Jay A. Brown
Analyst · Benchmark Company
Thanks, Fiona, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with a few summary comments as outlined on Slide 3 and then I'll go through our results and outlook in greater detail. As you see from our press release, we had an excellent second quarter, exceeding the high end of our previously issued guidance for site rental revenue, site rental gross margin, adjusted EBITDA and AFFO. We continue to make good progress with the integration of NextG and the WCP assets we acquired earlier this year and are excited by the ongoing deployments of wireless data networks. The strong year-to-date results and our expectations for the second half of the year allow us to meaningfully increase our 2012 outlook for site rental revenue, site rental gross margin, adjusted EBITDA and AFFO. Turning to Slide 4. During the second quarter, we generated site rental revenue of $518 million, up 13% from the second quarter of 2011. New tenant additions increased site rental revenue by 6%, reflecting the increased leasing activity driven by the 4 major carriers upgrading their networks. And the remaining 7% growth came from our 2 recent acquisitions. The contribution to site rental revenues from these acquisitions was approximately $6 million higher in the quarter than we had previously expected. Further, we were able to achieve certain cost synergies related to these acquisitions quicker than we had previously anticipated. Site rental gross margin, defined as site rental revenues less cost of operations, was $386 million, up 15% from the second quarter of 2011. Further, our network services continue to exceed our expectations, reflecting the level of network upgrade activity in the market. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2012 was $379 million, up 18% from the second quarter of 2011. As shown on Slide 5, AFFO was $215 million, up 19% from the second quarter of 2011. And adjusted funds from operations per share was $0.74, up 17% from the second quarter of 2011. Further, while there were no significant nonrecurring items in the second quarter, I would note that we collected approximately $5 million in cash in the second quarter that we had previously expected to collect in the third quarter, which benefited our AFFO results in the second quarter. Turning to investments and liquidity as shown on Slide 6. During the second quarter, we spent $95 million on capital expenditures. These capital expenditures included $29 million on our land lease purchase program. As of today, we own or control for more than 20 years the land beneath towers, representing approximately 77% of our gross margin. We believe this activity is a core competency of Crown Castle and continue to enjoy significant success with this program as evidenced by the fact that today, 39% of our site rental gross margin is generated from towers on land that we own, up from less than 15% in January of 2007. Further, the average term remaining on our ground leases is approximately 32 years. We continue to focus a significant amount of effort and capital on purchasing land beneath our towers and extending our ground leases. Of the other remaining capital expenditures, we've spent $7 million on the sustaining capital expenditures and $58 million on revenue-generating capital expenditures, the latter consisting of $30 million on existing sites and $28 million on the construction of new sites, primarily distributed antenna system deployments. Further, during the second quarter, we used $51 million of cash to purchase a portion of our 9% senior notes and 7.75% senior secured notes, including make-whole costs at prices we found attractive relative to these bonds' respective call dates. We ended the second quarter of 2012 with total net debt-to-last quarter annualized adjusted EBITDA of 5.5x and adjusted EBITDA-to-cash interest expense of 3.1x. As you saw in our press release last night, we reached an agreement with T-Mobile USA to extend the remaining term on all 7,300 existing leases to 10 years and granted T-Mobile rights to upgrade certain towers with radio equipment in connection with their network modernization plan. We expect this agreement to contribute approximately $20 million in site rental revenue to our second half 2012 results. Moving to the outlook for the third quarter and full year 2012 as shown on Slide 7 and 8. We expect site rental revenue of between $530 million and $535 million and adjusted EBITDA of between $387 million and $392 million for the third quarter of 2012. Turning to our full year 2012 outlook. Based on our year-to-date results and our visibility into near-term leasing activity, we have meaningfully increased our full-year 2012 outlook from what we provided in April, increasing site rental revenue by $43 million, site rental gross margin by $36 million and adjusted EBITDA by $63 million. This increase in our outlook for adjusted EBITDA is driven by a number of factors, including higher run rate site rental revenues than we had previously expected, the benefit from the aforementioned T-Mobile agreement, better-than-expected contribution from our recent acquisitions and the expectation of continued strong performance from our service equipment [ph]. I'm delighted with the performance of our business and our increased expectations for the balance of 2012. We now expect 2012 year-over-year site rental revenue growth of 13%, an adjusted EBITDA growth of 17% and AFFO growth of 16%. We expect to augment our AFFO growth through opportunistic investments and activities such as share purchases, tower acquisitions, new site construction and land purchases. Consistent with our past practice, our outlook does not include the benefit from these expected investments. As shown on Slide 9, for 2012, we expect to generate approximately $850 million of AFFO and invest approximately $350 million on capital expenditures related to purchases of land beneath our towers, the addition of tenants to our towers and the construction of new sites, including distributed antenna systems. Ignoring our borrowing capacity, the portion of our AFFO after expected capital expenditures represents $125 million per quarter of cash flow that we could invest in activities related to our core business, including purchases of our shares and acquisitions. As such, we remain focused on our investing our cash in activities we believe will maximize long-term AFFO per share. I believe that this level of capital investment can add between 4% and 6% to our organic AFFO per share growth rate annually. In summary, we had an excellent second quarter as we continue to execute around our core business, and we are very excited about the balance of 2012. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Ben.