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SBA Communications Corp
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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the SBA Second Quarter Results Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and later, you will have an opportunity for questions. [Operator Instructions]
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. And I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Mark DeRussy, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Caroline. Good evening, everyone and thank you for joining us for SBA’s second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Here with me today are Jeff Stoops, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brendan Cavanagh, our Chief Financial Officer.
Some of the information we will discuss on this call is forward-looking including, but not limited to, any guidance for 2021 and beyond. In today’s press release and in our SEC filings, we detail material risks that may cause our future results to differ from our expectations. Our statements are as of today, August 2nd, and we have no obligation to update any forward-looking statements we may make.
In addition, our comments will include non-GAAP financial measures and other key operating metrics. A reconciliation of and other information regarding these items can be found in our supplemental financial data package which is located on the landing page for our Investor Relations website.
And with that, I will now turn the call over to Brendan.
Thanks, Mark. Good evening. SBA had a tremendous quarter with results for the second quarter ahead of our expectations in most key areas. Total GAAP site leasing revenues for the second quarter were $524.1 million and cash site leasing revenues were $514.6 million.
Foreign exchange rates were ahead of our previously forecasted FX rate estimates for the quarter, contributing $3.1 million of incremental site leasing revenue in the second quarter. They were also a tailwind on comparisons to the second quarter of 2020, positively impacting revenues by $3.5 million on a year-over-year basis.
Same tower recurring cash leasing revenue growth for the second quarter, which is calculated on a constant currency basis was 3.4% over the second quarter of 2020, including the impact of 2.5% of churn.
On a gross basis, same tower growth was 5.9%. Domestic, same tower recurring cash leasing revenue growth over the second quarter of last year was 5.5% on a gross basis and 3% on a net basis including 2.5% of churn.
Domestic operational leasing activity or bookings, representing new revenue placed under contract during the second quarter was up significantly from the prior quarter and represented the highest quarterly level since 2014.
Even with this high level of executions, our domestic new lease and new amendment application backlog finished the quarter at a multiyear high. These backlogs support our expectations for continued strong domestic operational leasing activity throughout the balance of this year.
During the second quarter, amendment activity represented 34% of our domestic bookings with 66% coming from new leases, the first time in many years, the bookings from new leases outpaced that from amendments. The big four carriers of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Dish represented 97% of total incremental domestic leasing revenue signed up during the quarter.
Internationally on a constant currency basis, same tower cash leasing revenue growth was 5.3% net, including 2.2% of churn or 7.5% on a gross basis. International leasing activity increased modestly from the first quarter. In Brazil, our largest international market, we had an improved quarter of leasing activity. Growth same tower organic growth in Brazil was 8.9% on a constant currency basis.
During the second quarter, 84.8% of consolidated cash site leasing revenue was denominated in US dollars. The majority of non-US dollar-denominated revenue was from Brazil, with Brazil representing 11.5% of consolidated cash site leasing revenues during the quarter and 8.4% of cash site leasing revenue excluding revenues from pass-through expenses.
Tower cash flow for the second quarter was $421.2 million. Our tower cash flow margins continue to be very strong with the second quarter domestic tower cash flow margin of 84.7% and an international tower cash flow margin of 70.8% or 91% excluding the impact of pass-through reimbursable expenses.
Adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was $400.2 million. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 70.7% in the quarter. Excluding the impact of revenues from pass-through expenses, adjusted EBITDA margin was 75%. Approximately 98% of our total adjusted EBITDA was attributable to our tower leasing business in the second quarter.
During the second quarter, our services business produced record results for the company with $51.4 million in revenue and over $11 million of segment operating profit. The very high activity levels we saw in the first quarter strengthened further in the second quarter, resulting in a quarter end services backlog that was 30% above first quarter levels and was also the highest in our company’s history.
We expect to see continued high levels of services activity throughout the rest of the year. And as a result, have increased our full year outlook for site development revenue by $25 million from last quarter and by $40 million from our initial outlook. AFFO in the second quarter was $293.5 million. AFFO per share was $2.64, an increase of 15.3% over the second quarter of 2020.
During the second quarter, we continue to expand our portfolio acquiring 57 communication sites for total cash consideration of $67 million. We also built 98 new sites in the quarter. Subsequent to quarter end, we have purchased or agreed to purchase approximately 400 additional sites in our existing markets for an aggregate price of $95 million. And we anticipate closing on the majority of the sites under contract by the end of the year.
In addition, during the second quarter, we announced that through a new joint venture arrangement, we have entered into a contract with Airtel Tanzania, a subsidiary of Airtel Africa to purchase their approximately 1,400 towers in Tanzania.
