Crown Castle : Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript FINAL

Published: 2026-04-24 18:09:08 ET CCI

Published on 04/24/2026 at 06:09 pm EDT

Company: Crown Castle, Inc.

Ticker: CCI-US

Kristoﬀer Hinson - Crown Castle, Inc., Vice President-Corporate Finance & Treasurer Christian H. Hillabrant - Crown Castle, Inc., President, Chief Executive Oﬃcer & Director Sunit S. Patel - Crown Castle, Inc., Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Oﬃcer

Matthew Niknam - Analyst

Ari Klein - Analyst Michael J. Funk - Analyst Richard Choe - Analyst Eric Luebchow - Analyst

Nicholas Ralph Del Deo - Analyst Brendan James Lynch - Analyst Madison Rezaei - Analyst

David W. Barden - Analyst Batya Levi - Analyst Brandon Nispel - Analyst Michael I. Rollins - Analyst

00:00:15 Good day, and welcome to the Crown Castle First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded.

00:00:32 I would now like to turn the conference over to Kris Hinson, Vice President of Corporate Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

00:00:41 Thank you, Chloe, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we discuss our ﬁrst quarter 2026 results. With me on the call this afternoon are Chris Hillabrant, Crown Castle's President and Chief Executive Oﬃcer; and Sunit Patel, Crown Castle's Chief Financial Oﬃcer.

00:00:56 To aid the discussion, we have posted supplemental materials in the Investors section of our website at crowncastle.com that will be referenced throughout the call. This conference call will

contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and

assumptions, and the actual results may vary materially from those expected. Information about potential factors which could aﬀect our results is available in the press release and the Risk Factors sections of the company's SEC ﬁlings.

00:01:22 Our statements are made as of today, April 22, 2026, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, today's call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP ﬁnancial measures. Tables reconciling these non-GAAP ﬁnancial measures are available in the supplemental information package in the Investors section of the company's website at crowncastle.com.

00:01:44 I would like to remind everyone that having an agreement to sell our Fiber segment means that the Fiber segment results are required to be reported within Crown Castle's ﬁnancial statements as discontinued operations.

00:01:54 Consistent with last quarter, the company's full-year 2026 outlook and ﬁrst quarter results do not include contributions from what we've previously reported under the Fiber segment, except as otherwise noted.

00:02:06 With that, let me turn the call over to Chris.

00:02:10 Thank you, Kris, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered solid ﬁrst quarter results and are reiterating our guidance for full year 2026. This is a transformative year for Crown Castle, and we believe we have an opportunity to generate attractive shareholder returns as we transition to a standalone tower business and pursue our goal of becoming a best-in-class US tower operator.

00:02:33 To maximize shareholder value and to reach our goal of becoming best-in-class, we are focused on three business priorities. Our ﬁrst priority is to conclude the sale of our small cell and Fiber businesses, which we believe remains on track to close in the ﬁrst half of 2026. We have received almost all required approvals and have largely completed the separation of our small cell and Fiber businesses.

00:02:58 Second, we are working diligently to preserve the value captured in our original DISH agreement from 2020. Along with the Wireless Industry Association, we have taken an active role in engaging with the relevant government authorities to ensure that DISH honors its commitments. We have also taken appropriate legal action.

00:03:17 After DISH defaulted on its payment obligations in January, we exercised our right to terminate the agreement and we are seeking to recover the remaining payments DISH owed for the terms of the contract. We believe we have a strong legal case against DISH and continue to vigorously pursue a legal remedy in the Federal courts.

00:03:36 During the ﬁrst quarter, we amended our pending litigation against DISH to include a claim for breach of contract alongside our requests for declaratory judgment. The amendment also asserts a claim against EchoStar for their role in helping DISH evade its contractual commitments.

00:03:52 And ﬁnally, to become a best-in-class US tower operator, we are performing a thorough review of

our business, looking for ways to drive improvement in our operational eﬃciency and eﬀectiveness. In the ﬁrst quarter, we successfully executed a restructuring of our tower and corporate organizations, resulting in an anticipated $65 million reduction to annualized run rate cost.

