This `session is for Citi clients only, and disclosures are conveniently available at the back of the room next to the AV desk. Welcome back to Citi's 2024 Global TMT Conference. For those of you I haven't met, I'm Mike Rollins with Citi Research, and we're pleased to welcome Dan Schlanger, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Crown Castle.
Thanks for having us, Mike. Appreciate being here.
Thanks for joining us. For everyone in the room, there's gonna be QR codes around, and so if you use your phone to scan it, you can participate in our live survey questions. We wanna get you involved in today's conversation, and all of the submissions and your participation is anonymous. So with that, Dan, it's been a busy year, and curious, you know, as we're sitting here today, for an update on the go-forward strategy evolving for Crown Castle, especially after some of the changes, you know, this year?
Sure. I think it's an understatement to say it's been a busy year. There's been a lot going on in our company. But what was the focus and has been the focus for us over the last six months or so has been a strategic and operating review of our fiber business, which includes both our fiber solutions and small cell businesses. And as part of that review, we started with more of an operational review, where we went and solicited input from a number of advisors and consultants and tried to figure out what the best go-forward plan will be for our company. At concurrently, we were doing a strategic review that is ongoing at this point.
Can't really speak much about what that is, but on the operating side, what we determined was we have a very attractive fiber footprint in the biggest markets in the U.S. That footprint was put together to support a small cell strategy that we have, where we believe that the future demand on networks in the U.S. will outstrip the ability for towers to be the only source of supply. We still believe that to be true, and we have built a strategy around building and buying fiber in the top markets because we think that's where small cells are going to be, but it has also afforded us a very good fiber footprint for addressing enterprise demand.
And when we had been looking at that market over time, both small cells and fiber solutions, we had made the determination that having additional fiber assets in these markets would be a positive. Largely because data demand would increase on the wireline side, but also on the wireless side, and small cells would be necessary in these markets and require fiber connectivity. So we were in the right markets in the right ways, looking to increase our fiber asset base, meaning we were continuing to invest capital in those markets to build out away from where we already had fiber assets, either to a new location for connectivity for a business or a new location for connectivity for wireless through small cell.
And as part of this operating review we went through, one of the theories we were testing was: Could we pull back from that way of thinking, reduce our capital, and focus more on putting additional revenue on the assets we already owned in these markets? And a lot of the information we got back was that we had sufficient growth opportunities are in and around what we would call on-net or near-net to the assets we already had in market, that we could continue to grow both the fiber solutions and small cell business and pull back pretty substantially on capital.
So we announced that shift in June, and we've enacted that shift, both in terms of changing the return thresholds for new build and in terms of reducing the number of people in the company because we had less work to do and therefore needed to rightsize the business. So the first thing, like I said, that we've been focused on is how do we make that change and do it in a way that our employees continue to be motivated and excited about the future, and in a way that increases the returns in our business without significantly damaging any of the potential growth? And that's a hard balance to strike, and I'm not sure we're there yet because it's still new.
But we believe we still have the opportunity to grow our fiber solutions business, very similarly we have in the past, which is around 3% a year, and that we can grow our small cell business, in the 10% range or more, on an annual revenue basis, and significantly reduce the capital that's going to it. And one of the major sources of pushback we've gotten from investors over time has been: Why haven't we been able to show a substantial increase in returns on the purchases and builds we did long ago, and should allow for this on-net, near-net expansion on those assets?
And the answer has been, well, we continue to build all these new assets, so it kind of masks the returns, and I think we will be able to show better incremental returns going forward with this new operating plan. And we're excited that I think that the response we've gotten from investors has been very positive, more wait and see, but very positive. Like, "That sounds like a good idea. Let's see how that goes. So that's been the priority for us right now, is to try to figure all that out.