Under this agreement, Airtel will leasebacks based on each of the towers and will also provide a fixed minimum number of build-to-suit towers during the first five years following the closing of the acquisition.
The total purchase price for the acquisition is expected to be approximately $175 million and the acquisition is anticipated to close in stages, starting in the fourth quarter. For our updated 2021 outlook, we have assumed that the acquisition closes at the end of the year and thus, we have included the entire purchase price in our outlook for discretionary capital expenditures.
But we have included no revenue or tower cash flow associated with these events. We expect the assets to produce approximately $18 million of adjusted EBITDA during the first full year of operations under the joint venture. SBA will be the majority partner of the joint venture.
And we are partnering with Paradigm Infrastructure Limited, a UK company founded by former senior executives of American Tower which is focused on developing, owning, and operating shared parts of wireless infrastructure in selected growth markets. We believe the combined international tower industry operating experience of SBA and Paradigm will allow us to maximize the opportunity in this new rapidly growing market.
In addition to new tower assets, we also continue to invest in the land under our sites. During the quarter, we spent an aggregate of $11.8 million to buy land and easements and to extend ground lease terms.
At the end of the quarter, we owned or controlled for more than 20 years the land underneath approximately 71% of our towers. And the average remaining life under our ground leases, including renewal options under our control, is approximately 37 years.
In this afternoon’s earnings press release, we included our updated outlook for full year 2021. Our update [Audio Gap] expectations for site leasing revenue, site development revenue, adjusted EBITDA, AFFO and AFFO per share. These increases are driven by outperformance across our business. Increased network investment activities by our customers, improved foreign exchange rates, reduced nondiscretionary cash capital expenditures, and reduced cash interest expense as a result of timely refinancings.
Notwithstanding our strong domestic leasing bookings during the second quarter which were ahead of our expectations, we have not increased our 2021 outlook for incremental, organic, domestic leasing revenue.
New bookings typically begin to accrue revenue at the earlier of a date certain or commencement of construction. For outlook purposes, unless we have received notice of construction commencement, we only consider the date certain which for the second quarter bookings outperformance generally ranges from late in the fourth quarter to sometime in the first half of 2022.
As we mentioned last quarter, we anticipate our reported gross domestic same tower revenue growth will begin to increase in the second half of the year and that we will exit 2021 at the highest rate of the year.
As is always the case, our full year 2021 outlook does not assume any further acquisitions beyond those under contract today and the outlook also does not assume any share repurchases other than those completed as of today.
However, when opportunities present, we are likely to invest in additional assets or share repurchases or both during the rest of the year. Our outlook for net cash interest expense does not contemplate any further financing activity in 2021.
Finally, our outlook for AFFO per share is based on an assumed weighted average number of diluted common shares of a $111.5 million which assumption is influenced in part by estimated future share prices.
With that, I will now turn things over to Mark who will provide an update on our liquidity position and balance sheet.
Thanks, Brendan. We ended the quarter with $12 billion of total debt and $11.7 billion of net debt. Our net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 7.3, a return to our target range of 7 times to 7.5 times faster than originally anticipated after the PG&E acquisition during the first quarter.
Our second quarter net cash interest coverage ratio of adjusted EBITDA to net cash interest expense was 4.4 times. On May 14, the company through an existing trust issued $1.165 billion of secured tower revenue Securities Series 21-1C which had an anticipated repayment date of November 9, 2026, and a final maturity date of May 9, 2051. These securities have a fixed annual interest rate of 1.631% payable monthly. The net proceeds from this offering were used to repay the entire aggregate principal amount of the 2017-1C Tower Securities and for general purposes.
Then on July 7, the company amended its existing revolving credit facility. Among other things, this amendment increased the total commitment of the facility from $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion. In addition extending the maturity date of the facility to July 7, 2026 lowered the applicable interest rate margins and commitment fees under the facility and incorporating sustainability like targets into the facility, allowing for interest rate and commitment fee adjustments based on how we perform against those targets. We are pleased to be one of the first companies to include such sustainability focused provisions in our credit facility.
As of today, we have no amount outstanding under our revolver and the weighted average interest rate of our outstanding debt is 2.9% with a weighted average maturity of approximately 4.5 years.
During the second quarter, we did not purchase any share of our common stock. As of today, we have $475.1 one million of repurchase authorization remaining under our $1 billion stock repurchase plan. The company shares outstanding at June 30, 2021 were $109.5 million compared to $111.9 million at June 30, 2020, a reduction of 2.1%.
