SBA Communications at 33rd Annual Conference: Strategic Growth Amid Challenges

On Monday, 10 March 2025, SBA Communications Corp (NASDAQ: SBAC) participated in the 33rd Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference. The discussion centered on the company’s strategic plans for 2025 and beyond, highlighting both opportunities and challenges. CEO Brandon Cavanaugh emphasized leveraging the improving leasing environment in the U.S. while acknowledging headwinds from Sprint churn and rising interest rates.

Key Takeaways

• SBA Communications projects steady growth in new leasing revenue, driven by 5G deployments.
• The company anticipates a Sprint churn impact of $50 million to $52 million in 2025.
• International focus is on Latin America, with the Millicom acquisition expected to boost growth.
• SBA plans to continue growing its dividend at a double-digit rate.
• The company maintains a positive outlook on long-term growth despite current challenges.

Financial Results

The financial outlook for SBA Communications reflects both growth prospects and challenges:

• New leasing revenue is projected at $35 million to $39 million in 2025, with each quarter surpassing the previous one.
• The Sprint churn impact is estimated at $50 million to $52 million in 2025, with a similar impact expected in 2026.
• AFFO per share is expected to decline in 2025 due to financing costs.
• The company aims to maintain a double-digit growth rate for its dividend, currently at a 35% payout ratio of AFFO.
• SBA acquired Millicom at an 11 times EBITDA multiple.

Operational Updates

SBA Communications is focusing on both U.S. and international operations:

• In the U.S., increased application activity is driven by 5G deployments, with expectations for higher quarterly contributions.
• SBA is expanding its network to meet regulatory commitments and sees increased colocation applications from major carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon.
• Internationally, the Millicom acquisition involves over 7,000 towers and a new build-to-suit agreement in Central America.
• SBA has exited markets in the Philippines and Colombia but is focusing on Brazil and Central America, with challenges in Brazil due to carrier consolidation.

Future Outlook

Looking ahead, SBA Communications plans to:

• Focus on executing organic business opportunities in the U.S. and internationally.
• Invest in high-returning quality assets, with a positive outlook on the Millicom deal.
• Explore new spectrum opportunities, though they anticipate these will take time to develop.
• Maintain optimism about long-term growth in Brazil despite current market challenges.

Q&A Highlights

Key discussion points during the Q&A session included:

• The potential impact of satellites on the tower industry, viewed as complementary rather than a replacement.
• Opportunities arising from BEAD funding, with increased openness towards wireless broadband.
• Confidence in the resilience of terrestrial networks despite satellite advancements.

In conclusion, SBA Communications remains focused on executing its strategic plans while navigating industry challenges. For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 33rd Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference:

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: All right.

Matt, Analyst: If everybody can go ahead and please take their seats, we’re going to go ahead and get started with our next session. We’re pleased to welcome back SBA Communications’ CEO, Brandon Cavanaugh. Brandon, welcome.

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Thank you, Matt. It’s great to be here.

Matt, Analyst: Great. Great to have you. So maybe just to start out, what’s top of mind for you as SBA enters 2025 in terms of top priorities? And what do you see is the biggest differences entering this year, if any, relative to this point a year ago?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. Well, I mean, for me personally, obviously, a year ago, it was my I was just I just moved into the CEO role, and so there was a lot of time being spent on kind of establishing what our focus was going to be, getting the team sort of rallied, getting the right people in the right seats. And we’ve accomplished a lot of that as we sit here a year later. So this year, it’s really about executing. There’s not any major strategic change, but it’s about executing and taking advantage of the improving environment in terms of leasing activity with our customers here in The U.

S. I’m sure we’ll get into that a little bit, so I won’t dwell on that. But taking advantage of an improving environment and really kind of reaching out more to our customers and making sure that we shore up those relationships and secure as much of the opportunity set that we think is out there for this upcoming year, really the next couple of years. So that’s the primary focus for this year, but it doesn’t vary that much from where we were a year ago, other than the environment being a little bit better.

Matt, Analyst: Great. It’s a great segue. So you’ve talked about increasing application activity in The U. S. Exiting last year.