Having said that, the vast majority of our revenue, cash flow, and value comes from our tower business. So we have also been very focused on ensuring that we do not lose our touch with our customers on the tower side, so that we continue to drive growth during a period that our customers are continuing to add to the network, particularly in towers. Our customers' focus on towers has been true for a little while now, and it's now shifting into small cells currently. So we're trying to keep track of all of it, but I would say that the priority really has been on the strategic and operating review.
On the strategic side of that strategic and operating review, we're looking at things that to try to maximize the value of the assets that we own, the businesses we own, to our shareholders, and that could have a wide variety of outcomes. The optionality the board has is a positive, because I believe that they are trying to make the best decision that will drive the most value to the shareholder that they can. They've left open kind of a very wide swath of next steps. We're currently in that process, so not much I can add to it, but I am excited about where we are. We continue to engage with third parties, and I think what we will do, whatever is decided by the board, will be in the best interest of shareholders.
Great. This is a great time to introduce one of our survey questions for our audience here to get them involved. So we are gonna ask them: What is the most likely outcome from the fiber strategic review? No change, retain ownership of the fiber segment, sell the entire fiber segment, partial equity sale of the entire fiber segment, which is different than the last option, which is sell part of the assets within it, whether it's regions or products.
You know, there's always been questions about whether fiber solutions and small cells belong together, so we'll see what our audience thinks as we continue the conversation in a few moments, but I wanna drill down a bit more on you know, what you were describing in terms of the shift in operations, so as you've begun to execute this new strategy of focusing more on the existing assets versus the new builds, what's been the customer reaction, and are you seeing the pipeline that you wanna see to support the growth aspirations for the business?
I think our customers completely understand what we're doing. I don't think they were surprised or frustrated in any way. I think our relationships with our customers remain very good. And we are in the middle of exactly what you're saying, which is assessing where our bookings and pipeline are. As with any change, one of the things you have to do is affect how people respond and how people act, and in this case, a lot of those people are salespeople that are going out and engaging with customers. And we've changed the incentives to try to help guide towards on-net, near-net, and doing so in the middle of a year is a tough ask. So I can't answer your question right now.
I think when we announce earnings for the third quarter sometime in October, I think we'll have a better sense for where we are, but I'm optimistic, based on the feedback that our customers, our salespeople are getting, that there's the analysis that was done to try to identify appropriate targets is a reasonable analysis, but we need to wait and see.
One of the features, I think I'm remembering correctly, about your fiber assets, you have a lot of strands?
Yep.
So with all the strands of fiber that you have across the fiber network, are you seeing a pickup of interest or demand from the hyperscalers, where we're starting to see for other companies in the category there's been a greater interest in IRU purchases and data center connectivity? Are you seeing that, and is that an opportunity for Crown?
Yes, it's an opportunity, but I think it's different than a lot of the talk that has been going recently around the industry. We are not. Let me say that in the affirmative. We are focused on shared infrastructure, and we believe that building a large pipe or a large amount of fiber to a single location somewhere, like a big data center in the middle of Idaho, is not shared infrastructure. That's infrastructure for one purpose. We don't do long-haul fiber for very similar reasons. It's also because our fiber strategy is rooted in, we want to put small cells on that fiber, and I don't think small cells are gonna end up in any of these places.
So that shared infrastructure model pushes us more towards metro connectivity, not intra-market, inter-market connectivity, nor to these big data centers that are going to, I believe, be housed in very low-cost, low electricity cost, low land cost environments, which are not cities. Where we have very good fiber with, as you pointed out, a tremendous amount of capacity through lots of strands, are in these cities. And I believe that as data demand continues to grow, not only because of AI, but also with AI, because I do believe artificial intelligence will drive more data, we have the opportunity to connect the consumers of those data, which would be buildings, where people work, to data centers, and then data centers to data centers within those markets.