In addition during the second quarter, we declared and paid a cash dividend of $63.5 million or $0.58 per share. And today, we announced that our board of directors declared a third quarter dividend of $0.58 per share which is payable on September 23, 2021 to shareholders of record as of the close of business on August 26, 2021. Today’s dividend announcement represents a payout ratio of 22% of second quarter AFFO per share which leaves us ample room for material future dividend growth.
And with that, I will now turn the call over to Jeff.
Thanks, Mark, and good evening everyone. As you have heard we had a very strong performance in the second quarter, one of our best in quite some time. Domestically, our customers were extremely active. This quarter we signed up more new leasing revenue than we have in any quarter in seven years. We believe the second quarter was the start of a multiyear increase in US wireless carrier CapEx.
Our backlogs of lease and amendment applications ended up near record highs at the end of the quarter, notwithstanding the high levels of bookings which obviously bodes well for activity levels throughout the rest of the year and into next.
Our customers are focused on building out their 5G networks with a particular focus on upgrading their macro networks. Leasing activity levels were driven by initial C band initiatives, 2.5 gigahertz deployments, FirstNet amendments, general coverage expansion and the beginning of DISH’s Network build out. These initiatives also drove our services volumes to record highs.
Last quarter I was pleased to discuss how our first quarter services results were the best in seven years but that didn’t last long as we reported 18% more services revenue in the second quarter than we did in the first quarter producing over $51 million of quarterly revenue, the highest in our company’s history.
We also finished the quarter with the highest services backlog in our history. These results allowed us to increase our full year services outlook by $25 million.
As you could tell, our domestic customers are very busy right now and that sets us up for a very good 2021 and 2022.
Internationally, the second quarter was also very solid for us with quarter-over-quarter sequential increases in new lease and amendment executions and increasing CPI-based escalators in a number of our markets.
During the quarter we signed up 45% of new international revenue through new leases and 55% through amendments to existing leases. Our increased leasing results were driven by our two largest markets, Brazil and South Africa. These markets are still being affected at a greater level than here in the US by the COVID-19.
Our local teams though continue to perform very well and we believe we remain well positioned to benefit from increased network investment from our carrier customers as conditions improve and new spectrum auctions take place over the next year, including, for example, the just completed 3.5 gigahertz option in Canada, which raised proceeds well above expectations. Similar options of 5G suitable spectrum are planned in the near term in a number of our markets, including Brazil.
Even with this positive momentum, perhaps the most exciting international news from the quarter was regarding our pending acquisition from Airtel Tanzania. We have partnered with Paradigm Infrastructure for this opportunity.
Paradigm was founded by and is run by several former American Tower executives well known to us, including those that were responsible for their initial African expansion and operations. Paradigm will be both the financial investor and an operational partner in this venture.
As a market, Tanzania provides many opportunities. The country has a large growing population and has consistently produced good GDP growth and the new President has indicated a greater commitment to policies that encourage foreign business investment.
Despite Tanzania’s growth, the mobile penetration rate is still only 41% today, creating significant opportunity for incremental wireless investment and expansion. Wireless markets predominately made up of three major carriers who are relatively well balanced in terms of market share, Vodacom, Airtel and Acción, who recently bought Tigo’s operations in Tanzania.
Each of these M&Os are focused on expanding their infrastructure in Tanzania. Airtel will be using a substantial amount of the proceeds from the sale of its sites to increase CapEx spending. Likewise, Acción is an African focused and experienced operator whose plans include a strong investment in the country to improve the existing Tigo network.
We are purchasing Airtel’s approximately 1,400 wireless towers which have a current tenancy ratio of just under 1.5 tenants per tower including Airtel and the majority of the existing revenues are denominated in US dollars.
Approximately three quarters of the sites are located on the power grid. And for those that are not required provision of energy, the costs will be passed through to the tenants. We believe there will be opportunities to not only organically grow our revenues on existing towers but also to expand our tower portfolio in Tanzania including through a build-to-suit commitment from Airtel over the next five years which was part of the transaction.
The combination of our partnership with Paradigm, the attractive price paid for the assets and the growth characteristics of the Tanzania market support our belief that this will be a value-creating new market for SBA.
In the same way we have created material value in South Africa and Latin America on a country specific basis without any requirement for further regional or geographic expansion. We are very excited about this new SBA market.
In addition to our strong second quarter operating results, our balance sheet is in a very strong position. We ended the quarter is in a very strong position. We ended the quarter of 7.3 times net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA in the middle of our target range of 7 terms to 7.5 terms, one quarter after absorbing the large first quarter PG&E transaction, demonstrating the ability of our business to rapidly organically delever.
During the quarter we completed a new asset backed financing at the lowest fixed cost interest rate for any non-equity linked security in our history. Shortly after quarter end, we increased the size of all revolving credit facility by $250 million and extended the term. These activities continue to drive our liquidity position higher and our weighted average borrowing costs lower for the first time below 3% to 2.9%.