00:04:14 We have benchmarked our performance against competitors to both drive eﬃciency and excellence in operations. I would like to thank our Crown Castle teammates for working hard to ensure that we continue delivering for our customers during this transition period. I remain impressed by the resilience and determination along this journey.

00:04:36 Our 2026 guidance also includes a year-over-year increase in capital expenditures, as we seek to acquire more land under our towers and invest in systems and processes which we believe will drive operational eﬃciency and eﬀectiveness in the following ways.

00:04:54 First, we believe that acquiring land under our towers improves our margin and increases operational control of our assets, allowing us to deliver more value to the customer by meeting their needs more rapidly.

00:05:06 Second, we believe the investments we are making to enhance, streamline and automate our systems and processes will improve the quality and accessibility of our asset information and empower the Crown Castle team to make better business decisions in a more timely manner.

00:05:23 As I look to the future, I'm excited by the opportunities in our sector, including the persistent growth in mobile data demand, the upcoming spectrum deployments by Crown Castle's customers, and over 800 megahertz of new spectrum auctions beginning in 2027. I believe our focus on becoming a best-in-class US tower operator will position us to capitalize on these trends and maximize cash ﬂow by unlocking additional organic growth and improving proﬁtability.

00:05:51 In summary, we believe we will generate attractive shareholder returns by focusing on the following priorities. Concluding the sale of the small cell and Fiber businesses, preserving the value captured in our DISH agreement, and improving our operational eﬃciency and eﬀectiveness. We believe these priorities, combined with our disciplined capital allocation framework and investment grade balance sheet will maximize shareholder value.

00:06:16 With that, I'll turn it over to Sunit to walk us through the details of the quarter.

00:06:20 Thanks, Chris, and good afternoon, everyone. We had a solid start to the year in the ﬁrst quarter as we executed the previously announced restructuring. First quarter organic growth, excluding the impact of Sprint cancellations and DISH terminations, was 3.1% or $30 million and included 0.3% or $3 million decrease in other billings.

00:06:44 First quarter organic growth increases to 3.3% if DISH revenues are excluded from prior year site

rental billings. Excluding the decrease in other billings, organic growth was 3.6%. This growth was more than oﬀset at site rental revenues by $5 million of Sprint cancellations, $49 million of DISH terminations, and a $26 million decrease in non-cash straight line revenues and amortization of prepaid rent.

00:07:16 Adjusted EBITDA and AFFO in the ﬁrst quarter beneﬁted from lower repair and maintenance costs, sustaining capital expenditures and other non-labor costs. These lower costs were largely due to timing and seasonality, so we expect them to occur later in the year. We also experienced a modest decrease in quarterly interest expense due to lower than anticipated short-term borrowing rates.

00:07:44 Turning to page 4. Our full-year outlook remains unchanged. When excluding DISH revenues from prior year site rental billings, our full year outlook includes 3.5% organic growth, excluding the impact of Sprint cancellations and DISH terminations, which we expect to mark the low point. At the midpoint of the range for full year 2026, we expect site rental revenues of approximately $3.9 billion, adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2.7 billion and AFFO of approximately $1.9 billion.

00:08:21 As a reminder, for the purposes of building our full year 2026 outlook, we'll assume the sale of the small cell and Fiber businesses closes on June 30. Following the close of the transaction, we plan to allocate approximately $1 billion to share repurchases and approximately $7 billion to repay debt, allowing us to remain at our target leverage range between 6 and 6.5 times.

00:08:50 Our full year 2026 outlook positions us well to meet our unchanged range for AFFO for the 12 months following the anticipated close of the transaction of $2.1 billion at the midpoint.

00:09:03 Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with signiﬁcant liquidity and ﬂexibility, positioning us to eﬃciently maintain our investment grade rating after the sale of the small cell and Fiber businesses based on our previously announced target capital structure and capital allocation framework.

