- Crown Castle International (NYSE:CCI) posted adjusted funds from operations that grew 10% to $383M in Q1, while revenues were up 7.4%.
- Adjusted EBITDA of $554M (up 5%) beat expectations of $543.8M, and that and AFFO benefited from some $9M in network services that had been expected to occur in the second quarter, as well as about $6M in lower-than-expected sustaining capex.
- For Q1, about $205M in capex (including $24M in land purchases and $17M in sustaining capex). Net debt-to-EBITDA was about 5.3x.
- The company's expecting wireless demand to grow significantly, "with one industry estimate projecting a seven-fold increase in US mobile data traffic between 2014 and 2019," says CEO Ben Moreland.
- Moreland thinks the company's portfolio of towers and small cells is well aligned to expected demand, "providing us with confidence in our ability to deliver on our stated goal of generating compounded annual growth in AFFO per share of 6% to 7% organically over the next five years."
- CCI has bumped the midpoint of its 2015 guidance for site rental revenues, site rental gross margin, Adjusted EBITDA and AFFO by approximately $7M, $3M, $3M and $3M, respectively.
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Conference call tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. ET.
- Press release