Well, good morning, welcome back to Citi's 2026 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Mike Rollins with Citi Research, we're pleased to have with us SBA Communications and CEO Brendan Cavanagh. This session is for Citi clients only, disclosures have been made available at the corporate access desk. To ask a question, you can raise your hand or go to liveqa.com and enter the code GPC26 to submit questions. Brendan, we'll turn it over to you in just a moment to introduce your company and team, provide any opening remarks, if you can share with the audience the top reasons an investor should buy your stock today, we'll get into Q&A.
Thanks, Mike. It's nice to be here. Thanks for hosting us again. As you said, I'm Brendan Cavanagh, the CEO of SBA Communications. I have with me today Louis Friend, our Vice President of Capital Markets and Finance. You know, That's always an interesting question, what's the top reason to buy our stock? You know, I think, I hate to say this, but in part the reason is that it's valued, much, way below where it should be in our view, and that's something that we typically historically would never comment on because that's really for you guys to figure out.
We see where assets like ours are valued in the private markets, and there's quite a disconnect, and we recognize that our valuations are below historical norms and also below where they really should be in terms of the predictability and steady cash flow that we continue to produce and will continue to grow over time and our ability to provide shareholder remuneration. Part of the way we've been capitalizing on that phenomenon recently is just through increased share buybacks, and that's something we'll probably continue to do while we're valued at these levels.
Thanks. You know, maybe building on the points that you just made, can you share with us the priorities for SBA this year and how that's going to drive over time the growth in revenue and cash flows?
Sure, yeah. Our priorities aren't really all that different than they've been historically. One of the great things about our business is that it doesn't change that much over time. The critical nature of the assets that we own for the wireless carriers continues to be the same as it was a decade ago. Our focus is really on making sure that we're building strong relationships with the carriers. One of the things that has changed a little bit is that there's been some consolidation among our customer base over the last so many years, which I think most people are well aware of. That has made it even more critical that the strength of the relationship that we have with our customers remains a top priority. That's something we're focusing on.
Beyond that, it's really the allocation of capital in the best way possible. We've always prided ourselves on being very strong allocators of capital. Really, there's a few different buckets that we evaluate, and those haven't changed that much either. The first one is to continue investing in new assets, both new tower builds and acquisitions. That's ideally where we would like to prioritize our spending. Given the disconnect that I mentioned before between the private markets and public markets, that's made that more challenging. It's moved us more into that second bucket, which is share repurchases. Right now, we're seeing the opportunity to buy shares at immediately accretive prices, and we have great confidence in the future. It seems to us like it's the best investment available to us.
Of course, I didn't mention it, we have a dividend that we're continuing to grow at a very high level. We're the fastest-growing dividend in the industry, and that will continue, I think, to be the case for many years to come.
Maybe, digging into this, a little bit more, you know, when you talk about the financial flexibility you have, just to help our group here, can you frame the financial flexibility this year, whether you know, in dollars or size of market cap that you can use for whether it's, you know, asset opportunities, build-to-suits, repurchases, and you know, how that, how you're thinking about those priorities of spend? You know, obviously you just had your earnings, and you gave us an update on some of those projects.
Right. Yeah. First we start with our leverage target, which is something that we've recently changed, although we changed it to a level that we've been operating at for the last several years. Our target leverage range is 6-7 turns of net debt to adjusted EBITDA. Today, fourth quarter, we finished the year at 6.4 turns, so kind of right in the middle of that range. Given that we historically have always seen our EBITDA grow year-over-year, that creates increased capacity. In addition, we're generating $1.3 billion of AFFO each year. That's just available cash to be redistributed into the business.
At that, within that context, we're able to take that amount plus the additional capacity that's created through EBITDA growth, and keeping our leverage the same and invest it into all the items that I mentioned before. Ideally in a mix of new assets that we add to the portfolio, as well as share buybacks and dividends. I think those will be the primary areas that you'll continue to see us invest. We will occasionally look at other things that are complementary to what we do, and we've done that at times throughout our history, and I think we'll continue to do that if we see something that fits well with our skill set and complements the assets that we have. The first few buckets are really the primary areas where we'll invest that capital.
You know, as we, maybe jump into the operating businesses and leasing trends, you know, on the earnings call, you gave some updates in terms of churn, both within the domestic business and in the international businesses. Can you talk about, you know, how you see this, these churn events in terms of a possible clearing opportunity for SBA to sort of get back on serve and get back to more of the organic growth rates, that have been underlying this business for some time?