We have no debt maturities until 2023 and we continue to have access to low cost debt with additional opportunities to continue to improve our overall cost of debt financing. Our liquidity position and balance sheet and our approach with regard to leverage have allowed us to drive incremental AFFO per share, an incremental value for our shareholders. We feel really good about our capital structure.
Things are going very well right now here at SBA. Our customers are busy, our financial position is strong and our team members are the best in the industry. We are excited about the opportunities that lay ahead. I want to thank our team members and our customers for their commitment and their contributions to our success and we look forward to sharing our results with you as we move through the year.
And with that, Caroline, we are ready for questions.
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ric Prentiss from Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, guys.
Ric.
Hi. A couple of questions. First, obviously PG&E was a big transaction. We saw a story come out the last few weeks that they planned to bury like 10,000 miles of electric line. Is there going to be any changes to the sites you have got where they might be taking electric lines down, making it obviously easier to call on them? And what kind of interest activity have you seen on their sites?
We have seen great activity where we are ahead of planned and there’s a lot of demand in terms of application backlogs.
In terms of that story, Ric, that relates primarily to the lower wood poles, the ones that are closer to the end user as opposed to the high power transmission poles that are the ones that we really are part of our transaction. So we don’t we don’t see a lot of issues related with that.
But if, in fact, there are poles or assets that were part of our transaction, there’s a fairly elaborate -- if anything should happen to those in terms of being no longer needed or used by PG&E, there’s a fairly complex set of rules that deal with that. So something that we are -- cover it all and feel very good about, but for the most part, it’s going to be the shorter wood poles that they are talking about.
Makes sense. Okay. Also the Tanzania joint venture. One of your peers recently doing a big private equity transaction in Europe has started giving consolidated AFFO per share as well as attributable to common AFFO per share. Have you guys considered that now you get a little more joint ventures going that you might move to obviously a EPS stories, they always take out minority interest, but have you thought about moving towards a measure of more proportionate AFFO to common?
Yeah. Ric, to this point, obviously nothing has been material enough to do that. We do always back out. We have previously identified and we haven’t consolidated something obviously the JV piece of the AFFO per share. But it’s something we will look at, if it becomes material, we will highlight it for you guys. We just haven’t had any really to-date.
Makes sense. Final one, obviously we make that adjustment from AFFO to funds available for distribution. We have been watching I think you guys call it amortization of capital contributions, which is still very low. I think it was $13 million in the first half of this year, $33 million all of last year. One of your peers has almost 20 times that level of noncash items that get put into AFFO. Any thoughts of any changes coming from you that would take it up higher or is it fairly low? Because it’s obviously one of the big line cash items that kind of -- is different between the tower companies?
Yeah. I mean, I don’t think so, Ric. The things that will drive it up is obviously more augmentation activity, the towers which is certainly possible given the increased amount of activity in general that we are seeing.
But the offset to that is that as we have longer terms to our leases, particularly, the Verizon MLA which we talked about last quarter and some of the new agreements that come longer term, that tends to stretch the period over which you are amortizing and actually reduces the amount, plus it just -- it’s a factor of which towers are getting hit whether work needs to be done at the site, how much it costs, just bring those -- all those kind of things. So I don’t expect it to actually move up materially at any point in the next year or two.
Yeah. It’s very different, Ric, when you are not doing small cell fiber work where it’s more common that your customer contributes a large amount of the initial CapEx upfront. Then you amortize it into that amount. I mean, that’s never really been a big issue in the macro tower side of the business other than just the regular augmentation stuff, which is, we don’t we don’t foresee any material changes in that.
It makes sense. Obviously, I was like going back to cash and the ability to pay dividends. So appreciate that and you guys stay well
Thanks. You too.
Our next question comes from the line of Simon Flannery from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you very much. I was wondering if you have had any more clarity from T-Mobile about their plans for the Sprint towers. Do you think the churn is going to be consistent with the current contracts or do you think there’s the potential to either keep some of those towers or have them pushed out? And any updates on the oil restructuring and how we should think about the impact maybe opening up the potential for more investment in Brazil once that goes through? Thanks.
Yeah. In terms of the T-Mobile-Sprint question, Simon, T-Mobile is very organized and very I think ahead of what people thought in terms of their network planning. So there’s a lot of crisp communications going back and forth.
But I don’t know that it materially has changed our prior statements on what we expect in terms of decommissioning. And we don’t have any additional news on the uptake of the potential Sprint sites. But I would just say that T-Mobile is very prepared in their work in this area.
Okay.