00:09:21 Lastly, our outlook for discretionary CapEx remains unchanged at $200 million or $160 million net or $40 million of prepaid rent received.

00:09:33 To wrap up, we believe we have an opportunity to generate attractive shareholder returns as we transition to our standalone tower business and pursue our goal of becoming a best-in-class US tower operator.

00:10:03 With that, operator, I'd like to open the line for questions.

00:10:08 Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. The ﬁrst question comes from Ric Prentiss with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

What would be the process? And seems to make sense, but if you could just comment on that FCC letter that's saying maybe you could split it into and the vast majority of the value seems to be in domestic.

00:10:57 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: Yeah. Ric, maybe I'll just start by saying we continue to work towards our stated goal of closing the transaction by the end of ﬁrst half. We have received the vast majority of approvals, as I mentioned in my statement, and continue to feel very positive about the direction that things are headed. While not getting into the speciﬁcs of some machinations that might be going on behind the scenes, we remain extremely conﬁdent that we will close by the end of ﬁrst half, or as soon as possible.

00:11:29 Question - Ric Prentiss: Okay. Makes sense. And so just trying to work the Washington levers given the government shutdown maybe had aﬀected things. Okay. Second question that we get a lot is when you think about Crown's portfolio of US towers and the peer group, of both public and private companies out there, is there any reason systemically or fundamentally on why over a medium or long term your growth rates should vary from the peer group? Maybe it's something as simple as where we are in the 5G cycle and then heading into a 6G cycle. Is there anything systemically or fundamentally diﬀerent in your towers that is leading to the kind of lower new lease activity where we're seeing in this year's guidance?

00:13:22 The next question comes from Matt Niknam with Truist. Please go ahead.

00:13:28 Question - Matthew Niknam: Hey guys. Thanks so much for taking the questions. I will have two questions as well. Just ﬁrst, on the 5G cycle, I'm just curious, are we at the point now where carriers are coming back to initial 5G coverage layers to add more densiﬁcation? And is this any diﬀerent from prior 3G, 4G cycles?

00:13:48 And then secondly, maybe bigger picture question. Is the dynamic of your carrier customers partnering with satellite players for connectivity and remote areas aﬀected at all, how they're approaching network and site planning, in conversations with yourself? Thanks.

00:14:05 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: Let's start oﬀ with the ﬁrst question, which is around what the carrier behavior has been in terms of densiﬁcation with 5G. You get a combination of two things. You have both the additional capacity where spectrum is available to add additional radios and tower loading on individual towers in which they're installed today. And then you have a continued densiﬁcation where maybe they don't have the amount of spectrum that they need and/or they're looking to drive better in building coverage in either residential or workplaces, and therefore go on incremental towers in the form of colocations and not really any change from past deployments and very speciﬁc to the individual customer and their spectrum portfolio.

00:14:50 In terms of answering your second question on the satellites. Again, this has been something that I think we've said repeatedly, we see as something that is ultimately a plus up for operators to go into very, very rural locations where maybe coverage is a little more sparse. There's a number of limitations around satellite in terms of in building coverage, line of sight. That doesn't make it a perfect surrogate for really rural sites, but rather something that is an additional plus-up for the satellite companies and the operators to squeeze some incremental revenue opportunities in those very, very rural areas. And in terms of its impact on us as a business, it's really de minimis or inconsequential at this point.

00:15:51 The next question comes from Ari Klein with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

at benchmarking yourself versus peers and curious where you think kind of the biggest incremental opportunity remains on that front?

00:16:33 We're looking at for customer as an example, customer satisfaction and how can we dramatically improve our customer satisfaction over time? We benchmark against our other competitors and ﬁnd ways to take actions to meet the unmet needs of the customers. It might be in the form of increased cycle time and delivery of an application. It could be in terms of the products that we developed to meet that unmet demand.