And I think all of that speaks to the attractiveness of the assets we've amalgamated over time, because we focused on trying to get high-capacity, dense fiber in metro markets, and I think that there's gonna be a lot of demand for those assets going forward. And even though the recent discussions that I've heard of on hyperscalers interacting with fiber providers, or even Verizon's purchase of Frontier, is different than our fiber, I think it does give some indication that there is a realization going on in the market that the ability to move data from one place to another is important, and that is done over fiber, and having good fiber assets in good markets is attractive. I think that there's been a shift recently to where that attractiveness is being more recognized now than it was six, 12 months ago.
Let's see, what our audience is thinking of the strategic review.... So, there's a mix here. So, 29%-
All right
-no change, retain the ownership. Another 29%, just sell the entire fiber segment. 14%, partial equity sale of the entire fiber segment, and 29%, just sell part of the assets within the fiber segment. Any reaction?
I would've predicted that.
That is-
It's very interesting. One of the more difficult things that we've tried to deal with is part of figuring out what is going to drive value is figuring out what investors think is going to drive value, because some of value is perception, and we are the board, in addition to value being perception, the board is acting in a fiduciary way on behalf of shareholders. So knowing what shareholders want is an important input to our process, and when we've sat down with investors and tried to have these conversations, that pie chart is basically the response we get. Not sure what's gonna happen, and also not sure what each investor wants. Like, each investor wants something different than others.
It's a mixed bag, and as I just mentioned, I think it is not only a mixed bag, it is an evolving bag because a single investor will have a different opinion now than they did six months ago because things have changed, whatever that may be, at any time. I believe things have changed positively on the fiber side. I think there's generally more support for having fiber than there was 12 months ago, like I said. But I don't think it changes what people want out of our strategic review.
I think that, that whether you say, "What do you think will happen?" or, "What do you want to happen?" I think that pie chart is very representative of the responses we get, both in terms of predicting and declaring, "Hey, I'd like you to do this." We get those four answers a lot.
You mentioned value and the importance of value, and so we get questions on this all the time. So I figured let's ask our audience this question as well. So if Crown monetizes part or all of the fiber segment, what value will be placed on the transaction? And I'm describing this 'cause there's so many questions about what to put the multiple on. We're gonna put the multiple on disclosed 2024 fiber segment operating profit, which is basically the EBITDA contribution on a GAAP basis. So the choices that we're giving our audience for our streamers is eight times or less, over eight to 10, over 10 to 12, over 12 to 14, and over 14. So we'll see what... You know, encourage everyone to contribute their view, and we'll see what we get from this in a few minutes.
Do you have a view?
We do have a view, but I wanna see what our audience thinks. You know, before we talk about value, maybe a little bit more specifically, as you've gone through this review and you see all the different feedback you're getting, have you had a chance to learn anything unique or narrow the set of menu options that Crown is considering for this?
No, we're not narrowing the set of options. We've learned a lot through this process. And I think it's healthy for any business to go through, or any company to go through a portfolio review of what you own and what you think you should do with it. I think that's a very good thing to do, and I think it's good that we're doing it. And whatever comes out, part of what the even spread says to me is there's no clear-cut answer here. There's nothing that says, "This is absolutely what you need to do." But that also means there's no clear-cut, terrible answer.
So I think we do have a lot of flexibility to choose the path that our board believes creates the most value, and there are going to be people who are upset by whatever that is, is what as by that. If you shift the question from "What do you think will happen?" to "What do you want to happen?" we get similar responses. I think there will be people who are like "Oh, I didn't want you to do that," but there will also be people who say "Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted you to do." And so I think that the board has a lot at its disposal to try to generate the best value possible for shareholders. Our board has been very engaged in this process.
I think they have been very well informed, both by us as the management team and representatives of the company, but also by external advisers, and I think, again, that's a very healthy dynamic. With a board who is engaged and informed, I think they can make good decisions, and I think they will.
Let's see what our group here thinks of value. So 20% at or below 8x , 60% at over 8%-10%, 20% over 10%-12%. Curious for your reaction.
What's your number?