And in terms of the OE, I believe the latest is that we are not expecting anything until at least the fourth quarter of this year, maybe into next. And our prior statements in terms of our exposure to both or all three of Tim, Vivo [ph] and Clara, those have not changed.
Okay. Great. And then do you think there’s an opportunity for you to do more on build-to-suit? I think you did about a 100 in the quarter and then it sounds like it’s part of the Tanzania story as well. But you haven’t done a huge amount relative to what we have been hearing from some of your peers?
Yeah. I think there’s always an opportunity. The question is does it represent the terms and the financial returns that we are looking for? I think that the universe of opportunities would allow us to do more.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Our next question comes from the line of Phil Cusick from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, it’s Phil Cusick. Start with the paradigm deal. Was this the team you worked with from South Africa or is this a different team?
No. We didn’t work with any of the IMT guys in South Africa, Phil. This is Steve Marshall and Hal Hess and Steve Harris, guys that I have known forever and worked very closely with Steve Marshall at WIA. So that’s really just through the industry, this all came together.
Okay. What’s your potential capital commitment over time for this?
It’s not much beyond the $175 million. I mean, Brendan, what…
Yeah. That’s the total purchase price, the $175 million, plus a few incremental costs. So that represents everything. So it wouldn’t be materially more than that. I mean, down the road, we will have to see how things…
Yeah. We have -- I mean, we have modeled in some upgrade CapEx and some refurbishment CapEx. But you are not talking about material numbers there, Phil.
Okay. It just sounds like if you are going to do something like this in a whole bunch of new countries, it’s -- I would think you would have a sort of number that you would be willing to invest alongside them to make these more interesting over time.
Yeah. The JV, Phil, is specific to Tanzania. There’s no obligation to do anything alongside them going forward. So there’s no commitment, as far as that goes.
Yeah. Okay.
If we could find more opportunities like Tanzania, though, we would be excited.
Got it. Okay. Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from the line of Michael Rollins from Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks and good afternoon. With respect to the domestic leasing activity that you were highlighting just earlier in the call, how does this compare with the internal expectations that you have had? And what does this mean to levels of gross leasing growth that you can achieve in the domestic business over the next couple of years?
And then just separately, I just wanted to follow up on another thing that was said earlier. I was just curious if you could unpack why the mix of leasing activity had a greater amount of new sites versus amendments in the domestic business. Thanks.
The last one is an easy one to answer, Mike, and it’s DISH, because DISH is coming online in the form of entirely new leases and they are very busy. So that’s the answer to that. In terms of the second quarter, we achieved results that were ahead of our expectations.
We did have some fairly robust expectations but even those were exceeded by the level of second quarter activity. And in terms of the growth rate going forward, I don’t want to get too specific other than to say it’s going up.
In the past, I think you can correct me if I don’t have this right. Were you talking high-single digits of where you expected gross domestic growth to get over the next few years? I am just curious if you could just revisit that perspective.
Yeah. Mike, from a growth standpoint, we certainly expect it to be mid- to high-single digits in the future given what’s going on now. So, when you are talking about going out a lot of years, obviously, we are getting bigger and bigger.
So you have to add that many more dollars to make that happen. But given the activity levels today, I think as we get a year or so out, you will start to see us return to levels that are similar to what we have reported in the past when we were busier.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Nick Del Deo from MuffettNathanson. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey. Thanks for taking my questions. First, for the question that Mike just asked. It sounds like DISH was really an outsized contributor to leasing in this quarter. Can you just -- if you back that out, can you talk about how activity from the big three carriers in particular has changed over recent quarters? Was it DISH in particular that really drove the outperformance in leasing versus your expectation or was that drove the outperformance on leasing versus your expectation or was that outperformance more broad based?
I would say that the ones that had kind of a step function changes in their levels of activity were DISH and Verizon. And the Verizon story is very understandable, it’s coming off the C-band options, their public statements and our MLA with them.
Okay. Okay. That’s helpful. And then one on Tanzania and the partnership with Paradigm. Give an option to eventually buy out their stake or vice versa or is there no mechanism in place to do that?
No. There is a mechanism that gives us the right to buy them out.
Can you talk about the time frame or any other parameters or is that proprietary?
It’s not that proprietary, it’s five years-ish.
Okay. Okay.
Might be a reason why it gets accelerated a year, extended a year. But that’s generally the time frame that we are looking at.
Okay. Okay. Good to hear. Thanks, Jeff.