00:17:00 We look at this holistically of what we can do to drive a superior customer experience, such that when there's choice of a customer between two tower companies, that we win 100% of the jump balls. That's the way I think about it. In terms of teammates, another example might be is looking at employee engagement across the organization post the split. It's about training and developing our employees. It's about process improvement in tools and pay for performance.

00:17:25 So in each one of these, we've worked with outside consultants to help us to both deﬁne those goals and then to put in goals for 2026 speciﬁc to our company performance, but then also over the 2027 to 2028 so that we have a long range transformation that allows us to make that claim that we're a best-in-class tower company. This is how we're approaching it and how we're implementing it in the company today.

00:18:12 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: I mean, we've got no indication from customers. In fact, if you look at most of the public related statements, both of the carriers themselves and even the satellite companies and the Satellite Industry Association, all of them see this as a complementary technology. Now, are there speciﬁc use cases in a very rural area for ﬁxed wireless, which we think is obviously we see that they've had some success providing emergency coverage, absolutely. But if I have to walk up the hill to the top of the hill in order to get a satellite signal to place a call, if I want to do anything in the form of mobility and broadband type experience in mobility, this is probably not the substitute that's going to eventually displace towers anytime soon based on all those data sources.

00:19:04 The next question comes from Michael Funk with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

00:19:10 Question - Michael J. Funk: Yeah. Thank you for taking the questions. I had two, if I could. So, we've heard this here from a couple of the carriers that they intend to do more densiﬁcation on their own ﬁber with small cells in 2026. Just wondering if you're hearing similar comments from your carrier customers, if you look to densify with 5G, then I have one for a follow-up after.

00:19:36 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: If I understand the question correctly, Michael, it's around densiﬁcation, speciﬁcally in the small cells business that we're listing as discontinued operations.

00:19:45 Question - Michael J. Funk: Well, the carrier is utilizing their own ﬁber and then using small cell to add capacity, rather than contracting with the tower companies for densiﬁcation in some of the urban and suburban areas that you mentioned earlier.

And so that they might be going oﬀ and doing a spot small cell here or there, I wouldn't doubt it, but it certainly isn't something that we've seen a widespread impact into the business or the industry as a whole.

00:21:19 Your next question comes from Richard Choe with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

and kind of going forward, or is that something that is happening now and something that you

can implement sooner?

00:21:52 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: Okay. A couple comments. One is you see from our guide that it is a second half loaded growth guide that we've given, and therefore we're in the process of developing and starting to build that. In terms of like speciﬁc things, I'd leave you with what I've said historically, which is the great news is when we talk to our customers, they're looking to do additional business with us and looking for ways that we can partner with them. Some of that is related to, obviously, new colocations or amendments. Some of it's related to an expanded service oﬀering. Many folks are asking for turnkey based services versus the service model that we currently have.

00:22:32 We are starting to talk to folks about new tower builds again, which is exciting as a tower company to build new towers and then other things like power-as-a-service or shared generators, things that we believe will help us to openly build the revenue for tower and the proﬁtability of Crown are all on the - all being considered now.

00:22:52 And then most recently, if you would have seen, I think, a press release one of our partners recently released, which is around the exciting opportunity potentially here of edge compute and making our 40,000 odd sites available for co-location with data centers. Given that in many of our sites, we have existing shelters that can be reutilized or repurposed for this usage. So there's a bunch of stuﬀ in the pipeline. And I'd just say, look, as our guide is shown for this to be more of a second half series of opportunities.

00:24:06 So I think we're excited potentially where this could take us. But these are early days still. And our key is to utilize our existing assets and to ﬁnd ways to drive new revenue streams. So we're looking at this as a very opportunistic thing for us to pursue with very little capital required. But yet, as a real estate company fully utilizing our assets.

00:24:28 So, this is how we're thinking about it. I'd say, let's stay tuned to this. And maybe this is something that we can continue to update you on through the course of the year, as we start to see some of the initial results of the eﬀorts underway.