Services guide for this year implies about 11% growth for 25%. So as we think about the demand backdrop, maybe you can speak to what’s driving the step up across carriers and whether we’re maybe pivoting from more five gs coverage towards more infill intensification?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I think each carrier has a little bit of a nuance difference between them in terms of where they are. But overall, you’ve got a more favorable environment. It was really slow for the last couple of years. And so you had this situation where obviously obviously the cost of capital was higher.

I think the lack of that sort of killer five gs app allowed them the opportunity to be a little bit slower in their rollout. So if you look at what happened over the last several years after the Sprint T Mobile merger, T Mobile had access before the other two incumbents to mid band spectrum, the 2.5 spectrum. And they did get out ahead in terms of deploying that five gs spectrum. And in the past, you would have seen a dynamic where it would have driven the other two carriers to say, hey, we need to invest quickly to catch up to close that competitive gap. And I think there was a little bit less of that because there wasn’t this driver like there was with LTE where the end subscriber was saying, hey, I’ve got to be on the five gs network in order to do whatever it is I want to do.

And that really wasn’t happening. And I think most people can attest to that as kind of end users of their services. And so because of that, the deployment of the C band spectrum, although they were very aggressive in acquiring it, AT and T and Verizon, was a little bit slower in its rollout. And now where we are as we’re seeing sort of that pickup in terms of of the Sprint merger in order to of the Sprint merger in order to provide coverage into more rural and underserved areas, but not only provide coverage, increased downlink speeds. And as a result, that requires a much denser network.

And so we’re seeing significant increase in the number of brand new leases, new colocation applications from T Mobile. In addition, we’re seeing more new colocation applications from the others as well, AT and T and Verizon. And I would say that’s a little bit more around densification. So their focus is more the C band rollout upgrades at the amendment side of it and more infill in order to densify the network. And T Mobile is heavily focused on expanding the network out in order to meet their regulatory commitments.

Matt, Analyst: Great, great. So you’ve guided for 2025, ’30 ’5 million dollars to $39,000,000 new leasing in The U. S. It’s somewhat of a modest pickup relative to the $8,500,000 exit rate for 4Q. So maybe if you can help us think about the quarterly cadence for new leasing and what maybe the potential drivers of upside could be?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Sure. Well, I do expect in 2025 within that outlook that those numbers that we provided that each quarter throughout the year will be a higher contribution than the prior quarter. So it will increase steadily during the year. But basically, you got to go back to the basics of how our business works. We’re signing agreements.

There’s an application that comes in. We go through a process to negotiate the specifics around that application, whether it’s a new amendment or a new lease. And we sign that agreement and then there’s a delay before you actually have the commencement of that revenue. It’s usually tied to the timing of when equipment gets installed out at the tower site. And so with a new lease, and I mentioned sort of the shift towards more new lease contributions versus amendments, that’s a longer cycle.

It’s usually about six to nine months from the time you execute the agreement to when it commences, when the installation takes place and the revenue kicks in. And so what we’re talking about in terms of this increased activity is increased applications, increased executions as well, but we’re in the early stages of that in terms of its impact to the P and L. And so as I said, we expect to see it grow all the way throughout the year and we should exit the year at the highest point of the year in terms of the contribution from new leasing revenue.

Matt, Analyst: If we think about five gs and I think the conversation around AI comes up, maybe towers are a little bit less discussed in that conversation, but I’m going to ask the question anyways in terms of how you see the proliferation of AI ultimately manifesting in terms of wireless data usage and tower leasing demand. So do you sense that this fits into the sort of typical annual wireless data growth of roughly, call it, 20%, thirty %? Or could it be an accelerant?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I think it’s a little early to know for sure whether it could be an accelerant, but it’s at least, at a minimum, a contributor we expect to increase mobile broadband consumption. And that’s really the big pickup for the tower companies is just the opportunity to have another element that’s driving increased usage and demand on the networks. And as that happens, there’s only a couple of ways to solve that. One is the deployment of densifying the networks with more equipment, additional antennas and radios.

