or other broadband ways. We go through the process, and we have, it's what I consider one of our core competencies. We have the same folks who did a lot of this work for us when we were at Nextel, and this was the fundamental premise that allowed us to take then underutilized spectrum and turn it into more useful spectrum. We need to negotiate with each of those incumbents. In this case, there's hundreds of them. We've actually gone through just about half of the licensees in the nation already and worked agreements to move them out of the band.
We continue to do so. It's a bit of a success-based process where y ou talked about LCRA, for example, right? In that area of Texas. We've been in because we had a good idea that these guys were coming. We've done a lot of the work already, and we have some remaining retuning to do of these incumbents. We'll continue to go out, strike arrangements with those existing incumbents, which, as you mentioned, LCRA is one of the largest themselves. Obviously, it's in their interest to retune their systems to free up the space. We'll be delivering the spectrum over the next couple of years to allow them to be able to utilize broadband. Typically, the payment terms, you know, we're signing usually long-term leases or in their case, a sale. We're doing that in which they're paying upfront as we deliver the spectrum.
That's why we see the, you know, even for the long-term leases that we're typically signing, we're seeing that payment over the first several years of a long-term lease.
Okay. They're contributing some of the spectrum to the retuning process. What's the net amount of spectrum you're gonna end up with in that area in particular?
For LCRA, They're, as part of the agreement, they're contributing spectrum with, you know, significant value for us, that counts in the channels that we deliver to the FCC in order to get the broadband license back. What we get is a 6 MHz broadband license throughout their service territory. That's what we've contracted with them, is to deliver 6 MHz of broadband, which is what the FCC has designated throughout their service territory.
Got it. Got it. You mentioned the payment terms here. When we first started talking about this idea a few years ago, it was gonna be 20-year leases, then let's see what happens on the other side. Increasingly, these are happening as sales. How should we think about the process of utilities in going from A to B?
It's interesting. As we went into utilities and we're talking about this long-term leasing and really copying the dynamics of long-term tower leases, saying we were gonna offer a 20-year lease with renewals, and typically we're offering a 20-year lease with two 10-year renewals as kind of our standard terms. The utilities asked if they could prepay us and for a couple reasons. One is it's kind of the way they think about it operationally and their cost to capital is pretty low, as you know. That's probably one of the best credits, you know, next to the government for now, depending on how things go.
The prepayment aspect also is important for them because they capitalize their investments when they make them, and that's part of the business model of electric utilities, investor-owned electric utilities. They put their capital investments into a rate case. They get it approved by their state regulators. They get a fixed rate of return on that investment. For them, it's important to have their capital investments in this rate case approval process. For that, they get the returns. Prepaying us made it easier for them to be able to capitalize those investments.
As, as a result, you know, when you talk about the, you know, $240 million roughly of contracted proceeds we've signed so far in these five deals, we still have another $150 million to be collected as we deliver the spectrum for those contracts. We're gonna see about $100 million of that this year. It, you know, from a cash flow standpoint, it's got great fundamentals for us as we, as we see the proceeds up front for the long-term usage of that spectrum. In LCRA's, 'cause you asked about kind of the sale aspect, there's a small number of utilities that are what are called complex systems, as designated by the FCC. Those are the few that actually had very large existing systems, narrowband, in the 900 MHz system.
They have a unique position that they are not required to move out of that band unlike the other incumbents. They have to voluntarily do so. LCRA is a great example that when we first filed our petition to the FCC almost a decade ago, they were opposed to the idea of broadband. Like others, they said, "You know, I don't know if we need broadband." Now they've come around fully and saying, "Actually, we really do need broadband," and obviously we've contracted to move forward. It's important because this is what we're seeing, you know, nationwide, the idea that the requirements to be able to support this modernized grid requires a modernized communication system.
All the narrowband legacy systems that are disparate throughout utilities, and some of these utilities, you know, working with have 10, 15, 20 different existing networks today, wireless networks that will converge onto a single private LTE network that's considerably more secure, a lot more reliable and resilient for their requirements.
Okay. The initial pace of contracting was expected to be a lot faster than it has been. What do you think has changed that pace?
Yeah. Absolutely. I would say we, you know, we went into it with a level of optimism. As we've learned a lot through the work with the utilities, we've learned about what it takes for a utility to get through their own decision-making process. It's a complicated process. I mean, these are large flat organizations, often multi-state jurisdictions, they're regulated, you know, state by state in different ways. Making a decision across all of these operating companies is often a challenging process that honestly, we're helping them learn how to do. The great thing about that, though, as we progress and we're seeing the influence of utilities and other utilities, is the most powerful communication tool we have.
