I would be surprised if Crown Castle was not at least exploring their options as far as selling their fiber assets. It has been a disaster and nobody in the entire company knows how to manage it. Now it would be a good time to move on from their bad investments.
That’s right, time is running out and it’s high time to move away from a bad investment, but I doubt that it will happen.
There have been multiple tower acquisitions in the industry lately, specifically EcoSite and Insite Wireless assets picked up by our competitors. Crown is positioning for a 3rd or 4th place seat at the macro table as others pick up steam and continue to invest domestically in steel. Amazingly, the economics of steel work for everyone but us now....hmmmm
Crown has proven they have ZERO interest in any international business, tower or otherwise. Historically, they have sold off their UK & Australia holdings in separate transactions and consistently take a hard pass whenever international portfolios present themselves. This coupled with the fact that the EMT has stated the best ROI remains in the states. To your point, there is not alot out their for tower acquisitions except maybe consolidation among the big 3, AMT/CCI/SBAC. I agree with others that the fiber business will be co-managed with another company or sold altogether. Happy 2021!
I don't think it is too late to move on from the fiber business, after all there were companies such as Digital Colony who have expressed interest in buying it. There is always risk when a company tries to move away from their core business, Crown's core business being Towers. Crown was a much more stable company when it was just tower, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. The problem then becomes if Crown isn't in the fiber business anymore and there are no tower companies left to buy where does Crown go from there? Perhaps towers from other countries?