And really in either case, the tower industry benefits from that. The new equipment in order to handle the new spectrum is deployed at our sites and obviously if you’re identifying, that’s a positive as well. So that’s the biggest driver we see. Of course, we are using AI increasingly internally in order to become more efficient to provide better information to our customers, which I think increases the relationship and the benefits that they see in working with a professional organization like ours as opposed to some of the smaller organizations that maybe aren’t that sophisticated in what they offer. But overall, in terms of a driver or an accelerant, it’s going to be that increased bandwidth consumption.

And we’ll just have to see how significant that is as the applications get more developed.

Matt, Analyst: One of the headwinds the business has faced, not unique to SBA, but the industry has been sprint churned. Maybe you can just remind us of expectations for sprint churn. What’s left in ’twenty five and ’twenty six as well as maybe a little bit in ’7?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Sure. Yes. So we gave these numbers out actually with our earnings a couple of weeks ago. We guided to a Sprint churn impact in 2025 of between 50,000,000 and $52,000,000 We also mentioned that we expect that next year, the impact will be approximately $50,000,000 of churn. And then there’s about $20,000,000 in total, we believe thereafter.

A lot of that will probably be in 2027, but it’s really that’s sort of the catch all bucket. And so we’re getting near the end of that. It’s interesting just as a minor comment on it. We some people say, Oh, well, it’s unfortunate that you still have this and your peers don’t. And the interesting thing is back before the merger took place, we actually entered into an agreement with Sprint where we extended all of their leases out.

And as a result, we benefited from that in that we were able to continue to collect revenue on leases that they don’t actually need and aren’t in many cases even using. And so it was really a positive thing, but it’s turned into a little bit of a negative because we still continue to have those leases in place and so the churn has been delayed out. But that’s my excuse for why it’s still there. But it’s ultimately, we’re at the end, I would say, these next couple of years and then it’ll be nice to not have to talk about it anymore.

Matt, Analyst: And once you do in fact move past that, how should we think about long term steady state annual growth for The U. S. Tower business?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I think you’re looking at mid single digits as sort of the normal. And the way I think about that is that you’ve got fixed escalators across almost all of our contracts here in The U. S. That average, we’ll say, 3%.

It’s actually higher than three percent is the average, but say approximately 3%. So that’s fixed growth from that. And then you have the lease up, which is probably is between 24%. It’s 2% when things are really slow and when all the carriers are active at the same time and aggressively spending is closer to 4%. So you’ve got that range.

And then you have the churn impact and post the Sprint churn, it’s historically been 1% to 2%. I think that’s a reasonable assumption, although we’ve seen it actually coming down further and further. And so I think we expect 1% is not an unreasonable assumption. So if you put all that together and you average it out, you’re somewhere around 5% or somewhere between 46% depending on that lease up contribution. Got it.

Matt, Analyst: One of the other, I would say perceived risks, it’s been talked about a lot, but satellites. There’s a lot of discussion from carrier customers, the government maybe using more satellite to supplement existing cell coverage. How do you handicap the risk, if any, to your business here? Is there maybe a little bit less addressable market opportunity in rural markets? And I guess, maybe to sort of dovetail on that, what are you hearing from your carrier customers in terms of their plans?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I would characterize the risk as very minimal based on our understanding of what’s actually available. In fact, we consider the advent of satellites as it relates to some sort of direct to sell type of coverage to be largely complementary. You’re talking about a focus on much more rural areas, maritime, aviation, national parks, those kinds of things. And the reason for that is that it’s just not cost effective to cover those areas with a traditional terrestrial macro based network.

And that’s why the coverage is lacking in those spots. And so it provides a solution. And that’s why I think the carriers are aligning in a number of cases with some of the satellite providers to try and provide that solution to those areas that it’s just not cost effective to otherwise cover and the reason that they don’t cover those areas. In terms of it being a risk though, I think it’s very limited because there’s a number of limiting factors. You have power issues in the devices, you’ve got spectrum issues in terms of the lack of availability of that, the latency that exists today and the fact that it’s going to be very expensive to constantly have to replacing these satellites.