Our next question comes from the line of Brett Feldman from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. Follow-up a little bit on C-band. Now that you are starting to see what some of the carriers are doing with C-band, how much visibility do you have and to the extent to which that’s mostly going to be a significant amendment project versus any visibility into a new site project? Because all of the operators that you already have a tenant to on C-band, this would be a higher frequency that anything that ever historically used on a macro site, so we would probably that might need densification but I don’t know if you have that visibility at this point in time. And then just finally for the services backlog, I am just curious is all of that services work being done on your towers? Meaning is it a fairly good leading indicator of what you are all missing is or you actually winning degree of the business across other portfolios as well? Thanks.
The answer to your last question is yes. It is mostly all on our towers which is why we have the confidence we have. And in terms of your first question, Brad, there will be some subleases in there. But for T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T it’s going to be mostly amendments and for DISH is going to be all new leases.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Walter Piecyk from LightShed. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Jeff, I will preface this question by noting that last quarter your average price of your share repurchase was I think $258 and the stock is now $340 or $342. But in this quarter you didn’t buy anything. So I am just kind of curious. Is this -- I mean I know this acquisition was whatever $175 million. It’s kind of in the ballpark of what you spent the last quarter. Is that the connection that we should draw or is it maybe where the stock price is in terms of the activity this quarter?
No. We wanted to come down off the 76 [ph] and we came down quicker than we thought. And by the time we knew that we were blacked out.
Got it. And then on the domestic ramp, when you look at your guidance for new lease activity it’s obviously very high so there’s going to be a ramp. Can you give us a sense of Q3 versus Q4? I mean obviously we are going to have to see some type of jump Q3. But is the bigger jump really going to occur in Q4 in terms of the new lease activity?
Yeah. You are talking about the same type of growth rate? Well…
Yeah.
…you are right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
We expect it to step up sequentially each of the next two quarters. But certainly the fourth…
Sure.
...quarter would be a bigger step up is our expectation based on the timing of when this stuff we are signing…
Orders and stuff came in. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And then -- I mean if T-Mobile’s got to be a component of that. I mean, it doesn’t kind of speak to the timing of how their integration is going, if it’s still more of a Q4 event.
Yeah. I mean, they are busy. They are busy and…
But they are not going to back debated in Q3, right. It’s still not happening until Q4 for them.
They are getting stuff activated in Q3 as well. So -- I mean it’s…
Got it. Okay.
…it’s a mixed question, Walt, but they are busy in activating stuff. And both -- we expect them in both quarters.
So it’s just interesting given it’s fee management around the corner for Verizon and they are still kind of back end loaded, but whatever. And then international, that’s also a big number. So, that’s going to be a big ramp second half then for international as well, right? Today, that’s 13 million target.
I -- it will be a slight ramp. I don’t know if I would call it a big ramp. We can walk to those numbers…
A slight relative to the overall company for sure but for Interna -- for what your levels have been in the first half of the year, it seems like it’s kind of big now.
Yeah. It’s increasing. I mean, certainly the lease up has been a little bit better just recently and we expect it to be better as we move through the year. I don’t know if I would agree with your characterization now, so we should probably talk about that separately.
Sure. Okay. One last one and I am sorry. But T-Mobile is use of Dish’s 600-megahertz spectrum. Did that generate an amendment or a collocation or anything?
It will when it happens.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Batya Levi from UBS. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Great. Thank you. A couple of follow-ups. First, can you provide some color on the pacing of Sprint churn for this year? I think it was close to $2 million in the first quarter. How do we think about it for the rest of the year, and maybe a color if that $30 million still holds for next year? And another question on the services side, the margins are coming in a little bit lighter than historical levels. Is there any opportunity to improve the services margins? And how do we think about the 2022 services revenues? Thank you.
Batya, on the Sprint churn piece, it’s expected. We had -- I think what we reported last time was about $1.7 million or so in the first quarter. We expect the full year to be somewhere between $8 million -- maybe $8 million to $9 million or so for the year, the fourth quarter impact. And this is again on a full year year-over-year basis will be a little bit bigger because obviously there are some of those leases that are going away as we move through the year.
In terms of next year, right now, we still think the $30 million -- maybe $30 million to $35 million or so is appropriate. I have to hedge a little bit only because the timing of when we get noticed is what they specifically decide to do is a little bit of a fluid situation. But based on what we know today, we -- and lease expiration dates that we think that’s a reasonable estimate.
Yeah. In terms of the services margins, I mean our services business is comprised of two distinct offerings, one is site acquisition zoning kind of software and then the second is construction. Construction typically produces about half the margin of the site acq and zoning.
So the mix between site acq, zoning, and construction is what drives the margin. And the margins have actually been based on the type of work being provided historically strong compared to our experience.
