Anterix Inc. Common Stock Oppenheimer 29th Annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference
Review the key takeaways and the transcript of this earnings call.
- Anterix Inc. expanded its low band spectrum capacity from six megahertz to ten megahertz as of February, increasing its licensed spectrum in the 900MHz band, a scarce and valuable asset.
- Anterix holds about 85% of its nationwide megahertz pops remaining, approximately 3 billion MHz pops, with a current market cap of $1.8 billion, valuing the spectrum at about $0.60 per MHz pop compared to $2.50 per MHz pop in the recent FCC Auction 113, implying a gross asset value of about $7.5 billion.
- The company recently reported earnings emphasizing optionality in monetizing and utilizing its spectrum, including terrestrial and potential satellite uses.
- Anterix conducted successful initial technical trials with Link, testing data connectivity including texting and web browsing over satellite using their spectrum.
- The company maintains a strong balance sheet with no debt and $116 million in cash as of the end of the quarter.
- Anterix continues active negotiations with about a dozen utilities for spectrum leases, with many discussions focused on pricing adjustments reflecting increased spectrum value.
- Electric utilities deploying Anterix’s spectrum report multiple use cases including predictive maintenance, outage prevention, and wildfire mitigation, with some fully deployed networks and ongoing load increases.
- The company highlighted the importance of low band spectrum for coverage and penetration, noting limited availability of sub-1 GHz spectrum and the long timelines for potential new auctions such as repurposed 600 MHz broadcast spectrum.
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Transcript
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Good morning, everybody. Tim Moran, the communications analyst here at Oppenheimer. My pleasure to be hosting a fireside chat with Anterix. As all of you know, Anterix owns critical spectrum, low-band spectrum, which we have effectively run out of. As all of you know, if you want to do any form of mobile or satellite communications, you need spectrum. Without spectrum, no communications. It is really, really good to be the company owning really, really scarce assets, and we are going to talk about this in a lot of detail. We are lucky to have both the Chief Regulatory and Communications Officer, Chris Guttman-McCabe, and Elena Marquez, the CFO. I have a whole series of questions, but Elena, I do not know if you want to start with some kind of just regulatory message or other message.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Tim, thank you very much for having us both. We are very happy to be here, and thank you for setting up the conversation in such a great way. We completely agree with you that being a spectrum holder in the current environment is just absolutely terrific. I want to start with things that we did control over the last few years, which is an incredible regulatory effort that Chris led that came to culmination in February, where we were able to expand our band capacity from previously 6 MHz to now 10. Folks like you can completely appreciate what 10 MHz of low-band spectrum means. It is certainly more of a standard band, but also we own spectrum in 900 MHz band, and it is a very scarce asset currently.
Our spectrum is licensed, which makes it quite unique also in this environment, and there is not a lot of it left. With all of the current, just over the last few months, activity on the spectrum acquisition front. Companies like SpaceX acquired spectrum from EchoStar. The most recent transaction was Rocket Lab and Iridium, and many others. There is just so much validation to the demand for spectrum, but the supply is fixed. It is an incredible position to be in for Anterix. As you know, we historically have monetized our spectrum geography by geography to utilities. Interestingly, we have been very actively messaging the scarcity and the increase in value of spectrum and its appreciation through public forums and certainly to our prospective utility customers. We see that they are really very actively coming to the table with us.
A lot of the discussions with about a dozen different opportunities currently are all about pricing, and a lot of them are renegotiating pricing. I also wanted to highlight really, I think, all of the above themes, I am sure we will unpack them further throughout this conversation. One of the things that even with our current very significant run-up in stock price over the last few months, we still believe that there is a significant disconnect between how the market values us and the value of the underlying asset, again, given all of the public comparables available out there, including the most current and recent auction that just closed, Auction 113.
We will unpack the evaluation- Well, I guess while you mentioned it, Yeah just so 10 MHz of spectrum, what do you estimate you are trading at right now as a MHz-pop?
Yeah. How does that compare?
Yeah. We have about 85% of our nationwide MHz-pops still remaining after the 11 utilities that we transacted with, which equal about 3 billion MHz-pops. If we take our market cap at, call it, $1.8 billion today and divide it by the 3 billion MHz-pops, that is only $0.60 versus the Auction 113 that just concluded at about $2.50 average nationwide. That would have put us at about $7.5 billion gross asset value. We remain very excited about the upside opportunity that exists for us.
Can you compare and contrast your spectrum versus that auction spectrum, the, just the qualities, features, functionality?
Yeah, no, appreciate that prompt, Tim Moran. Our spectrum is low-band, and there's almost none left out there versus AWS-3, of course, is more of mid-band spectrum that doesn't have the same incredible propagation and penetration qualities as low-band spectrum does. Again, there's just not a lot of it on the shelf, and we're excited to be one of the holders.
Maybe just stepping back a minute, you just reported earnings a few days ago. What was the most important message that you were trying to convey on that earnings result?
Yeah, just really a lot of the same. Interestingly, and I know that would be a topic that we go into probably next, is SpaceX's filing to the FCC with some optionality for fulfilling our potential build-out requirements, not only with terrestrial that we already have in our rules, but also potentially with satellite coverage. That was very exciting. That, I think, helps validate the message around great and growing demand for low-band spectrum and its scarcity, and being mentioned as one of the three bands in that filing was certainly very exciting and very validating for us and our message.
And maybe just a step back for people that didn't read the letter. Can you say what SpaceX said in that letter? And yeah, we can get into it in more detail, yeah.
Yeah. Chris, do you want to take over?
Sure. Sure. And hey, Tim.
Hi. Thank you for having us.
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