And it’s not just the satellites. I always think about it at our tower sites, a lot of our growth has come from a constant need to be upgrading the equipment at the tower site, and we’ve benefited from that. But the carriers have had to be out there on a regular basis, sometimes every few years. Well, that dynamic doesn’t change if the service was being provided by a satellite. And so it’s not as easy to change the antennas at a satellite as it is at a tower site.

You actually have to the whole thing. So it’s a very expensive proposition. And I think if you talk to any of the satellite folks, they’ll tell you that this is not a replacement for the existing terrestrial networks. It’s really a complement.

Matt, Analyst: We just had a regulatory panel right before this session and there was talk of BEED. And I think it’s no question there was maybe a bigger tilt towards fiber deployments for BEED under the prior administration. It seems

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: like maybe there’s a little bit

Matt, Analyst: more openness towards being more, you could say technology agnostic. Does that benefit SBA in the tower industry to the extent that there’s maybe more wireless broadband? And is that something that maybe could become a tailwind over the next several years?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. That’s definitely a positive because it was in our view and we’ve actually through WIA, our industry association have been making this argument for some time that the bias towards fiber was really too much because that wasn’t the point. The point is to provide access to these communities to broadband. And in some in a number of cases, the more efficient way to do that was through a wireless solution, a fixed wireless solution. And so we’ve seen that developing more and more with the carriers and the service that they’re offering.

And so the technology has been proven out much greater, I think, since the original thinking around BEED. And so I’m hopeful that the new administration’s interest and openness to having it expanded to really focus on broadband access as opposed to a particular method or technology for doing it will be beneficial. And I do think as a result, if you see that start to happen, it certainly can only be a positive for company like us.

Matt, Analyst: On The U. S, maybe just to expand a little bit more, how do you think about the prospects for new spectrum coming to market, whether it’s the upper C band, maybe Department of Defense spectrum, are there frequencies you think are more likely to come to market sooner?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: That’s hard to say. The DoD spectrum, I think that was mentioned on the previous panel too as being something that would probably be there’d be a fight to the death over that to give up some of that. But there’s definitely a desire by our customers to get their hands on more spectrum. I think this administration has also made it more of a priority to make spectrum available. But the truth is it’s been a while now since you’ve had new spectrum bands auctioned off.

It It will probably be a little while even if it is accelerated till you see that again. And then the whole process of having to clear that spectrum and actually get it deployed, you’re looking at many years out before it’s actually available to be used, I think, in the way that it’s been used in the past for wireless deployment, particularly by the MNOs. And so it’s important, I think, that it happens, and we’re certainly supportive of that. And I do think it’s good for our business as well. But I think you’re looking at minimum three to five years before you would see any impact from it.

Matt, Analyst: Let’s pivot to the international business. If you can talk about your outlook for this year, for your international segment and the latest you’re seeing in terms of your top markets?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. So our international business is heavily concentrated in Latin America, particularly Brazil is our biggest market. We have recently announced a significant acquisition that we haven’t closed yet from Millicom, who’s a carrier in Latin America, but particularly in Central America. We’re buying over 7,000 towers from them as well as having entered into a brand new build to suit agreement with them for significant expansion further expansion in Central America. So we’re going to have a pretty heavy concentration in Brazil, Central America and then we have two markets in Africa.

We are seeing great opportunity in Central America, particularly with this acquisition. And we can talk more about that now or later if you like. But I do see that as a significant growth area for us given the way that it’s setting up. Brazil is a little more challenged today. You have basically four carriers have gone to three carriers in that market.

And unlike here where you had Sprint and T Mobile merge, you had fourth carrier, Oi, be absorbed by the other three carriers. So it was also this business was split up among the three carriers. And that difference does create a little bit of a different dynamic in how they’re dealing with it. I think there’s a little more confusion perhaps in the rationalization of the network. And as a result, there is more churn that we’re seeing.

And I think it’s going to take a little bit of time. The carrier’s attention is focused there. Having said all that, I do think the long term setup will be very positive in Brazil because the three carriers will be much stronger. It’ll be a much better position. They’re much further behind The U.