Sure. A moment ago, I referred to some of the consolidation that's taken place with our customers in each of our largest markets. As a result of those consolidations, it's caused some amount of churn. The Sprint churn, obviously T-Mobile buying Sprint years ago, we're kind of in our last big year of churn that we're recognizing related to that consolidation. There still will be some, a little bit left somewhere in the $15 million-$20 million range into the future over the next several years. Really, the bulk of it is gone after this year. In addition, we, of course, had the situation with EchoStar, DISH, who sold much of their spectrum earlier this year and has essentially said that they're moving out of the wireless business. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what's happening.
Given the situation with them and the fact that they frankly stopped paying their bills, we pulled forward all the churn related to our contracts with them into this year as well. We had a heavy amount of U.S. churn primarily driven by those two items. Internationally, the other big one was in Brazil, where Oi, which was the fourth carrier down in Brazil, was essentially bought. Their wireless business was bought and split up among the other three incumbent carriers in Brazil. We've seen some churn related to that. In addition, they're shutting down their wireline operations, of which there was a big wireless component, and we had a number of leases. That churn has also been basically pulled forward into this year.
That makes this year a little bit rough in the way that it looks. The idea is to essentially pull all that stuff forward, clear it out, and allow us to get back to a little bit more of a normalized growth level in future years. That's essentially what we've done.
You know, since you mentioned the EchoStar churn, what are the potential paths or remedies that you have to try to, you know, get your contract value from your customer? Is regulatory an option? You know, there's been some press and some filings with the FCC on meetings regarding this topic. I'm curious if that's a possible remedy or opportunity to make forward progress.
Well, it's certainly a possible remedy. Our belief is, and this is not just SBA, but our industry as a whole, believes that the FCC ideally should make the approvals of these transactions contingent upon the making the vendors that made it possible for DISH to be in the situation that they are to be made whole. We've made that case to the FCC and to other officials. We hope that they will help step in and do what's right, because otherwise there's a chilling effect to future investment potentially. There's a lot of spectrum that's about to be auctioned off by the FCC.
If they expect infrastructure companies and services companies and fiber providers to all step up and to be there to support any new build out of that, you know, we have to know that they're going to support enforcement of contracts and that there can't be some windfall to a party based on the spectrum that they were fortunate enough to acquire years ago. Yes, hopefully, there will be a regulatory result. Either way, whether there is or there isn't, the contracts are what they are, and it's our intention to enforce to the extent that we can. I think I mentioned on the last call that we have filed suit against DISH, EchoStar, to basically enforce our rights and their obligations under those agreements.
We'll pursue that as far as we can. Really, there's not much else I can say about it at this point, but we'll see how it shakes out. In any case, we've taken the churn, as I mentioned, for the full year. You know, any recovery at this point as it relates to our numbers would be upside in terms of reporting.
Very helpful. Maybe getting into domestic leasing, can you talk about the leasing activity that you're seeing, for your portfolio and what's embedded into the guidance for 2026?
Sure. Yeah. We're seeing, well, let's start with the U.S. We are seeing activity from all the carriers. There's obviously different situations that each one is in. I'll start with Verizon because we signed a master agreement with Verizon last year, late last year at the end of the year. We're just now starting to get into activity under that agreement as we've gotten into the beginning of this year. You know, we're very pleased with that agreement. We're very pleased with our relationship with Verizon. They have a lot of work to do.
It's very heavily focused on new siting activity, which is great for us in the sense that not only are those touches worth more than the average amendment in terms of their value, but they're also creating more points of presence across our portfolio of assets. We think that's great in terms of enhancing the value of the portfolio, but also the future opportunities for upgrades and the introduction of new spectrum bands down the road and the ability for that to contribute to growth for us for a long term. It's a long-term agreement. I think there'll be a lot of opportunity there, and we'll start to see that grow throughout this year. We're already seeing it in our backlogs. AT&T is also quite busy.
We have a different structured agreement with them that goes back a number of years. For the time being, the difference with AT&T is that when they acquired, in particular, the 3.45 spectrum from DISH, although that transaction has not been approved, they were able to essentially sublease that spectrum for the time being. They kind of shifted focus on overlaying their network with that spectrum. I think that's a timing issue, and we'll start to see them shift back to some further densification in the future. It's been a little bit slower for us, really because of the structure of our agreement with them, which is not allowing us to capture as much growth from amendments because they essentially paid for it upfront through bonus escalators. It's just a different structure.
As they get back more to new leasing activity, I think that will be a positive contributor for sure going forward. T-Mobile has been extremely busy over the last couple of years. I'd say that there's a little bit of pause there as they reset, but they have a tremendous amount to do as well as they're integrating the U.S. Cellular assets that they've acquired. They're dealing with certain regulatory requirements as well. We expect to see them continue to be the strong market participant that they've always been, and our relationship there is very, very strong.
