Crown Castle Inc. (NYSE:CCI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Greg Williams: Great. Thanks. Just wanted to touch on the M&A comments you mentioned, and you choose to build rather than buy per se. Does that imply that private fiber multiples just remain stubbornly high? And are they coming down to any degree? And do you foresee them coming down in the next few quarters? Second question is just actually on cable. We’ve been fairly dismissive that they are going to be touching the towers per se, but more on CBRS deployment on their own air strands, but there is possible conversations of cable getting more aggressive and a more macro facilities-based network and just wanted to see here if you had any updates on conversations with cable? Thanks.

Jay Brown: Sure. On your first question, I would say it’s €“ on some level, it’s probably a function of price. It’s more likely a function of our targeted approach to which assets we want to own. In order for a fiber asset acquisition to be attractive to us, it needs to be in dense urban areas. It needs to have high fiber strand count, and we need to have visibility that those areas are going to have or likely to have significant lease-up for small cells. And the reason why you haven’t seen us do any fiber acquisitions in the last 5 years is much more related to the fact that we haven’t seen anything meet those criteria than, frankly, it is price. We just haven’t seen the opportunity to acquire assets that meet the criteria that’s going to drive long-term growth from the wireless carriers from the deployment of small cells.

And we are going to remain disciplined on that front, continue to believe the vast majority of the fiber that we will accumulate over time will be as a result of building it rather than acquiring it because we just don’t see a lot of assets in the market that meet our criteria for assets that we would want to own. On your second question, I believe that cable over the long-term is a very attractive opportunity for us to increase our growth rates and think that we will see leasing from the cable operators. We will see some of that on macro side. Frankly, I think we will probably see more of that in our small cell business, given the places that they tend to deploy infrastructure as they think about the density of population and users. So, I think it’s more likely that we will benefit from the deployment of network by the cable operators using their various spectrum bands.

We will see €“ we are more likely, I think to see that in small cells over a long period of time than we are in macro sites, but do think macro sites will benefit from cable.

Greg Williams: Well. Thank you.

Operator: The next question is from Nick Del Deo of SVB MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.

Nick Del Deo: Hey. Good morning guys. Jay, you noted that about half the sites on your towers have been upgraded with mid-band 5G spectrum, very interesting statistics. So, thanks for sharing that. I guess do you see any meaningful differences in that percentage between more urban towers versus suburban towers versus more rural towers, or is it reasonably consistent across the board? And I guess maybe to build on some of the previous comments you have made, what does your work suggest with respect to how high that number needs to get before carrier starts to pivot more noticeably towards co-locations?

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