S. In terms of their five gs coverage. And so I think the opportunity set to see significant growth as we look a few years out is positive. But we do have a window that will be a little bit tough for us, I think, the next few years in terms of some elevated churn.

Matt, Analyst: Let’s dig into Millicom. If we can maybe go through the rationale for the deal, what makes Central America different relative to some of the other smaller markets that you’ve been exiting recently?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Sure. Yes. So let me just kind of go back to the overall approach. A year ago, we talked about a strategy that was very much focused on stabilization of our cash flows and how do we do that, the quality of that cash flow. And so we did a deep dive, a strategic review of all of our international markets and said, how do we stand, what’s the future look like, what are the different potential paths that we could take?

And what might that produce for us in any direction? And how realistic is it, frankly? And as we went through that, one of the things that we recognized in looking back at the places where we’ve been successful and those where we haven’t been is that it’s critical in our opinion, it is critical to be in a leading position in the market to be either the number one or number two carrier in any of the markets that we’re in because the carriers don’t want to deal with you, your ability to have access to them to negotiate favorable opportunities into the future is very limited if you’re in a minimum in a smaller or subscale position. So being a leading provider is critical. The other thing is, it’s very important to be aligned with one of the leading carriers in the market.

If you have an over indexing to one of the weaker providers, we’ve seen unfortunately the impacts of that because you have consolidation that is going to take place in a number of these markets. In the case of Central America, the consolidation has largely already taken place. But there are a number of benefits to this particular deal. One, it ensures that we’re forever the number one tower provider in the market. We’re the leading tower company for the long haul there.

Number two, we’re aligned with the leading carrier in the market. And so that puts us in a very strong position. We happen to have a very good relationship with the number two carrier in the region, which is Claro, America Movia. And I think the opportunity set for growth as they are a fast follower and chaser of Millicom today in these markets will be very positive for us with this portfolio. Third, everything is denominated in U.

S. Dollars. That’s a huge difference maker. It’s been a challenge for us in Brazil. Frankly, the currency has been a headwind and it introduced an element of instability into what is otherwise a very stable business.

And so shifting our concentration of currency more back towards the U. S. Dollar concentration, I think is very favorable. In addition, it was an accretive deal. We paid 11 times and 11 times EBITDA multiple for that.

We haven’t paid it yet, but we will pay an 11 times multiple. We in exchange for Millicom got fifteen year non cancelable lease commitment back along with an all or nothing renewal term. So that gives us confidence in the long even longer term beyond the fifteen years. And so all of those dynamics combined with the build to suit that gives us a growth engine and frankly ensures that other people can’t come in and sort of get in the way in those markets makes us feel very, very good about our future prospects there. And I didn’t mention them.

One other thing is we got a fifteen year extension, new lease term on all of our existing leases that were on our existing sites in the market as well. So it solidified that and removed any risk that might exist there.

Matt, Analyst: Where are your key international markets? And maybe we’ll zone in on Brazil and Central America in terms of five gs coverage and deployments relative to The U. S. How far behind are you?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: They’re pretty far behind. I would say, in The U. S, when we look at the way that we sort of determine how far along they are is we look at our portfolio of leases with the big three carriers and say, how many of those sites have been upgraded with mid band five gs spectrum. And on average, that’s 55 ish percent here in The U. S.

It’s not the same for all the carriers, but that’s the average among the three. And when we look at that same sort of dynamic in our international markets, it’s closer to 30 ish percent. They’re not all in the same bucket, somewhere actually much lower than that, but it’s around 30% or so. So there’s a pretty good gap there and we believe as a result a pretty good opportunity to see additional growth going forward.

Matt, Analyst: Is the mix of new activity internationally materially different as we think about the colo and amendment mix?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: It is it has shifted towards more new leases as well, not quite to the extent that it has here in The U. S. Recently. But we’re seeing that actually in both markets, if you will, The U. S.

And international markets.

