Crown Castle Inc at NAREIT REITweek: Investor Conference Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Before we get started, please note we have disclosures at morganstanley So Dan, thanks for your time today. The tower industry is somewhat unique within the the overall retail universe. So perhaps I'll just lay out for those who are not so familiar with it, some of the key drivers that make you so confident about the sustainable organic growth over the years?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And that you've had a lot of activity here at the company recently, including appointing a new CEO, Steven Moskowitz with a lot of experience in the industry, perhaps just give us some sense of his priorities and some of the early weeks of his time with the company?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And you referenced the strategic review. Can you just recap for those not familiar what you're looking at and where do things stand today?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : So you talked about the strong underlying demand for power, mobile communications infrastructure and strong secular growth on the reported results are lumpy from a couple of perspectives. One being carrier consolidation. The industry has gotten to a pretty healthy place. We're seeing wireless price increases and so forth, but there's also been churn related to that. And then you also have the stop-start nature of their CapEx to some extent. So let's start with the Sprint and any other churn. I think you talked about your growth troughing in the first half of this year and then reaccelerating help us understand when do we kind of get through all of the noise and all of that and then get to a true kind of where the reported results really start to reflect the organic trends better?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And just on DISH were at about 2% of service revenue of tower leasing revenues to start a little bit more than a 3% to 4%. And then the other part of this is the 5G CapEx cycle by the carriers. So we had these the merger we had the C-band auction, we had this explosion in CapEx. And then when was this time last year, it seemed like at the same time the carriers kind of pull back on, but it does seem like the commentary from you and others has been that we sort of hit bottom and things are starting to pick up again. So help us with both what you're seeing today, but also where the carriers are and the amount of work, you know that they still need to do to build out 5G because it's far from done that may be in New York City, but there's a lot of work to do?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And I guess the flip side of that big spike initially in macro towers was there was a low on the small cell side. So they're a little bit from Yang Ming Yang Ming, but you guided and have started to see a re-acceleration. You've always had a big small cell backlog. So just help us understand where you are on that reacceleration in small cell node construction? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. JUNE 04, 2024 / 5:30PM, CCI.N - Crown Castle Inc at NAREIT REITweek: Investor Conference

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : And on those 16,000, I think one of the things that the tower model is great at is those incremental economics that you talked about I think you believe that said that this will play out as well in the small cell market. But it's in that you measure it more like maybe nodes per mile or something like that. So perhaps give us an update on how that's progressing.

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And then on your fiber solutions business, again, looking for reacceleration there. Can you update us on what you're seeing there and what the drivers are of that?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. And the last couple of minutes we have done. Could we just review balance sheet and capital allocation? You like a lot of reach obviously benefited from the favorable rate environment. You've pushed out a lot of your maturities here, but help us with your target leverage and your upcoming maturities and how you're thinking about refi-ing and so forth? And then any anything you can give us on the dividend policy?

Question: Simon Flannery - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. Dan, thank you for your time today. And really appreciate it.