When you pull all of that together, how do you see that long-term algorithm for domestic organic site leasing growth?
Yeah, you basically have 3 components to organic growth. I think I mentioned this actually on our earnings call last week. You have the built-in escalators that are built into the contracts that in the U.S. average about 3% annually. That's kind of a fixed component of growth across our U.S. business. The second piece, of course, is new lease-up activity in the form of both new leases and amendments to existing leases. That's typically the most variable component of the 3. We expect that that will be over the long run somewhere in that 2%-3% range. It may vary from year to year and period to period depending on what activity the carriers are undertaking, what new spectrum they have in hands, all those things. That's the second piece.
The third piece is the negative item, which is any churn that we experience. The churn, as I just mentioned a moment ago, is elevated for this year. Once we get beyond this kind of what I would call more specialized consolidation churn and we get back to a more normal level, that's typically been historically for us somewhere between 1% and 2%. I believe that as we get a little bit further down the road, given the consolidations that have happened and a lot of the clearing that's taken place, that we'll be a little bit closer. We should probably normalize out somewhere closer to 1%. Basically you have 3% plus 2% to 3% minus 1% in the long term. Somewhere in that 4%-5% range.
We're getting questions just about some of the changes from some of your carrier customers this year, some cutbacks, layoffs, cost cutting as they're responding to the competitive landscape. Are you seeing any adverse indications on how that rolls down to their network spending plans and the leasing activity, even if it's on a temporal basis?
Yeah, I think it's probably a little bit different for each one, but I would say that there's been some impact. It's hard to draw the direct correlation because there's always been throughout my history, I've been at SBA for over 28 years and I've seen many different cycles, but there's always been this tug and pull between the needs of the network and the constant additional strain that's been placed on it through consumption, particularly broadband consumption versus costs and how do we manage the financial side of the house. At various points in time, one side tends to win a little bit more. It's kind of like a tug of war. The other side tends to have to step back in.
I think as we start to see growth in applications like fixed wireless access in particular, we're going to see the network needs increase again and put pressure on the ability of the network to perform. Therefore the carriers will have to continue to invest to create that additional capacity and to densify their networks.
Just thinking about this, the decision for Verizon, for example, to do a co-location comprehensive deal with you that you were describing earlier is different than the traditional types of comprehensive MLAs that we've seen from these big three carriers over time. Is there something more significant that investors should be mindful of when thinking about that agreement and what that could mean for future comprehensive deals that you could enter into with the carriers?
I don't know. I think in this particular case, they had their specific needs that they foresee over the next decade because it's a 10-year agreement. They recognize the need for increased points of presence, whether that's driven, and you really have to ask them, whether that's driven by fixed wireless access as 1 item or just general densification over time or further expansion into rural or really all of those things, which is what I think it is. It's a mix of everything. They recognize that they had a need for a lot more locations. I think you know, it just the agreement was built around what their needs were. It's not driven by us. It's driven by really what they need. And we try to meet them there and come up with an agreement that is mutually beneficial for both parties.
As you think about the addressable market for revenue, you've talked about the historical and continued interest to expand through build-to-suits and acquisitions. What are the opportunities in the U.S., whether it's from either of those two activities or other things that you could do to just help grow your revenue pie and, you know, squeeze a little more juice out of the lemon?
Yeah. There are assets that come available, not as many as there used to be in terms of the acquisition landscape. I think the biggest challenge, of course, is that it's very competitive out there because you have a lot of private money that is heavily invested in this business and continues to look for ways to grow as well. Quite frankly, as a private company, are able to stretch more and to do things that are dilutive in the early days. That's much harder to do as a public company. You've seen, I think, all of the publics be less acquisitive in the U.S. That's not, I can assure you, and I'm sure this is true for our peers as well, that is not because of a lack of desire. That is really just the economics of the situation.
That's been more of a challenge. Having said that, we do have strong relationships with a number of developers. We've done many deals historically. There are a lot of people that I'm proud to say prefer us, even will take a little bit less money because they know that they can count on us to get the deal closed, to do it right, to not change things at the end. We'll continue to lean into those relationships where we can. On the new build side, you know, it's been a little bit more challenging historically, and this is over the last several years, because the carriers have had much more leverage in that capacity. They've offered up arrangements that weren't necessarily all that attractive.