You know, when we sign on Xcel Communications and they're out talking publicly, you know, in Utility Broadband Alliance forums, which is the, you know, leading industry association that we're proud to have launched and now is standing on its own 2 ft as a nonprofit, led by utilities and, you know, had hundreds of attendees in the last session. The ability to have utilities driving utilities to understand the collective value of them working together, that's gonna have a big influence on this pacing for us. It doesn't shorten the sales cycle, meaning the cycle in which they have to make decisions like any large organization that's conservative in nature because they need to be, right? They need to make sure that the power system runs. They're not taking technology risks.
They're not taking the kind of risks that an ordinary commercial organization would because the power has to run. For them, as they're seeing their peers move forward, that's having a really big influence on the level of interest. We measure it. You know, we talk about our pipeline of utilities with over 60 utilities that are working with us through the process. We've talked in our last quarterly call about the way in which we measure internally, we've now turned into an external metric, is this demonstrated intent.
The scorecard.
Yeah. Exactly. I know it's an important thing for us internally, Now we've started to share it externally because we measure these utilities. You know, these are conservative, potential customers that normally don't talk publicly about things unless they really have a serious intent. When we You know, when a utility files for, you know, an experimental license or if they're getting on a podium at a public event and talking about their intention to do this or even, you know, there's some that aren't yet customers but have filed their public PUC statement saying, "We intend to deploy a private LTE network to cover our service territory." They don't get ahead of themselves.
It means that they're in a process, that they intend to get to the conclusion. That's why I like to say, you know, it's not a question of if they're gonna do it's just a question of when they're gonna do it. For us, you know, we. It's hard to be patient, you know, as a public company. We talk about, you know, that we wish we had more control and awareness of exactly when they happen. What we're confident is in the scale of what's happening here. The movement that's occurring within the utility industry, the sharing of information, and the necessity of modernizing these communications is clear to us. That's gonna result in, you know, what we see as a large funnel. We talked about the demonstrated intent.
The last thing we talked about was $800 million roughly of contracts in this, in this top level of measurement. You know, roughly 15 to 20 variables that we measure are positively measured on a utility. It puts them in this category. I mentioned a few of them. Some of them are public, some are private aspects of what we learn through our conversations. They're demonstrating intent that they wanna put in a private LTE broadband system and move forward with us.
One thing we've heard is that many of them are happy to wait and see how Ameren and the others do. Where are you in that process of getting the early ones up and running?
We're very involved in seeing them succeed. The great news is we have a very broad base of partners that interests are aligned with ours in doing so. We have this Anterix Active Ecosystem program now with over 100 companies, leading vendors that are, you know, out demonstrating, out developing capabilities, requirements, and that's everything from, you know, leading engineering firms that are providing the consulting and advising on helping them design and deploy these networks. It's leading vendors that are infrastructure vendors that are selling them equipment to deploy these networks. For us, it's important they have a lot of choice. Through that, we're seeing great progress.
You know, Ameren, Evergy are all are, you know, well under the way, as is SDG&E on deploying their networks. We expect to see that. These are complicated networks. You've seen it. You know, these are cellular networks. It's no different than what we saw with the carriers. It's the same people that are helping them that are have done this before. This is not, you know, this is not rocket science. It's a very complicated process that we've seen, you know, cellular networks deployed around the globe. They're adapting it for their own requirements.
Forgive me, I should know, but have you delivered Ameren cleared spectrum?
We have.
First.
We have. Yeah. In a number of their counties. Same thing in San Diego and same thing with Xcel as well. We're seeing.
Have they chosen vendors and up and constructing the network?
Some have publicly disclosed that and some are still in the process. Yes.
Okay. When do you think the first completed running cellular network will be with one of your customers?
Yeah. I mean, there are already sites deployed and live, so, you know, they're. If you remember back to as the cellular system started in the NFL cities and expanded to really cover the nation, they're going where they need it first. We're seeing sites already up and running, in, you know, in most of our customers at this point.
It seems like people think of cellular networks as mobile. These companies are not building mobile networks. These are nomadic or effectively fixed applications. Is that fair?
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. The utilities come at it from different directions. LCRA, as our last customer, is very focused on mobility. They're actually replacing a legacy to a radio system-
Okay.