We have it in our published research, but before we get there, is there a line in this, you know, virtual sand that you would draw, where you're like, "It would not make sense, it would be a disservice to shareholders if we went below a certain number?
I think there's always that truth. That is always true. For any business, there is always a value below which you would need to be able to say, "That's not good. That is not in the best interest of shareholders." And for some businesses, that's really high, and for some businesses, it could be really low. I'm not gonna speak to our business. I think that would be inappropriate, given we're in the middle of a strategic review. But there's always gonna be that line. Thankfully, it doesn't matter what I think, because this isn't my decision. It matters what our board thinks, and this is ultimately gonna be up to them.
And I think I can say, having had discussions with them, there are lines that they would say also, "Look, there at some point, it doesn't make sense." But I would hope that's true of anybody, anytime, anywhere. There, it is not such that, that there's inherently a business that is good or bad. It's there are values that make them where they can make money or not. We need to be cognizant of those values.
When I think back to the conversations that we've had, I've listened in to the conversations, some of them that you've had with investors, I think there was a question that came up about a question of capital allocation into fiber, which is, you know, viewed maybe as a longer duration investment cycle. Is there an overarching goal or possibility as part of this strategic review for Crown to take the fiber business, and whatever is chosen, just to put it in a kind of a self-funding position, where it doesn't infringe on the capital allocation from the tower business?
I think part of what I was talking about earlier was to reduce the capital being allocated to the fiber business, both fiber solutions and small cells. We've not been presented with facts that would say it is just definitively true that saying this is a separate business, even within some version of Crown Castle in the future, that that would be definitely better than what we do now. I think that there are benefits to how we have put these companies or these assets together, or we wouldn't have done so. I think the question that we're trying to face now is whether those benefits are outweighed by benefits would be for separating them. Because there are also benefits for separating them.
I can understand why an investor might say to us, "Look, I think the tower business in the U.S. is a great business, and that's all I want access to. Don't make me take fiber with it." I would understand that. And so, it's more of a question of, where is it best to house these different investment profile businesses? There's a different investment profile for towers than small cells. There's a different investment profile from small cells to fiber solutions. They all make sense. There's a reason they're together. They share characteristics and assets that make sense together, but they would make sense apart. And the question is: How do we maximize that value? And I do not have an answer to that yet.
A couple more questions on this. So in terms of structure, in your discussions with the rating agencies and with creditors, do you feel that the combined leverage ratio to stay investment grade is lower than what the tower business would be on a standalone basis?
I believe that the stability and growth of the cash flows of the tower business make it possible for that business to carry a fair amount of leverage. I can't speak to what the rating agencies would say about a U.S. tower-only business. Like, that's a hypothetical conversation that we really don't have the capacity to have. There is no direct correlation, corollary to that in the market. There is no direct just U.S. tower business that sits in the market that is similarly situated to where we are. So it's hard to say the answer to your question, but I do believe that the tower business, you know, we have very long-term cash flows with very limited churn, with built-in growth and very limited capital.
You put all those things together, and that is a creditworthy entity. And how creditworthy and what exactly it would be, we'll deal with that to the extent that we get to a transaction that makes sense, and we're able to talk about it, and we would then talk about all of our capital allocation decisions. But until that point, there are too many permutations to get into to really give direct answers of, "Here's what we think would happen if that happened, and here's what we think would happen if that happened." There's, if we tried to chase all of those and come up with our decisions on all those, there legitimately wouldn't be enough time in the day.
We'll pivot to the tower discussion in a moment, and we'll throw up another survey question on our screen here. So we're gonna ask our group here, what... It should be up there. What is your expectation for Crown Castle's tower organic revenue growth, excluding Sprint-related churn, which is a factor for next year in 2025. So, this year, I believe the midpoint of guidance is 4.5%?
That's true.