Matt, Analyst: The churn tied to carrier consolidation, you referenced it a little bit, but that’s been a bigger headwind to growth internationally. You talked a little bit about Oi. Are there other factors beyond Oi? And I guess more broadly, how should investors think about the duration of these elevated churn levels in terms of how long do you anticipate them being here?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I mean, Brazil, I mentioned before, as being elevated for a period of time here. And so I think you’re going to see that for the next two years, two to three years that it will be similar to the levels that it’s at right now. It’s our estimate. It’s hard to know for sure because we’re guesstimating what we think the carriers will do.

We haven’t necessarily gotten those notifications in all cases. But I would think it would be similar to the next few years here. In the other markets where we’ve seen higher churn over the last couple of years, I think we should see that improve because we’ve been as I mentioned before in Central America, in many cases, we’re largely through the churn. We have some remnants of it that are still occurring. But as you get through the consolidations, you have less actually available to churn off because it’s really not at the heart of, oh, we just don’t need these leases.

You occasionally have that, but it’s really about some rationalization to the network or it’s carriers that just don’t survive. They may not be consolidated. For instance, Digicel in Panama was a big component of our churn in the last couple of years and they basically shut down because they couldn’t survive. And when you look at it, you stand back and you look at it, it makes sense. I mean, if we have basically three carriers here in The U.

S, if you go to a country like Panama, the size of Panama, it’s not going to support four carriers. And that’s what we’ve seen happen as it shrunk.

Matt, Analyst: And so longer term, once M and A churn abates, we think about more of a steady state for the international business. What does longer term organic growth look like there relative to The U. S. Where we’re talking about maybe mid singles? Could it be a little bit stronger internationally just considering maybe the lag with five gs technology?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I think it should be stronger. And part of that perhaps is the lag in terms of where they are technology wise. But I would say it’s even more just a relative maturity overall. The U.

S. Is in a more mature state. The cash flow per tower, per lease, per tenant is much, much higher, even adjusted for the relative values of the different markets. So I think naturally you should expect on a percentage basis that over time you would be able to generate higher lease up contributions and higher organic growth as a result internationally in most of these markets.

Matt, Analyst: You referenced the portfolio review. I think it was about a year ago, where that was maybe starting. So you highlighted some of the actions you’ve taken so far or planned as a result of the review. Can you maybe put in terms of a higher from a higher level point of view, what’s been accomplished and what’s left? And is there sort of a target you have in terms of maybe regional exposure, how you’d like a portfolio to be allocated?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I mean, it was really about, as I said a few moments ago, about the stabilization of the cash flows and the quality of it. And so I wouldn’t say it’s over. I think a lot of our initial reviews are certainly over, but action steps taken continue to go on. And I think they will for some period of time.

There’s you don’t have an there’s not an immediate answer in every case that you effect. But I mentioned the Millicom deal a moment ago, we were talking about that. A big part of that was an avenue that we identified to improve our position in Central America. And that’s why we took the step that we did. It was a way to enhance our positioning and the quality of the cash flow in markets where we already had a presence and to give us greater scale.

In other cases, there were places where we didn’t feel that we had a great opportunity to do something like that. And so we made the decision to exit. So over the last year and a half or so, we’ve exited three markets or in the process of that. Argentina, a little over a year ago, but just recently The Philippines and Colombia that we just announced a couple of weeks ago that we would be exiting. And it was really just because we’re very subscale in

Matt, Analyst: those markets and the opportunity to

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: improve our position we felt was quite limited. And to improve our position we felt was quite limited. And so we made the decision that it was better to focus our attention and resources in places where we could actually drive greater organic growth. And so that’s what we did. There are other markets that we would like to find ways to improve our positioning on.

And if we can do that, that’s our preferred path to go. But if we can’t, then there would perhaps be a few others where we are currently subscale that we might decide to leave. But that’s not our number one goal. Our number one goal is to improve the relative positioning and the quality of what we have there. And if we can’t see a way to continue to grow, then then we would look to do the same thing we did, for instance, in The Philippines and Colombia.

Matt, Analyst: What’s the latest on SBA Edge? And how does that fit within the broader SBA portfolio? SBA Edge, Adam? Yes.