That they use for their mission-critical needs across all of those requirements, you know, as I mentioned earlier. They actually also provide services on that network to other parties as well. They've got transit companies, some public safety, you know, some schools, and so, There, it's a mobile effort. Ameren, yeah, their first use case was absolutely a fixed wireless deployment with an evolution to mobility too. What we're seeing is a growing list of use cases, which is very interesting to us. As, you know, as I mentioned, you take LCRA and add their needs onto all the ones. There's now a list of, you know, over 30 valuable use cases that are going into design and thinking.
It helps rationalize the cost. It also, really the rationalization of the value they're getting out of it. I think mobility will be a growing case, but fixed wireless, you're absolutely right, is a big part of it. I mean, their network doesn't move. Their trucks do. You know, they have to manage fleets of vehicles and things that are constantly being deployed. I mean, one of the things SDG&E said to me at one point, you know, what they didn't see in the value as they rationalize it, but the value they're getting is now the speed of deployment, right?
If you had to provision communications line to somewhere, you were going to a carrier or going through your own construction of a fiber line or something else, that takes a long time between all the rights you need to get that done. If you have a wireless network in place, and for them, it was about a battery storage facility. They put a new facility, they needed connectivity. You know, the time it takes to deploy a new wireless module to connect up an asset like that takes them, you know, minutes versus taking them months.
Okay. Anything you can share with us on updates to the scorecard over the last few months?
you know, we'll continue to update that, you know, quarter by quarter. For us, we just continue to see progress. I, you know, just would steer you and investors to. Clearly, we've got good investor communications, but watch what's happening in the industry. There's a lot of good indications, you know, public statements between the webinars that are happening, the, you know, the industry trade shows. The movement is underway, and it's visible. We try and describe it through the lens to investors. You know, don't take it from us. Talk to folks in the industry, understand what's happening with the requirements. There's really, it's the demand side that's really driving this. The number of use cases just continues to grow.
That to us is generating more and more value and more justification. The community of utilities that now is, you know, building what we see as this network of networks, right. The idea that each utility itself is an island, but as more of them connect onto this network, it is the network effect. It's, you know, Metcalfe's Law that each of them gets more value as others connect to it, both because of the systematic pieces of what they get to do together, whether that's roaming or border management or things that are actually physical, but it's also the interest of all the parties that are now developing within the sandbox. That's the ecosystem that we're driving the interest of a lot of vendors.
Okay. Help me think about your balance sheet. You've bought back a little bit of stock in the last few quarters. How do you think about the right amount of cash in the business? As people pay you up front, there should be a lot more cash coming into the system.
Yeah. We ended the year, you know, the calendar year with just about a little over $50 million of cash. As I mentioned earlier, we've got about $150 million of contracted proceeds, contracts we already signed and yet to be collected. We'll see about $100 million of that this year. We remain debt-free in our balance sheet to give us all the nimbleness and flexibility we wanna make sure we have based on the timing of these contracts. As we've demonstrated, you know, we have a $50 million share buyback program in place, and we've used about half of that so far. We absolutely see, and we've talked about that, we intend to continue to find tax-efficient ways to return proceeds to investors.
You know, we see opportunities, continuing to do that as we see, you know, continued contracts.
It looks like the path of the company is to sort of put yourself out of business by doing a good job and selling your spectrum to utilities, and then that will be the end. What's the next leg for Anterix?
[audio distortion].
Are there new things you wanna do?
I think, I honestly, I view it as a, you know, as I told you, coming from the Nextel roots of being the first nationwide wireless carrier, we actually see the network effect of this nationwide network as much value as we have ahead of us to continue to take our, you know, roughly $3 billion pipeline and monetize that. And that itself is a great business, as you said. Rather than it being an end to that's a beginning for us. Once there is a nationwide network of utility networks, the ability to continue to monetize off of that, whether it's for, adding the commercialization of that to third parties, like I said, LCRA does of, you know, who's gonna serve the railroads? Who's gonna serve the oil pipelines?
Who's gonna serve other critical infrastructure needs that are not really being served well by carrier requirements? This network will be very well situated, fully paid for, and justified by utility use cases. There's an absolute interest we've heard from pretty much every one of our customers to figure out how to commercialize that. That's kind of one example. You know, having been in the nationwide commercial business, I think we're very well situated to help them do that between the rating, billing, customer service, all the things that we can expand into if we, if we choose to do so. The other aspect is, you know, once you have the fixed cost of having to deploy this network, the marginal cost of deploying additional spectrum on that network is pretty small on a relative basis.