And so it would be in comparison to that. So, 3% or less, over 3%-4%, over 4%-5%, over 5%-6%, or over 6%. We'll see what our group thinks. So one other thing, I want to go back to, one of the things you mentioned about, some of the changes that you made to the way you're operating the fiber business. So you made these changes in capital, kind of at the half-year point, like, right before the half-year point. So the changes were more or less back half. Is there any simple way of thinking about, whether there's an annualization of those savings, so in fact, when we get into 2025, the business may even be more efficient than the way it's presenting for 2024?
Yes, I think it will be more efficient. I think we reduced the cost structure of our business in June, and therefore, 2025 will be that lower cost structure for the full year, just like you said, as opposed to half a year. But I think that's pretty well understood and baked in. I think the back half of this year, people understand what has happened, what we've done, and have modeled it appropriately when I look at your models or your peers. I think people generally get what we've done. The harder question, and it's harder for us too, because it's hard to predict the future, is what is the revenue going to do?
Part of what we did was purposefully constrain the opportunity set, and can we continue to get the right pipeline in order to grow? For the second half of the year, we said that we, because of the disruption we caused, we thought that there would be less productivity and therefore less growth in revenue than we had previously expected. But we also said that going in 2020- 2025 and beyond, we would expect to get back to where we were, like I said before, 3% growth in fiber solutions and 10% or more growth in small cells. We believe all that's attainable, and until we give guidance, we can't really tell you what we really believe it's going to be. But it's also because we're in the middle of these changes, and we've got to figure out what happens, a nd we're excited, optimistic, pleased the way things have gone thus far, but it's still not yet, the story is not yet written.
Maybe pivoting over to the tower business, before we get to our survey, just curious if you can give us an update on the leasing environment. You know, what you're seeing in terms of activity levels from your carrier customers.
As you pointed out, when we gave guidance, we expected 4.5% growth tower revenue in 2024. We still expected that when we updated our guidance in the second quarter. So if we had seen any change in activity, we would've reflected it in that update. And therefore, you can infer we didn't see any change in activity levels, and that remains true. Like, the activity levels are in the range of what we expected for the year. What has been a bit of a shift is, as I've listened to the public commentary from the carriers, they are talking more about spending money.
The issue has always been, though, you've been around this business a while, the correlation between our carriers actually spending money in tower leasing is tenuous at best, much less our tower customers talking about spending money in tower leasing. That is a very hard line to draw. So calling when an inflection will happen in growth in the business is very difficult. But as I sat here and listened to your previous conversation, Marc said it. I feel pretty good about our longer term growth profile. We have said that through 2027 , we think we can grow our tower business at 5%, excluding the Sprint churn for next year.
And all of that talk from our carrier customers gives me more reason to believe that's true, because it may not be in 2025, but over a period of time, what they're saying is: "We need to spend more money on our network." And when they say things like that, it generally results in more tower leasing over some period of time. So through 2027, I think, is long enough that we feel good about it. The tower business is great all the time, but it has an especially good dynamic, either at the beginning of a generational upgrade, which we saw earlier in this decade, 2020, 2022, or when our customers have spectrum and have competition and are feeling the effects of that competition from each other.
We know they have spectrum right now, and what we're seeing and what we're hearing is they are trying to ramp up a little bit of the competition when they're saying, you know, I heard Verizon speak yesterday, and they said: "You know, we're gonna reach our 4 million target for fixed wireless customers, and then we're gonna push farther, and we're gonna tell you how we're gonna do that.
That's leaning into more competition, and that's good for us. I just don't know when it's good for us. It's always been impossible. Back when the carriers broke out wireless CapEx, which you would think would have a very clear correlation to the leasing activity on towers, there wasn't one. Like, you couldn't tell what our leasing activity was versus their change in wireless CapEx. They don't even break that out anymore, so it's even harder to find or harder to make that connection. But what allows us to feel good about is that over time, we think there will be more activity on towers, and that's always going to be good for somebody who owns towers.