Because of the desire for growth and assets in the U.S., they were able to get it from some smaller players. I think, though, that there is a recognition now with some of the things we just talked about a moment ago, for instance, with Verizon, that there's a need for more siting, more points of presence, and the ability to rely on established companies like ours to make sure that it gets done and gets done well and on time is starting to matter a little bit more. I actually am hopeful and optimistic that we will see an increase in the number of new tower builds we're able to do here in the U.S. over the coming years. It's something that we're going to focus on internally quite a bit.
Shifting to the international markets and specifically Latin America, you mentioned earlier that you pulled forward some churn. What's the opportunity now for that portfolio to get back to growth in 2027 and beyond? How does that growth compare to what you anticipate out of the U.S.?
Yeah. When you say that portfolio, you mean internationally broadly.
Yes.
Yeah. Well, there's plenty of opportunity. In fact, the primary reason that we're invested internationally is really because it is so far behind in many of the markets that we're in, so far behind the U.S. in terms of the network development in those areas. What it allows for is a much greater runway in terms of growth. We've seen it play out here in the U.S. We have a good sense of what's needed to support each of the new generations of technology and each of the spectrum bands that are becoming available in these various markets. I would expect that the growth over time will be much greater than it is in the U.S. in terms of organic growth. It really should be because of the needs. I'm kind of excited about that.
The challenge has been recently, and it was, by the way, if you go back to the earlier days of our investment in these markets, you saw that it clearly grew faster. I think we will get back to that. Really what's offset that is a lot of the consolidation that has happened in a number of these markets. When you had markets that were a fraction of the size of the U.S. and they had more national carriers than we did here, that dynamic was not going to last long term. We've seen that happening. It's put pressure. Our lease-up has actually been pretty decent, but the churn has kind of offset that.
Even the lease-up has been somewhat negatively impacted over these couple of years due to the consolidations because the carriers have had to focus their attention on integrating those two networks into one combined network. As we start to move beyond that, I think we will see a return to an increased pace of growth in these markets. We're excited to get back to that. I think it will happen in the coming years.
One question that we're asking all the companies attending this conference is how you're approaching AI within your company and the mix of building or buying or partnering for AI solutions. How do you decide if you want to build a solution yourself or buy it in from the outside?
Yeah. Well, we're certainly adapting AI-based solutions within our organization for our own processes and systems and just operating efficiencies. Many of those are internally facing, but some are starting to become externally facing and things that we can offer to our customers too in terms of a view of what's happening at the tower sites with their equipment, with their network, something that we can do more real-time and more electronically. It's actually reducing the number of site visits and tower climbs that have to happen. Internally, the way that we're approaching it at this stage is a little bit more of a broad-based approach. We're not getting too specific into using just one particular tool.
We use a number of the topName tools that you're familiar with, and for different purposes, each one is applied differently based on where we think it is most capable of being helpful. I think over time, it'll allow us to make more informed decisions about what we use. The reality is things change. Something that's the best today may not be the best tomorrow because something new seems to come along. The rapid pace of change is quite significant in this space. You know, for us, it's really just about kind of being selective where we introduce it and also being disciplined in it.
We're not just jumping in without kind of understanding what the risks are. I think we'll start to see, operating efficiencies and synergies that we gain, over these coming years that will be. Will start to become quite impactful, actually.
Another question that we get is regarding satellite, and there's two ways, you know, we get the questions. One way is, you know, what is the risk that satellite LEO constellations can start to take the place of towers, particularly whether it's in rural areas or emerging market areas, you know, that are not well-populated. The second side of it, and it's something that I think that you've been asked before, is are you seeing any interest also in leasing from these companies to try to bolster their networks?
Yeah, I definitely think there's opportunity. We have been having some conversations with some of these folks to understand what their needs are. I think the truth is that they're still very much in the planning phase and trying to understand what's possible and what companies like us can offer. I'm encouraged by how some of those early conversations have gone. I do think it may be a hidden opportunity that people weren't really thinking about early on because as you said, most folks look at it and think of it as a threat. I don't really see it as a threat. The places that you're talking about where it may displace a traditional terrestrial solution are ones where it's not that cost-effective to provide that terrestrial solution today, typically.
It's really a financial decision because the quality of what can be provided is not nearly as good through a satellite solution. If you're talking about a sparsely populated area or providing broad-based coverage for basic functions, then sure, then that may be the way to do it, and it's probably less expensive than trying to have all these individual locations out there. Frankly, we've seen that for years anyway prior to the satellites coming along. There were a lot of places that just aren't covered at all because they weren't financially accretive investments. That already existed, so this may provide, I think more of a complementary solution to cover those areas.