00:24:41 In terms of the Fiber, sorry, second part of that question, the question of the question. Fiber, most of our sites do have Fiber backhaul into them, so there's ample ability to scale those sites. One of the attractive things about tower companies is edge data centers is that you have ample ﬁber, you have ample power and you have space, which we have all three. Then therefore fairly easy in terms of speed to market for interested parties.

00:25:11 The next question comes from Eric Luebchow with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

00:26:14 So, we have a very disciplined approach in place on how we look at this. It's initially going to be small volumes here. But I think our hope is to eventually ﬁnd a way to provide this as a service to our customers, as I think we're in a unique position given our size and scale to deliver this at a price that's eﬀective and attractive in the marketplace, but allows for the returns that Sunit and his team require in order for us to put cement in the ground.

00:26:45 Question - Eric Luebchow: Great. And just one follow-up. I think you've talked the last couple quarters about kind of cost eﬃciencies through SG&A and gross margins and getting your margins up 300 or 400 basis points over some period of time. So just wanted to conﬁrm that. And potentially anything you can reveal on kind of some of the cost initiatives that we'll see after the Fiber and small cell deal closes, that could kind of close some of the margin gap you have versus your two tower peers? Thanks.

00:27:14 Answer - Sunit S. Patel: Yeah. Let me take that. It's Sunit. So, we've already done a fair bit of that with that 20% reduction in staﬃng this last quarter. Having said that, I do think there are two big areas. One is what Chris talked about in his remarks, which is us buying ground leases at returns that exceed our cost of capital. We think that is a long-term opportunity for us where structurally our costs are higher than our peers because they own more of the towers underneath the - more of the land underneath the towers than we do.

00:27:54 So that is a good long-term opportunity for us where we're executing harder on. And then the second is what we talked about, which is investments in platforms and systems and automation, which we think will continue to drive eﬃciencies over the next peers. So yeah, I mean, as I look at where we're in 2026, let's all the way out to 2030, deﬁnitely think that we can do another, meaning

in addition to the reduction we made, probably another well over 200 basis points in margin

improvements.

00:28:32 The next question comes from Nick Del Deo with MoﬀettNathanson. Please go ahead.

00:29:26 So, I mean, I think that you're beginning to - you saw some beneﬁt in the ﬁrst quarter, you saw our CapEx is a little higher. But we do think this is a long-term opportunity. And where can we get to? I mean, our goal is over the next handful of years, get to a point where we own from 30% to as much as 40% of the land underneath our tower. So it's a long-term opportunity for us that we think we just stay focused on and turn up the dial on that and continue to execute well on.

00:30:36 The next question comes from Brendan Lynch with Barclays. Please go ahead.

risk from direct-to-device to the tower business. Maybe you could comment on the ﬁxed wireless

access demand that you've had over the years, and how that might be at some risk of increased competition from satellite, from broadband satellite?

00:31:08 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: Well, let's start with the premise of the start of ﬁxed wireless for the operators, and I've spent half my career on the operator's side, so little bit of insights here. It was really about excess capacity being soaked up, and monetized by the operators. Since that time, if you look at the current growth rate of data being on a CAGR of like 30% plus, it's now clear this is a new line of business, and that is driving incremental activity in terms of densiﬁcation, and capacity in the 5G networks as these operators really go and push this as an opportunity to grow their top line business.

00:31:47 Again, our portfolio tends to skew more towards suburban and urban. The hypothesis that you're going to replicate the capacity that a terrestrial network has to service that customer from a broadband perspective seems highly problematic to me comparative to that very rural customer where you might have excess capacity. The coverage areas of the individual satellites are much larger in terms of the service areas that they provide to than say a terrestrial network in general.

00:32:15 And therefore, I think we feel pretty conﬁdent that that won't be something anytime soon where the satellite guys are going to be going after the urban customer, but rather the rural customer, rather the guy who's out in his boat somewhere, and wants to have broadband available or the farmer out in the farmland. This is how I think we're looking at it and as the industry looks at it today.

