W. Moreland
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets
Thanks, Jay, and thanks to all of you for joining us on the call this morning. We had a strong first quarter, exceeding our outlook for site rental revenue, adjusted EBITDA and recurring cash flow. In addition, our U.S. Services business performed very well, with services revenues up 14% and services margins up 39% compared to the first quarter last year. Further, we are pleased to be back purchasing our shares which we believe will maximize long-term recurring cash flow per share. As Jay just mentioned, most of the growth we anticipate for the balance of the year is fueled primarily by the two largest U.S. carriers upgrading 3G capacity and overlaying 4G networks. In addition, there are a number of other potential 4G deployments that we believe will create additional demand for our infrastructure, although unlikely to have a material effect on our results this year. Before I talk about potential upside opportunities, I'd like to draw your attention to some of the important macro trends that continue to drive our business. The U.S. wireless data market grew 23% year-over-year to reach $55 billion in total mobile data service revenues in 2010 and is expected to increase another 22% to $67 billion this year. Smartphones continue to drive wireless data revenue, representing over 50% of the devices sold by all the carriers in the U.S. in 2010 which is almost twice the global average. As a result, at the end of 2010, U.S. smartphone penetration had reached 31% in the market compared to only 23% at the end of 2009. While the average data consumption in the U.S. at the end of 2010 was 350 megabytes per month, many of the "super phones" introduced in the last or second half of 2010 are consuming an average of 1 to 1.5 gigabytes per month. In fact, total 2010 U.S. mobile data traffic was more than 2.5x that of 2009. The significant rise in smartphone sales and usage in the U.S. market means that by the end of 2011 in the U.S., smartphones will consume more than data cards for the first time ever. The U.S. is also expected to become the number 1 nation globally in mobile data consumption per capita this year. To that end, smartphone sales helped drive AT&T Wireless data revenue growth 24%, up nearly $1 billion year-over-year. AT&T had its largest first quarter smartphone sales ever, signing 5.5 million new customers, comprising both upgrades and new subscriptions. The number of smartphones on its network increased by about 2.4 million in the quarter and 9 million in just the last 12 months. Similarly at Verizon Wireless, total data revenue grew about $1 billion year-to-year, 22% year-over-year and now represents 38% of total service revenue. A key driver of data growth in 2011 is expected to be increased penetration of smartphones in the company's retail postpaid phone base. With new smartphone sales running above 60% of total sales at both major carriers, it's clear that these devices will continue to grow from current penetration levels of only 46% at AT&T and 32% at Verizon Wireless. Further, in the period of less than 8 weeks, Verizon activated 2.2 million iPhones and in 2 weeks activated 60,000 of its first 4G LTE smartphone, the HTC Thunderbolt. While the U.S. represents less than 5% of the world's population, it accounts for over 20% of global data revenues. In fact, when measured by wireless data revenues, Verizon Wireless and AT&T are 2 of the top 3 largest mobile data carriers in the world. By the end of 2013, the U.S. market is expected to account for 25% of all global mobile data services revenue. Reinforcing our thesis that as the most dominant market in terms of revenue generation for the wireless industry, the U.S. is globally the most attractive market to capture growth in wireless services and ultimately drive our business. These statistics are why we remain focused on the U.S. market, the largest fastest growing and most profitable wireless market in the world by nearly every measure. With the demand for data services concentrated disproportionately in the major cities, we are best positioned to capture this opportunity with the highest concentration of sites among our peers in the top 100 U.S. markets. Moving on where we would expect to see the impact of this activity on our business, as we mentioned, most of the activity to date this year has been from AT&T and Verizon. As you are aware, in March, AT&T announced their intent to acquire T-Mobile USA. The proposed acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T is expected to increase AT&T's incremental infrastructure investment in the U.S. by more than $8 billion over the next 7 years. AT&T is committed to a significant expansion of a robust 4G LTE deployment, 294 million POPs or 95% of the total U.S. population, reaching an additional 46 million Americans beyond their current plans. We are seeing the benefits of the aggressive LTE rollout and other network enhancements underway at AT&T this year. The company is planning to commercially launch service midyear and plans to cover 70 to 75 million POPs by the end of the year. Similarly, Verizon's initial LTE launch last December, which included 38 markets carrying 110 million POPs, they have announced a further expansion of the company's LTE footprint to include more than 100 additional markets. By the end of the year, Verizon plans to be in about 175 markets covering more than 185 million POPs, and we are seeing significant activity toward that end. In addition, as part of their Network Vision plan, Sprint intends to repurpose some of their 800-megahertz spectrum for CDMA service, but expectations for the first upgraded cell sites to go live with the new equipment in 8 of the largest metro areas beginning in the fall of 2011. The capital expenditures related to Network Vision at Sprint are expected to ramp up in the second half of 2011, with the highest levels of capital investment taking place in 2012 and 2013. With regards to some of the new emerging carriers, there have been several announcements since the last quarter. Sprint and Clearwire recently came into an agreement over wholesale pricing. Under the new deal, Clearwire will receive at least $1 billion from Sprint in 2011 and '12. Further, LightSquared has signed a long-term LTE roaming deal with Leap, notching its first major wireless operator wholesale partner shortly after it announced a similar deal of open-range communications. The 2 companies said the deal will allow Leap to supplement LTE coverage it plans to deploy with roaming on LightSquared's network. Finally, President Obama's budget included $10.7 billion to include a nationwide wireless network for emergency responders and $5 billion to help Americans get mobile access to high-speed Internet service. While it appears the buildout activity of Sprint, Clearwire, LightSquared, and those that benefit from the federal government investment is unlikely have a meaningful impact on our 2011 financial results, we anticipate beginning to see the impact in 2012 and beyond and expect that our assets will be instrumental in facilitating these and other network deployments in whatever form they should take. We are obviously very pleased with our results and believe they demonstrate the quality of our assets combined with our ability to execute for our customers. As always, we remain disciplined and focused on maximizing long-term recurring cash flow per share through opportunistic investments such as share repurchases as viable alternatives to acquisitions. And at a macro level, we're incredibly excited about the trends we are seeing in wireless and are positioned to capture value from those trends. So to summarize, we are focused on the U.S. market, where the ability of the wireless carriers to make profitable investments is most apparent and barriers to entry for our business remain high. We have the best located assets in the industry, with significantly more towers in the top 100 market than any of our peers, and our customer surveys continue to indicate that we are a highly regarded partner and enjoy the highest level of customer satisfaction in the industry. So in closing, we had a strong first quarter and are excited about our future and I'd like to add my congratulations to the team on their 10,000th land transaction which is almost hard to even contemplate. With that, operator, I'd be happy to turn the call over for questions.