As we used to say, that's a rich person's problem in the carrier business because it means you've fully utilized the spectrum you have, and it means you're absolutely justified to spend more on being able to find more spectrum. As you know, in our DNA is finding spectrum opportunities and bringing that to market. We see opportunities to do that as well. Then lastly, which I think is, to me, the most exciting part, is about when I talked about this ecosystem, it's really taking this network and the evergreen aspect of creating value. We're in the unique situation of playing this, the role of being the coordinator across these utilities.
I like to say that we've woven ourselves pretty well into the fabric of utilities through now a pretty long experience of helping them achieve these important goals. I think that positions us in a position of trust with our critical partners. This ecosystem is the leading partners to utilities, working with them to bring more services and more capabilities. I think we'll have a right to win some of that ourselves, working with partners to monetize some of that. You know, I mean, you know, the crude example is the Apple Store, right? You know, you wanna get an application, every individual's not going out and buying that themselves. Instead, there's a centralized place that we believe we bring value to those partners, those vendors, because they can come to one place through this ecosystem.
A lot of this is connected. You know, the virtualization of wireless networks, the way the cores will eventually all be connected to provide a lot of simple starting services like mutual aid of, you know, driving a truck from one territory to another or managing those borders. You get into, you know, up the value chain into a lot more valuable things like cybersecurity services. You know, we host some of those vendors already in our cloud core. If you're connected to our core, you have the ability to get access to these services. That brings to the utilities a level of understanding. We go through the piloting, the testing, the certification of that in a centralized basis. They don't have to each individually do it.
There's a real economy of scale for them. I think for those partners, those vendors, it allows them to get an easier access to all those customers as well. I think we wanna be reasonable in our approach, but I think we'll have a right to be able to create more value in that role that we'll play.
You mentioned spectrum. Are all those things sort of capital light, or is there potential that you go out and you buy a significant amount of spectrum or something else?
I think at this point that those are, you know. I wouldn't say we're going out to buy any significant spectrum. As I said, we're, you know, we're opportunists in the spectrum world. We've been around the block. We understand how to create value in spectrum. For now, it's about monetizing the spectrum we have. As an example, you know, CBRS, which the other band that was created on a shared basis, I think 12 utilities bought CBRS licenses at auction. As you know, it's very complementary. It's kind of like a.
Yeah.
Super Wi-Fi spectrum. We've driven the development of a module through this ecosystem with one of the leading vendors that will have both CBRS and all the cellular bands, including ours, available in a lower cost module.
Yeah.
We crowdfunded that through these vendors because utilities said they wanted it. We already have commitments for some orders in that space. It's just an idea that collectively, the utility industry is much stronger driving vendor solutions, and we wanna be the party that helps bring that together, along with all of our partners.
Okay. Let's leave it in our last minute with your stock price, which has been, you know, sort of up and down in that $30-$60 range for a couple of years. What's your enterprise value today, roughly?
I didn't look at it today. I've been too busy talking to investors, but I would say.
It's about $600 million.
Yeah.
You said earlier there's about a $3 billion asset here based on the sales that you've already had. How do you think about being a public company? You know, it's kind of a pain. Why don't you just take it private?
I wouldn't have this opportunity to be here talking to you, Phil.
You wouldn't have to come to [audio distortion] .
I wouldn't wanna miss that. Look, yeah, there's obviously challenges being a public company, being a public company is what allowed us to be who we are, right? We relied on the public markets to provide us the funding to acquire the spectrum, we've had very patient investors to get us through what's been a challenging process to get here. My view is, you know, we couldn't be in a better situation of being embedded in what I think is probably one of the most valuable sectors in our economy. You know, these are companies, as an industry that's spending over $150 billion a year in capital expenditures. It's a, it's an industry that is critical to the livelihood of our whole economy, right? Without electricity, we're nowhere.
You know, the need to bring resiliency to our electric grid, I talk about it as our meaningful mission when I talk to our employees, is such a critical piece of what we do, and we're proud of bringing that along. You know, having public investors as part of that, I think is a level of credibility as we come. You know, as a new entrant in the space, it's established a level of credibility and importance for us. You know, it's been a rocky time in the markets overall, and you know that more than I do.
I'm confident that we've got such a solid pipeline, and as we see the monetization of these customers that are gonna be coming forward over the next months and years. You know, we've got several nine-figure customers in our pipeline. These are large scale concentrated customers. It is frustrating because of the infrequency, the sporadic nature of them. There's a lot of value there, and we're confident we're gonna continue seeing that value.
That's a good place to leave it. Thanks, Rob.
Thank you, Phil.
Appreciate it.