00:32:40 Question - Brendan James Lynch: Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. And maybe a related question, because we've also seen a lot of ﬁber being rolled out, ﬁber to the home. How should we think about that as competition that might be a little bit more urban, suburban focused than the satellite capacity that might be available?

00:32:56 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: Well, if you're thinking about like voice over Wi-Fi as an example using VoIP, obviously it's been great for the operators to ﬁnd a way to oﬄoad their networks, to provide that capacity using Wi-Fi, and broadband. But again, as a - this is the same experience, and that somebody is utilizing going on to Wi-Fi outside of the home as a way of oﬄoading. If there's a new business model in there, I'm not aware of it.

00:33:27 So in terms of threats that we look at is what could conceivably reduce the capacity requirements of our network across our portfolio. We don't see Wi-Fi beyond what is already being used as a huge disruptor in the marketplace, and suddenly shifting huge amounts of capacity oﬀ the operator networks. I think they would have done it already if they could.

an opportunity that exists, if somebody would step into the breach that the DISH has left in the

market.

00:34:50 The next question comes from Madison Rezaei with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

00:35:23 Answer - Christian H. Hillabrant: Well, let me start by reiterating what I always do, which is that we are aggressively taking every action to compel DISH to fulﬁll its obligations both from a legal perspective, from a lobbying, and public interest perspective. I've certainly been getting the frequent ﬂyer miles back and forth to DC, meeting with members of the administration, members of Congress, the FCC, and the like kind of telling the story. And I think hats oﬀ to the WIA or Wireless Industry Association. I think they've done a very good job laying out compellingly why this is not in the public interest to allow DISH to walk away from their obligations without paying their bills. And so I'm hopeful that there will be some action taken, although we don't have any speciﬁc knowledge of how this will unfold exactly.

00:36:08 In terms of the legal process, we feel really good about our lawsuits. I think we feel like we're in a good position disputing the force majeure, and the various suits that we ﬁled. But I think I've always cautioned the folks on these calls that legal outcome is going to take at least a year, and so there's some time that it will take to get to a resolution there. And then any type of government intervention on our negotiated settlement would be on an ad hoc basis, and that would also take time.

00:36:37 So there's no, I don't have a crystal ball in front of me right now. But I would say, if at the end of the day, I will feel very good having left it all out on the pitch. We've done everything we possibly can to try to drive to a favorable outcome for our shareholders. But, and I think legally we're in a good position, but the timing of that, how it might manifest itself is still very much an unknown.

00:37:12 The next question comes from David Barden with New Street Research. Please go ahead.

And I think it would be great to just get a sense as to whether when we get this auction done, is this going to be something that drives growth in 2027 or 2028 or 2029 or somewhere beyond?

00:38:14 And the second question, if I could please is, there were a couple of questions earlier about the edge data center stuﬀ. And we've been talking about this for a really long time largely in part, because of Crown Castle. And the question is, how does that business model look? Like who owns the shed? What zoning do you require? How political could it be to get a data center plugged into a local community that uses X amount of power? Who owns the servers? Who deploys? How does it work? If you guys have had thoughts about that, it would be really interesting to hear, like the evolved business model would be great. Thank you.

00:39:44 I do know this. There is a huge, again, back to my more recent experience in D.C., there is a growing excitement amongst members, senior members of Congress and the administration around emerging 6G and the spectrum that's being put into play here starting in 2027, that will enable the US to have a strong leadership position in 6G. Now how that manifests itself. What are the use cases? I can't tell you. I'm not sitting in the boardrooms of those companies. But there's going to be a lot of push from the government to enable this, to provide funding for it, to provide spectrum for it. And so I'm excited about what that means for the industry as a whole as I think about long term. And eventually that will - we'll ﬁnd a way to have a long-term guidance that you guys will actually be happy with in our guide. But all I can say is we're very hopeful for where we're headed in that perspective.

00:40:37 I think in terms of the second part of the question on the edge data center, do you want to talk about that, Sunit?