I think what we are seeing now in terms of the 5G upgrade cycle, where the first piece of that upgrade cycle is a very busy time for towers because our customers want to put out a lot of equipment to show that the generational upgrade has happened and give that benefit to us as consumers. We saw that, and then we saw the dip come in 2023, and now we're in kind of a more steady state.
That has been true of many other generational upgrades, but if you look at even 4G, for us, the high water mark in 5G is no worse than it was in 4G, and the low water mark thus far has been much higher than it was in 4G upgrades. We grew more slowly in this period of time if you just look back almost ten years ago, and what that means is, I think that our customers have to spend more money, and we have agreements that allow for a little bit more understanding of what long-term growth will be, and I think that's good for us. I think that's good for our investors who are looking for, as I mentioned before, stability and growth. I think that we'll be able to provide both of those things on the tower side.
I want to come back to stability in a moment. Let's just see the results. So it's pretty split. Half at over 3%-4% and half at over 4%-5%. Anything surprising about this mix for you?
I'm not gonna speak to that mix. That would be too close to giving 2025 guidance.
Maybe talking about stability. Often when we talk about growth, we talk about leasing activity... but there's another important component of it, which is the churn side-
Yes
of the equation. And, you know, ex merger-related activity, which I realize for you is very concentrated in 2025, but the churn's been coming down. So can you talk about what's happening on the churn side, and is the stability and maturity of the carriers just playing out to the point where there could be a better outcome for churn that helps growth, you know, even if the activity is a little harder to predict, you know, year to year?
So first, let me just explain. Part of what you talked about is that we have a churn event in the beginning of 2025, that when T-Mobile merged with Sprint, there was a reduction that they wanted to enact to reduce the number of sites that both T-Mobile and Sprint were on into one site or one set of antennas on that site. We negotiated with them because we had contracts that were coming to term at different times. We negotiated with them a single churn event that was a big churn event, which is about $200 million to occur in the beginning of 2025.
So, that is something that was due to activity that happened long ago, but we negotiated it to go out, to push it out, because the longer you can hold on to revenue, the better off you are. Unfortunately, we've been living with this kind of churn event over us for a long time, so it's felt negative. But if you just look at the kind of net present value of things, we did a good job negotiating a good deal. And once we get into 2025 and beyond, I think that you'll see exactly what you're talking about, which is, the return to growth in our business, as driven by a lot of the tower business. And as you pointed out, I think the most important metric is the net growth, not the gross adds. Churn does matter.
Even in our business, where churn has been typically between 1%-2% of revenue per year, which is such a very low amount of churn, there's a difference between 1% and 2%. Especially when you're talking about growth differences, that you're split fifty-fifty between 3% and 4%, and 4% and 5%, that 1% could be made up in churn. And what we've done is we've recognized that and tried to put in place agreements that limit the amount of churn that we have. So this has been purposeful. It is. We have targeted more net growth than we have gross adds, and we think that we can push that churn level down with those agreements.
Because, like you said, our carrier customers have matured in their tower portfolios, and they recognize that those portfolios are necessary to deliver the services that they want to deliver, including increasing the amount of coverage for things like fixed wireless or just the data demand growth that happens in the U.S. on a yearly basis. I think that we've done a good job of recognizing that pushing churn down is important and managing it down, and therefore, we have been at the low end of that 1%-2% range for a while now, when you exclude the Sprint churn that we're going to have next year. That is very important, and we think it will drive a lot of value over a long term for our company is to try to continue to drive that churn down.
If we can get it down below 1%, we will. There's nothing magic about 1%. It's just been what the range has been historically. We are still at the 1%-2% range. We're not willing to change that yet, but we've been operating at the low end of that for a while and want to continue to make that happen.
Switching gears a little bit, to GenAI, and with these capabilities, curious if you look at that as more of a revenue opportunity for Crown, more of a cost opportunity? Could be both. But which of these can create the most value for shareholders?