In terms of next year, I mean, we will give you next year’s guidance when we get there. But there’s no reason why the services business because it is primarily on our own tower should materially slow down. It’s going to reflect leasing activity.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of David Barden from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys thanks so much. Just follow-up a couple of things. So, I guess first, Jeff, I think last quarter when we were talking about the services business, you said you didn’t see any reason for there to be a material change. 2Q, 1Q, obviously there was a change. You kind of listed off a number of things that were contributing factors but was it really like how quickly the C-Band deployment came out of the gates or was it really how quickly maybe T-Mobile came out of the gates, or was it just -- everything just turned out to be better than expected?
Really more of the latter. I mean, C-Band came out quicker. DISH came out quicker. T-Mobile continues to be extremely strong.
And just with respect to the DISH deployment, maybe you can comment on this, maybe you can’t. But is it -- they have obviously publicly announced what their plan is to build up the Vegas market. Is this kind of bump that you saw specifically related to that or is there something grander that’s going on that maybe we haven’t heard about yet?
Our work’s pretty well spread out, David. I am not sure exactly how they geographically defined those comments you made but we -- we are seeing a fair spread to the geography.
Wow. Okay. Interesting. So just a couple of housekeeping ones. The Tanzania contract is that all denominated in shillings?
The purchase price, are you asking about the purchase price or the lease back?
The leasing contract.
It’s roughly. Well, this includes the other third-party. So, I don’t know the exact breakdown but the total leasing revenue that’s contracted is about 67% in US dollars when you exclude the pass-through stuff.
Got it. Okay.
Most of the space it’s rented in US dollars. The energy pass-through is all shillings.
Got it. Got it. Okay. And then my last one if I could, sorry. The roughly $100 million, $95 million that’s not Tanzania that you got invested. Where did you guys put that money this quarter?
I am sorry. The what? I don’t…
Sorry. The $95 million to $100 million that you guys that’s not part of the Tanzania deal that got spent this quarter. Where did that go?
The $95 million discretionary CapEx?
Correct.
Yeah. It went into various acquisitions, also some new builds. We mentioned we built about 100 sites during the quarter, so the total CapEx was up for a number of deals. The deals − if you are asking where the deals are − were located it was a mix. There were mostly deals in the US in this quarter.
Okay. Good. All right. Sorry. Thank you, guys.
Yeah. Thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Eric Luebchow from Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks for taking the question. I was wondering on AT&T, you didn’t mentioned them as one of the customers that had a step change function and activity. Have you seen any change from them since they announced the Warner Media spinoff around C band urgency. And you mentioned FirstNet as well on your comments. We have presumed that was staring to wind down but maybe you could comment how much longer you expect FirstNet amendment persist?
Yeah. AT&T is relatively steady, did not have the same change in velocity that some of the others that we mentioned did. And the first that stuff, I think we are past, well past the halfway point but not close to being finished.
Okay. Fair enough. And just wondering too, is there any update or anything to point out on SBA as the data center platform in terms of deal activity and any update on timing when that could potentially become a modestly more material part of the business?
Yeah. I believe and I just heard this today internally that we have now gotten our third contract for a true mobile edge computing site. So, that would give us two data centers and three or four mobile edge facilities. So, moving forward, but quite a bit a ways away from reaching that materiality point you referred to.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Colby Synesael from Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you. You mentioned the JVs $125 million. I am just curious what your ownership stake of that? And why did JV you obviously can’t afford to do that straight up on your own? Is that meant to signal some type of shift in strategy or is it simply that the ones that brought the deal to you and therefore were allowed to take a piece of it?
And then secondly, the new AT&T Dish partnership, I am curious if you view that as incrementally negative or positive to your business and I guess just the broader tower industry. Thank you.
Yeah. The paradigm folks who were responsible for bringing the deal to us, Colby, and had a long relationship with Airtel in Tanzania, with their former employer. So that’s why we are where we are. I don’t think we are disclosing the exact splits other than we are clearly the majority owner in all facets.
In terms of the AT&T-DISH deal, it doesn’t really change DISH’s requirements with the FCC, which is for their own fixed network. Arguably, it could impact their growth beyond that to just roam on AT&T’s network. But we will have to see. I mean, probing never is the first economic choice. But I mean, it certainly hasn’t in any way impacted DISH’s case out of the blocks here in 2021.
I will just do a quick follow-up. One of the parts of that agreement is the ability for DISH to effectively give some of its spectrum to AT&T to deploy on its behalf to which then DISH can use. Do you know if that would meet the threshold that the FCC has in terms of their 70% coverage requirement by 2023, i.e., they can effectively just go on AT&T’s towers using their spectrum and that would meet the requirement wherever they may choose to do that?
I don’t know the answer to that.
