By Lisa Beilfuss
Cell-tower owner Crown Castle International Corp. said Thursday
that it has reached a deal to sell its Australian subsidiary CCAL
for about $1.6 billion in cash to a consortium of private equity
investors, as it focuses on expanding its U.S. network.
Crown expects net proceeds of approximately $1.3 billion and
said it intends to use the proceeds in part to finance its $1
billion acquisition of Sunesys, a subsidiary of Quanta Services,
Inc., which it announced last month. The Sunesys deal is a move to
widen Crown's fiber footprint and increase its presence in large
U.S. markets.
The CCAL transaction is expected to close during the quarter.
The group of buyers is led by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real
Assets.
"The sale of CCAL allows us to redeploy capital towards our
growing small cell networks, which we expect will be accretive to
our long-term AFFO and dividend per share growth rates," said Chief
Executive Ben Moreland. AFFO is a closely watched measure of
performance for real-estate investment trusts, or REITs, that
measures a trust's net income. Crown converted to a REIT last
year.
The U.S. market makes up about 96% of the company's total
revenue. Crown said the Australian business was expected to
contribute about $97 million to $102 million to the overall
adjusted Ebitda--or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation
and amortization--of $2.145 billion to $2.16 billion the company
expects to report this year.
Companies like Crown Castle, which buy or build portfolios of
cell towers that they then rent to carriers, have grown amid a wave
of consolidation and investment driven by increased demand for
wireless Internet. In late 2013, Crown struck a $4.85 billion deal
to lease some towers and buy others from AT&T Inc. Earlier,
Crown spent $1 billion to buy NextG Networks Inc.
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