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: This is something that we spent a lot of time on many years ago and we continue to have those operations. We own three data centers in secondary or tertiary markets and we invested in those really as a way to educate ourselves more on the basics of how to run a data center business with the idea being that at some point, there would be the need potentially for edge computing that had to go all the way to the edge. The word edge is used by a lot of different people to mean a lot of different things. In our thinking of it, edge is all the way at the edge, meaning right at the edge of the wireless network at the tower site. And so we haven’t really seen that develop.

Honestly, at this stage, there hasn’t been a need to necessarily be at that point of the network where you have to have that immediate interconnection to the wireless networks. I think there’s still certainly a reasonable possibility that that develops over time. But what we’ve recognized is that we already have the asset that’s most important in that case. We have the towers, we have the land, we have the locations. And so if that develops, we’ll be well positioned for it.

And I think our experience with the data centers that we’ve been running will have us better suited for it. But I don’t think it’s any sort of near term material contributor to our growth.

Matt, Analyst: So when we distill all this, when you’ve maybe been optimizing the portfolio, let’s say, There’s some spring churn headwinds, there’s some debt refinancing headwinds, but I guess if we take a step back, what is longer term organic or maybe we’ll say organic revenue, which we touched on a little bit, What does AFFO per share growth look like on a more normalized long term basis?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. Well, obviously, we have a great business in terms of the incremental margins for everything that we add. So as we add additional revenues like we talked about before, and if that’s at a mid single digits level in The U. S, as it drops further down the P and L to EBITDA and then ultimately to AFFO, it’s almost 100% dropping down to the bottom line. So the relative growth contribution to that is greater.

The challenge that we have when you get to AFFO, at least today, is you have financing costs, of course, in there. And we did an excellent job for many, many years securing very low cost debt. In fact, our next three maturities all have a one handle on the coupon. Well, that’s great, but it’s not so great when you’re refinancing them at a rate that is three times the current rate. And so we have this headwind of interest costs ahead of us over the next several years and that is what will weigh on AFFO growth.

In fact, this year in 2025, we guided to a down year, year over year in AFFO per share. And I think that’s the first time I believe in our history as a first time that I can recall. And so it’s always been a very steady grower. In fact, it was growing in the mid teens for a long time. And so we’ve seen that slow, but it’s mostly due to the financing headwinds, the churn, the Sprint churn obviously plays a role in it as well.

So your question I think was, what is it normalized? And if I say normalized consists of no financing headwinds and the Sprint churn behind us, then I would say a high single digits is mid to high single digits, something a little bit higher than the revenue number that we talked about would be sort of a normal level that we would expect to see that growth at. Got it. You were

Matt, Analyst: the former CFO, so I’m going to ask you a couple of CFO questions. Can you just maybe first off, just to start, as we think about cap allocation, you obviously have the Millicom deal, which is I believe closing at the end of 3Q. Beyond that, as we think about just broader uses of excess cash, how do you think about that in terms of just beyond the dividend? How do you think about sort of opportunities for deploying capital?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. We have it really isn’t that different than it’s been in the past. The cost of capital is a little bit different and that’s created some challenges in terms of the opportunity set for new assets, particularly acquisitions because you’ve got dynamic mainly in The U. S, you have a dynamic where valuations have been for some time disconnected in terms of where public valuations are versus private valuations. And so as a result, the opportunity set has been less.

And frankly, just the sheer number, that’s part of the reason for that disconnect is you have a supply demand imbalance. There’s less assets available to buy than there is dollars available with private participants to invest in it. So that’s created a dynamic where we haven’t been able to be as acquisitive as we were in our earlier days. But it would be our preferred path to grow our portfolio. We We are going to do a decent number of new builds this year.

You mentioned the Millicom deal that accounts for almost $1,000,000,000 of capital. So we have some calls on that for this year, and we would like to continue to invest in assets. If we don’t see the opportunity to add additional assets, then I would expect that you will see a mix of what we’ve done historically. We’ve been a big stock repurchaser over our lifetime. We haven’t done as much recently in part because of the higher cost of capital and some things we were working on, some of which came to fruition like Millicom, others that didn’t that we had to kind of manage through and be cognizant of what we had in hand in terms of our liquidity.

