Mark Wallace
Analyst · the SEC. Discussions during the call will also include certain financial measures that were not prepared in accordance to generally accepted accounting principles. Reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the company's current report on Form 8-K dated today. I would now like to turn the call over to Uniti Group's Chief Executive Officer, Kenny Gunderman. Please go ahead, Mr. Gunderman
Thanks, Kenny. Good afternoon, everyone. We reported solid second quarter results today that were in line with our expectations. Consolidated revenues were $213 million with consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $179.6 million. AFFO for the quarter was $0.60 per diluted common share. Net loss attributable to common shares for the quarter was $18.2 million or $0.11 per diluted share. The net loss for the quarter includes $2.1 million non-cash charge for the change in fair value of contingent consideration related to the Tower Cloud small cell deployment milestones. As Kenny discussed, Uniti Fiber continues to see strong small cell order flow from all of the wireless carriers as they continue to densify their network. Uniti Fiber reported revenues of $35 million and adjusted EBITDA margins of 36% or $12.6 million. These results include just over $1.5 million of realized cost savings during the quarter or over $6 million on an annualized run rate basis. Maintenance CapEx for the quarter was $1.4 million or 4% of revenues. Net success based CapEx for Uniti Fiber was $25 million this quarter and was primarily deployed towards the Augusta and North Florida dark fiber builds. Uniti Fiber continued to make good progress towards completion of these dark fiber projects, both of which are for wireless carriers. The Augusta project covers 400 route miles and is scheduled to be completed late this year. The North Florida build covers over 1,000 route miles and is scheduled to be completed by the first half of 2019. On the North Florida build, we expect over half the total sites will be turned over this year, with the remaining sites turned over in stages before final project completion. With the closing of the Hunt and Southern Light acquisitions, Uniti Fiber now has three additional major Florida dark fiber builds in progress for wireless carriers, covering over 2,000 route miles. Two of the projects are expected to be completed late this year or in the first half of 2018. The remaining project, which runs along the Gulf Coast, is expected to be completed in the late 2019. These projects illustrate the attractive organic investment opportunity in Uniti Fiber's business as they are anchored by 20 year leases with high credit quality wireless customers. Furthermore, these builds are in the Southeast region, where we have continued to gain operational scale and have healthy future lease-up prospects to drive incremental returns. Following the acquisition of Hunt and Southern Light, Uniti Fiber now has over $1.2 billion of revenues under contract, providing excellent line of sight to future cash flows. These long term contractual commitments are with high quality customers, and nearly 40% are for future dark fiber and small cell deployments. Uniti Towers completed and closed on the acquisition of 16 of the NMS development towers during the second quarter this year, bringing year-to-date completions to 40 development towers. The balance of the NMS development towers should be completed this year or in early 2018. At quarter end, Uniti Towers had 510 completed towers. At closing, Hunt Telecom had 121 towers that are now included in our Uniti Tower portfolio, bringing our current tower count to 631. The Hunt towers had historically been used principally for e-rate services. However, we expect to market the towers to wireless carriers over time. Our leasing segment revenues were $170.9 million with adjusted EBITDA of $170.5 million for the second quarter of this year. Our Leasing segment benefited in the second quarter from nearly $80 million of improvements to our network made by Windstream with their capital. On a cumulative basis since our spin-off, we benefited from $340 million of tenant capital improvements completed by Windstream. Turning now to our capital markets activity. In connection with the closing of Southern Light and Hunt transactions, we issued 19.5 million common shares and closed on the $200 million of senior unsecured notes due 2024. At quarter-end, we had $934 million of unrestricted cash and $235 million of outstanding borrowings on our $750 million revolving credit facility. On July 3, we closed on the acquisitions of Hunt and Southern Light, using approximately $762 million of cash and issued $4.2 million operating partnership units. Following closing, our pro forma total debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA was 5.9 times, and net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDA was 5.7 times. Our regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.60 per share was declared earlier this week, representing an annual dividend rate of $2.40 per share. Turning now to our 2017 guidance. Our outlook for this year incorporates our acquisitions of Hunt and Southern Light as of the closing date on July 3. Accordingly, our outlook reflects the consolidated results of operations for six months in 2017 for both transactions. On a consolidated basis, we expect reported revenues this year to range between $913 million to $918 million, and adjusted EBITDA to range between $748 million and $753 million. During 2017, Hunt and Southern Light are expected to contribute a combined $64 million of revenue and $34 million of adjusted EBITDA, representing adjusted EBITDA margins of 53%. Uniti Fiber's integration efforts are proceeding smoothly. The combined organizational structure is in place. Go to market strategies are developed and both operations and back office integration execution is underway. We continue to expect Southern Light and Hunt to provide $12.5 million of run rate cost savings within 24 months of close and cost savings in the 2017 post close period of $2.5 million. Accordingly, Uniti Fiber is expected to report consolidated revenues this year of $205 million with adjusted EBITDA margins of 42% or $86 million at the midpoint of our guidance range. Net success based CapEx for Uniti Fiber is expected to be between $95 million and $105 million. Uniti Towers revenue for 2017 is expected to be between $8 million and $9 million, with adjusted EBITDA near breakeven. CapEx for Uniti Towers is expected to be $45 million to $50 million, including approximately $20 million for ground lease investments this year, with the balance towards tower development. Revenues from our leasing segment will be approximately $684 million, including $30 million of non-cash revenues, which is $3 million higher than our prior guidance, reflecting higher amortization of tenant capital improvements made by Windstream. Uniti Leasing adjusted EBITDA will be approximately $682 million for the year. Our consumer CLEC segment is expected to report revenues this year of approximately $18 million, with adjusted EBITDA of about $4.5 million or about 25% adjusted EBITDA margins. Moving to corporate items. We expect interest expense this year to be approximately $306 million, including $23 million related to the amortization of debt, discount and financing cost amortization. Corporate G&A expense should be approximately $27 million, including $6 million of corporate stock-based compensation. We now expect weighted average common shares outstanding for the third and fourth quarters to be approximately 175 million, and weighted average common shares outstanding for the full year 2017 to be 169 million, taking into account the issuance of 19.5 million shares in late April. Accordingly, we expect full year reported AFFO to range between $2.51 and $2.55 per diluted common share with a midpoint of $2.53. The impact of pre-funding the Hunt and Southern Light acquisitions was $0.07 on AFFO per diluted share. That impact is about $0.03 less than we previously indicated due to the timing of closing in each transaction. Excluding the pre-funding impact, our midpoint AFFO guidance would have been $2.60 per share. As a reminder, our outlook is subject to change based on the finalization of purchase price allocation adjustments. The full range of components of our guidance is included in our earnings press release issued this afternoon. In closing, we continue to be focused on deploying capital to accelerate the growth and diversification of our business. Our M&A pipeline is active with opportunities to execute on a wide spectrum of deals, including entity acquisitions, sale leasebacks and other transactions. That concludes my prepared remarks. We're now ready to take your questions. Operator?