Neither do I, but thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Matt Niknam from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys thanks for taking my question. Just on capital allocation, now that you are back within your target leverage range, I am wondering how you are thinking about that, how you are sort of prioritizing uses of that excess cash post the dividend. And then specifically on the M&A front as well, if you can talk about the latest you are seeing both in terms of valuations, the number of opportunities, particularly internationally? Thanks.
Well, the number of opportunities internationally is high, prices are high. You need to be very selective. I don’t know that we will be able to do a bunch of things like we are doing in Tanzania. I hope we can but I don’t, I don’t know -- that that will be the case.
In terms of capital allocation generally, we continue to believe our shareholders are best suited by a lower dividend, higher dividend growth strategy, gives us the most flexibility, produces very good growth numbers.
So, that’s what we will continue to pursue there. And given our access to capital and interest rates, we will look to stay fully invested within our target leverage range whether that would be portfolio growth or stock repurchases.
Got it. Thanks, Jeff.
Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Kvaal from Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking the question. I guess first would you mind offering us an update on how close you are to bumping up against supply or labor challenges in this market?
So, far so good. We really haven’t seen any I haven’t seen any issues on the labor side. I mean, the fact that we maintain a sizable in-house crew gives us some flexibility there. And in terms of the equipment side, we have not heard any issues around our customers delivering the equipment to the sites for installation. Now we read about all the same semiconductor issues that you read about. So, I guess that could change but it has not manifested itself so far.
Okay. And then secondly I think Brett asked earlier about the potential for densification on higher frequencies of C band. What are you hearing from your carrier partners about their propensity to add themselves or do you think that they will figure it out with better antennas, et cetera, et cetera?
There will be densification but just like every generational upgrade you go first to your existing sites because that’s the quickest, the best bang for your buck. So this is happening exactly like it always does.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from the line of David Guarino from Green Street. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Can you remind us of the company views on expanding in the new markets and if there’s any off limits? And then assuming you are open extend in the new markets. How do you determine whether or not to utilize the JV partner?
The last part of your question is based on what Dave would bring to the table and mostly operational in contacts as opposed to capital at least so far. And in terms of -- there is certainly once that are off limits either by choice or by legal necessity, places like Cuba and China.
I mean we are just not allowed to go there. And then there would be others where the analysis of the risks outweigh the rewards. In a country where you have very little rule of law and you have the potential for nationalization of assets, those are not going to be markets where we are most excited about.
That makes sense. And then how do you handicap the risk in those markets and I guess, particularly with the Tanzania acquisition, is there a model you guys have internally that you use just with great deal and how are you thinking that?
We look at all kinds of things. And when you get into markets in Africa, most of the work is not around the assets as much as it is around political, regulatory, tax, government. And we spend a lot of time and take in a lot of resources before we make those decisions.
Okay. That’s helpful. And then maybe one last quick one, on the unoccupied towers, the 28,000 as part of the PG&E transaction, is any activity from those sites showing up in your service revenue yet, or is it still too early for that?
Well, it wouldn’t show up in our services revenue. The way that that would -- and that would be leasing revenue. And I am just not -- I said -- I know we have some interest. I don’t know if it’s actually booked to anything or not. Do you know, Brendan?
I don’t believe so, not yet.
Okay. Thanks. Appreciate it.
And our last question comes from the line of Brandon Nispel from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. And thanks for taking the questions. You mentioned backlogs a couple of times, Jeff. Can you quantify You mentioned backlogs a couple of times, Jeff. Can you quantify the year-over-year change in backlog of signed but not commenced new leases this quarter?
And then just more broadly on build-to-suit, one of your peers has a large-scale build-to-suit program going on. Can you share with us how many towers you plan on building in Tanzania and maybe how you are thinking about build-to-suit more broadly over the next two to three years? Thanks.
Brendan, do we have the answer to the first question?
Yeah. I don’t have the exact number for you, Brandon. It’s materially higher, I can say generally, but we can actually look for something to maybe put a percentage increase or something on that for you after the call.
Yeah. And in terms of the new builds in Tanzania, we are committed to build hundreds of towers over the next five years. The hope is we increase that. I would point to South Africa, which we -- which is now, I believe, over 1,500 towers, most of which were built. So there’s a lot of opportunity there, and we will continue to compress it in those areas where we think it’s going to provide great returns.
And remind us what you are generally looking for in terms of returns from like an NOI yield perspective on build-to-suit sites. Thanks.
Well, we are looking for towers that ultimately either with the first, although that’s more unlikely, but with the second, get to a 15% cash on investment yield or higher.
Great. Thank you.
I want to thank everyone for tuning in today and stay tuned, and we look forward to the next time we are together with third quarter results. Thank you.
And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Conferencing Services. You may now disconnect.