SBA Communications Corporation (NASDAQ:SBAC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of David Barden with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi everyone. This is Alex on for Dave. First off, I just want to send our congratulations to you both Jeff and Brendan. Maybe just first on the international new leasing just flat year-over-year, does the expected cadence for that, should that €“ should we see that kind of ramp up through the year and exiting 2023? And then I know you just kind of touched on some of the carrier dynamics in Brazil. Could you maybe just touch on the spectrum auction as well as the recent presidential election last year? Thanks.

Brendan Cavanagh: Yes. The international leasing revenue cadence should be fairly balanced throughout the year. Unlike in the U.S., when we talked about a decline, that’s really U.S.-related. Internationally, we would expect it to be pretty steady throughout the year. And then on the other €“ I am sorry, the other carriers in the 5G auctions. Yes, I mean we are €“ those auctions have put spectrum into the hands of these carriers. With the consolidation now of Oi, it’s going to €“ we believe it’s going to actually be positive long-term. Once they kind of get beyond these synergies, there is some work to be done here in this first year or 2 years post merger. But I think as they get beyond that in order to compete as we believe they will now much more on network quality and 5G services, we expect that to be a big driver of leasing growth going forward.

And just as it happens here in the U.S. and in other markets, the need to put that spectrum to work is the only way to get that investment to pay off. So, we believe there is a lot of opportunity longer term now in Brazil as a result.

Jeff Stoops: And in terms of the political landscape, Lula obviously took the presidency, but the Bolsonaro group took the rest of Congress. So, you have what you have similar to the United States, which is a split Congress. And when that typically happens, it’s the same that occurs here, which is it’s very hard to get anything done there materially. And that ultimately, I think endures to the benefit of existing businesses. So, we don’t €“ in the current landscape, where you have that kind of a split representation, we don’t anticipate anything material coming out.

Unidentified Analyst: Thank you.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Brendan Lynch with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Brendan Lynch: Great. Thank you And congrats to Jeff and Brendan on the new developments. There was a lot of questions on M&A. Maybe you could discuss potential new markets and give us an update on the Philippines and Tanzania. And then secondly, Brendan, if I heard you correctly, there weren’t any collections issues related to Oi, but accounts receivable did tick up about $67 million quarter-over-quarter. Maybe you could provide some color what’s behind that. Thanks.

Brendan Cavanagh: Yes. On the last one, the tick-up is really actually just a timing issue in terms of collections because of the year-end. It’s as simple as where the holidays fall and where payments were made, plus there were some services-related AR that we expect will actually come down over time.

Jeff Stoops: Yes. In terms of M&A, I mean we continued to take an opportunistic approach to new markets. We will go into a new market based on our demographic and operational analysis as well as country stability, risk, taxation, currency. So, with certainly some exceptions that we would never look to go into under current circumstances, any country that we are not in today is a potential opportunity. And Tanzania is doing very well. Tanzania is ahead of our internal projections and the modeling that we did at the time of the acquisition. It is a dynamic country that is growing, and we are very optimistic about the future in Tanzania.

Brendan Lynch: Okay. Thank you.

Jeff Stoops: Next question.

Operator: Next question comes from the line of Batya Levi with UBS. Please go ahead.

Batya Levi: Great. Thank you. Congrats to both. A couple of questions. First, on the domestic churn, you have been pushing it out throughout the last year or so. Is it truly just timing, or do you think that some of that decommissioning activity that the carrier anticipated is actually not going to pan out, or is it a mixture of both? And to the extent that you see activity from carriers where they support fixed wireless service, have you started to see some incremental amendment activity in that region, or is it too early to tell? Thank you.

Brendan Cavanagh: On the domestic churn, the timing, which is all Sprint, T-Mobile merger-related is truly just timing. We expect that the total amount that we will incur will be the same as what we have kind of guided to in the past. We just think it takes a little bit longer to get some of that done, but we don’t expect any changes.

Jeff Stoops: Yes. And in terms of the fixed wireless, we believe what our customers say that it basically is a product that results from excess capacity that currently exists in the network after at least where they have deployed a lot of mid-band spectrum. That really just works off the existing macros bat yet, so we haven’t seen anything that we would clearly and particularly identify as incremental. Although there have been some reports where microwave, millimeter wave spectrum would be broadcast off the macro sites to help with the fixed wireless initiative. We hope that comes to pass, obviously, but we haven’t seen that happen just yet.

Batya Levi: Alright. Thank you.

Operator: And our next question comes from Brandon Nispel with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.