I think both for us, actually, so like I talked about earlier, I think that we have good assets that can take advantage of increasing demand for data, which I believe artificial intelligence will create. There's a reason that companies are allocating billions of dollars to infrastructure around artificial intelligence, and it's because they believe there will be more data that needs to be moved, stored, computed, moved back, and so I think there is a revenue opportunity for us. I believe there's also cost opportunities as we utilize more digitization to help drive more efficient operations of our assets. I also believe there are cost opportunities from what we were talking about earlier, where we can more accurately predict churn and then take proactive steps to try to mitigate that churn.
So those are all things we're looking at, but I think it's both for us have some impact, and a little bit of impact on a business like this is helpful because it's a very long-term business that has a long tail of growth, and if we can move those growth metrics around just a little bit now, that over time it can add a tremendous amount of value.
In terms of driving efficiency in the organization, a lot of the changes announced back in June were, I think, specifically fiber segment related. Are there incremental opportunities on the tower side?
Just another bit of context. About this time last year, we had a similar move on the tower side, where we had recognized the activity levels on towers had substantially reduced, and therefore, we had to substantially reduce the workforce that was working on towers. It's not as if we're just focused on the fiber segment because there's a review going on and we're just ignoring towers, and they can do whatever it wants. Like, we have kept towers running efficiently. Having said that, I believe one of the things that our new CEO, Steven Moskowitz, brings is a long history of experience in operating towers in the U.S. and around the world.
And with that comes ideas for how to be more efficient on the tower side, and I think that we will have the benefit of his interaction and his focus, which is much more operational. Like, he wants to understand, how are we doing everything we can to be as efficient as possible so that we can deliver for our customers faster and be cheaper, and hopefully gain more revenue that way? And that is one of his focuses, and I believe there are going to be more incremental things we can do, but I don't think there's gonna be the same wholesale type of change that we made this time last year in towers or June of this year in the fiber side of the business. It's gonna be more, how do we get more efficient, more continuous improvement, than it is, you know, big bang type of stuff.
As you move into 2025 and you have the Sprint churn event, sometimes the carriers will choose to leave the equipment on the sites and pay you for that, and that gives you some compensation that helps offset, at least in the moment, maybe some of that churn. Is there such an opportunity as we look out into next year, or is that de minimis or just not an option here?
Yeah, let me wait until we give guidance around that.
Sure.
But, generally speaking, you're right that there are times when that happens. Generally speaking, we are able to monetize some of those situations, where it's our tower, they can't just leave stuff on it. And that's part of the agreement. You know, if you rent an apartment, you can't just leave all your furniture there and be like: "Hey, you guys have to deal with it." You'll get charged for that. Whether that happens in this case, we can talk about as we give guidance for next year.
Are there any other items as you're thinking about kind of just the flow? So, you know, 'cause over time, you talked about got the churn event, and then the opportunities to get back to that mid-single-digit growth that you were describing earlier. Is there anything else, just from a high-level, long-term perspective, that you want to highlight for us today?
There's been so much focus on our fiber business for so long, I think people don't recognize how great of a business towers is. I think that everybody's like: "Oh, you do this other thing, and I'm not so sure about it." But the core of our business is one of the best portfolios of towers in the world. We have a very urban and suburban bent to what we own. We have tenancy ratios that are in the low two range, which means there's plenty of room for opportunity for growth. We have great agreements in place with all of the carriers, the four that are major carriers right now in the U.S., and all of the tailwinds that we're talking about are continuing to push investment in that network.
So I think we are extremely well situated, and that seems to get lost in the shuffle, which is hard for us to deal with because it is still the majority part of our business and the value of our business. Having said that, though, I do believe that the totality of the assets that we've put together fit well together and generate good returns, and we'll have a good business going forward. And we knew, like I said, well, as I opened, we just need to decide which set goes with what the most appropriately so that we can generate the most value. But underpinning all of it is a wonderful business that has a lot of room for growth going forward.
Dan, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.