00:41:05 And then like Chris said earlier, all our towers have ﬁber backhaul coming into those towers. So, I

think the advantage about what we have is you have a ﬁber connection, you have power, and you can have a sort of secure, conditioned shelter space. And we have a fair bit of that already because of prior initiatives. And in some cases, we look to either improve putting new shelter space. But essentially all we are doing is renting out real estate, which is what we do as a business, mostly vertical real estate and in this case, horizontal real estate. So we're not taking any depreciation or technology risk by deploying our own servers or anything like that.

00:42:46 The next question comes from Batya Levi with UBS. Please go ahead.

00:44:28

typically have a sort of all-in renewal?

00:45:00 The next question comes from Brandon Nispel with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

00:45:47 Answer - Sunit S. Patel: Sure. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, just this question saw a lot of discussion and deliberation, both with the team and also with the Board and the ﬁnance committee of the Board, and even back when we ﬁrst announced this capital allocation framework. If you recall back then, people worried about what DISH make it, for example. So some of this was thought through. And I think that, where we came out is, is to basically reiterate that the dividend would stay where it is now.

00:46:21 We do think that, as we said previously, that we can grow our AFFO pretty well. And so we will, over the next couple of years or so, get to the point where the dividend payout is within the ratio of the range that we've talked about. And then in the short term, we are paying down a lot of debt because one of the key things for us is to remain investment grade. And we are going to be buying out $1 billion of shares, which should also help both return capital to our shareholders and also drive AFFO per share growth.

00:46:58 So yeah, we did contemplate or think through that more than a year ago. And as I said at the time, people worried about if DISH would even be around. So, that was part of our thinking.

00:47:18 Our ﬁnal question comes from Michael Rollins with Citi. Please go ahead.

ﬁrst one is, if you were a private company, what could Crown Castle do diﬀerently that's diﬃcult or you wouldn't do whether it's operationally or strategically as a public company? And just curious if there's other considerations as you think about where's best for Crown to operate in public versus private markets.

00:47:59 And the second question I had was going back to the terms of contracts and I know you can't talk about individual customers. But when you look at the cohorts of towers that you manage and the vintages and where they came from, is there - and you mentioned earlier that you're a real estate company, so I think of mark-to-market. In your portfolio, is there a signiﬁcant number of towers that could either at some point have a signiﬁcantly positive mark-to-market or a negative mark-to-market that investors should be mindful of? Thanks.

00:48:42 Answer - Sunit S. Patel: Yeah. Great questions. On the private versus public, I think that the goals and objectives that Chris articulated, I don't think have changed. Like making sure we are, customer experience, customer satisfaction, improving our cycle times, operating eﬃciently, driving productivity. I think those would remain in place. I think where we see opportunities to put money to work like we talked about buying ground leases, I don't think that would change. Making investments in platforms and systems, to drive more eﬃciency, productivity, automation. I don't think that would change.

00:49:28 The only real change in a private company is, I believe, how much leverage you might take, and what would you do with your cash? Because you're not paying dividends out whether you pay debt down or pay to your shareholders. But from an operational perspective, I don't know that we would do anything, but I'll let Chris jump in...

00:50:06 I think it would be very expensive possibility, but it, look, we would do whatever is in the best interest of shareholders always. But I can assure you, in terms of running a private tower company versus a public tower company, we all face the same series of pressures to drive eﬃciency, highest return on invested capital. And it's about servicing the customer, and I don't really see any advantages one way or the other, only in terms of the valuation of how they're looked at in the public and private markets that would diﬀerentiate them. No real advantages that I would see. But that's one man's opinion.

00:51:24 So just depending on - escalators is another one. So, depending on the client, the history where you are, what kind of money we might or might not be leaving on the table, competition et cetera.

What kind of commitments the clients is making for the new tower or needing more space on an

existing tower, we - all of that gets factored into our commercial models to try and ﬁgure out what, how we can craft sort of win-win outcomes for both sides.

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Crown Castle Inc. published this content on April 24, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on April 24, 2026 at 22:08 UTC.