In terms of the more densely populated areas, though, what is needed to provide the types of solutions, and it's growing, by the way, as we move into the world of AI and the types of uplink capacity that will be needed to support more generative AI solutions, the satellite solution is just simply not going to be able to provide it with the same kind of latency, low latency that's required and the speeds that are required. I feel pretty good about our positioning in this, and I'm hopeful in terms of the growth potential from it as these networks are potentially developed and you have a complementary sort of hybrid solution that's a mix of terrestrial and satellite coverage.
You mentioned, you know, earlier in the conversation the contrast, actually a couple times, of private companies versus public companies.
Mm-hmm.
You know, just curious what your perspective is on the opportunity for SBA to consider alternative, you know, forms, whether it makes sense to be a private company, whether there's financial capacity to be a private company over time, and do you think about some of those pros and cons maybe differently today versus the way you would have looked at it previously?
Yeah. I mean, I would say it's not a top-of-mind thing that we spend a lot of time on because we have enough to do in our day job trying to run the company that we've got. I think there are moments where we see the benefits that certain private parties have, but there are also benefits that we have as a public company as well that sometimes they don't. I think, you know, there's trade-offs in both directions, but it's not frankly something that I spend a ton of time thinking about.
Thanks. A question that we've received from our group here today is, you know, they're asking about the debt rolling off over the next two years.
Mm-hmm.
Your incremental cost of debt, and how much of a drag on AFFO growth or AFFO per share growth that that could be, and maybe it's an opportunity to kind of frame the underlying growth of AFFO per share and then maybe unpacking some of the headwinds that might be slowing it down over this period.
Yeah. Well, really, outside of this year with this elevated churn that we talked about earlier. The primary drag on AFFO per share growth is the inter-interest cost. We, you know, I think our next 3 maturities, or maybe counting the 1 that just matured, all have a 1 handle on the coupons that we have in ABS paper that we hold. I think our high-yield debt that's coming up, you know, the next 2 high-yield pieces of paper both have a 3 handle on them. When you look at that relative to where we could finance today, where the market is, obviously the interest costs are going up. That certainly is a headwind to AFFO per share growth, and I think any of you that are looking at a model on SBA know that. You can simply take.
All of it's disclosed. You know exactly what our debt is, when it matures, and what the interest rate is, and you can probably make a fair assumption about what the cost of debt would look like to refinance that debt. You will see that there's significant increases to our interest cost for the next couple of years. You know, if it weren't for the interest expense headwinds, if you normalize that, I think as we get into the next couple of years, you'd see very nice returning to that kind of mid to high single digit growth in AFFO per share. The next couple of years we will have definitely a headwind.
Really, once you get out, I'd say about 2 years or so from now, that will start to normalize out because we'll start to get a number of these refinancings behind us. Hopefully, knock on wood, maybe interest rates will come down a little bit quicker between now and the time of some of these refinancings, and it will actually improve from what today's projections might be.
What is your services business inferring about the leasing activity, and what are you seeing in terms of that, you know, trajectory that it's on?
Our services business has been very strong the last several years. Last year, 2025, was actually the second biggest services year in our history. We saw a lot of activity that was correlated with that. There is a correlation to some degree, although we're very focused in terms of the work that we do. It's really focused on two of the carriers primarily. Sometimes it doesn't tell you everything that's going on, but it definitely gives you a sense with those particular customers. As we look forward into 2026, we've guided to a range that is below what we did last year, although above what we guided to at the beginning of last year 'cause it ended up being much better than we thought at the beginning of the year.
It's still very strong by historical standards, and that is an indicator that the carriers still have a lot of activity going on, and we would expect that to translate, at least in part, into leasing growth. There are some level of services activity that we do that isn't necessarily one-for-one with new leasing activity, but it is an indicator. We do services work across the industry. It's not all just on our towers as well, so we get a good sense of what's happening broadly with the networks.
You ready for our rapid fire?
I guess. If so, I thought we were already doing rapid fire. All right, go ahead.
What will be the most pertinent same-store growth KPI for your property sector overall, not your company, in 2027, and do you have a prediction of, you know, what that will grow at?
In 2027? Well, we historically always look at AFFO per share as being kind of the key item. I think, to some degree, AFFO per share, excluding the impact of interest headwinds, is probably the most important thing because it's an indicator of the steady state long term.
Do you have a prediction on the growth rate for the category? Not for your company.
Well, everybody, you have to take out the interest cost because everybody's in a different place in timing. I think if you do that, somewhere in that mid to high single digits % range.
Great. Will your property sector have more, fewer, or the same number of public companies a year from now?
I assume the same.
Great. Thank you so much for joining us today.
All right. Great. Thanks, Mike.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
It's great to see you.