But going forward, you should expect to see a mix of buybacks and some delevering too if the cost of money continues to stay high. So it should be a balanced approach between acquisitions, new builds, buybacks and perhaps some delevering. Yes, it’s

Matt, Analyst: a good segue. If you think about delevering, what’s your latest thinking around optimal leverage for SBA? And is there anything that would cause you to perhaps consider moving below six turns?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. I mean, eventually, that’s going to happen. So we’ve actually been resisting that a little bit. And as we find other better opportunities like I was discussing a moment ago, we don’t see a need to delever. In fact, the main reason to de lever is to become investment grade.

And the main reason to become investment grade is in order to ideally produce a lower cost of debt financing. We haven’t seen that much of a discrepancy in actually the cost of debt financing because we’ve had access to the ABS market and using that secured source of funding has allowed us to get very close to an IG level of debt. It’s a little bit higher, but let’s say it’s 50 basis points. That differential in cost, it hasn’t made sense to us to give up the potential flexibility of more significant investments in order to achieve that. Now we produce a ton of free cash flow every year.

We organically delever very quickly. And I think as we move beyond the Millicom acquisition, if we don’t find something of size to replace it with, even if we are a more material repurchase of our own stock, you’re going to start to see deleveraging happen naturally anyway. And so at that point, we have a decision to make. But right now sitting here today, I like the flexibility that we have. I like the optionality.

And frankly, locking in long term non callable, right thing to do to me. I think there’s, there’s a future where we will see lower rates and that there might be a better time for that. So for now, we’re comfortable at our leverage level and we’ll see where we are when we have this conversation a year from now.

Matt, Analyst: You also raised the dividend recently by about 13%. Your payout ratio still sits at about 35% of AFFO. Where do you see that going over time?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Well, the payout ratio is certainly going to go up over time. Part of the approach for us has been to manage the NOL balances that we have to take advantage of those tax attributes. We’ve been able to be a sizable grower of our dividend, a double digit grower for really since we introduced it. I would expect that we will continue to grow our dividend at a double digit level. That’s the plan for the next several years.

It’s not a commitment, it’s the plan. But that still will allow us plenty of available capacity because it still will represent less than half of our AFFO. And so we’ll still have plenty of capital available to reinvest into the business either into assets or buybacks or even delevering. And so it’s not that much of a shift in our approach. Eventually, you will see a much greater percentage though of the AFFO starting to get eaten up, particularly once the NOLs have been used up.

And that’s, say, four to five years from now probably. Got it.

Matt, Analyst: You mentioned M and A. And I know there’s not a lot of opportunities out there domestically, but what valuations internationally?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Yes. Definitely, I mentioned the disconnect domestically in terms of the public and private valuations. And that certainly existed internationally as well, although we’ve seen that actually start to dissipate materially internationally. And it hasn’t necessarily resulted in a lot of assets trading at lower values, but it has caused a lot of assets not to trade at all because you have seller expectations that are still higher than at least higher than where perhaps they should be, but certainly higher than where buyers are willing to pay. And so that disconnect has had a lot of assets not trading.

We’ve seen a number of portfolios that have come to market multiple times actually and not trade. So that may present some opportunity for us at the right moment because we certainly have the capacity. But we’ll be careful about that and focus on the ones that we think actually strengthen our overall position cash flow.

Matt, Analyst: Last question, if we’re sitting here a year from now, what would you like to look back on as key milestones and accomplishments that you achieved in 2025?

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Well, I would like to see us how I started this, I’d like to see us execute on very well in terms of capturing new organic business opportunities here in The U. S. And internationally as well. But we do see the opportunity for more activity with our customers here in The U. S.

And so it’s very important that we maximize that opportunity set. And I think I’d really like to see us kind of ferret out some quality opportunities to invest capital into high returning quality assets. And I’m proud of what we did with the Millicom deal. And I think if we’re, take focus, we’re going to be able to find similar other opportunities along the way.

Matt, Analyst: Great. It’s a great place to end it. Thank you.

Brandon Cavanaugh, CEO, SBA Communications: Thank you, Matt. Appreciate it. Thank you.

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