Crown Castle Inc. Bank of America 2026 Media,Communications & Entertainment Conference
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Started here with the next session. Really pleased to have Kris Hinson from Crown Castle here with us today, kind of continuing. This is nice. We've included a lot of tower companies on the same day of the presentations. Yesterday was data center today, and today is tower day. It's nice to continue that conversation and kind of the same questions and a narrative that I know a lot of investors want to hear. I'm going to open. Well, first of all, Kris, thank you.
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Thank you for coming. Just for the audience, I will allow about 5 minutes at the end if you have any questions. They will walk around with a microphone, so just raise your hand when I mention that, and we'll make time for you as well, please. Back to my point, I'm going to open the same way I did with Mark earlier, where investors are, I think, very focused on trying to determine when we're going to see growth inflection positive in the tower industry. The way I think that Crown Castle has talked about it is, this being a low point for growth, right, this year because of a number of headwinds. Can you take us from that low point in growth and what factors are going to drive accelerating rent growth?
Sure. As you mentioned, our organic growth forecast for 2026 is 3.6%, excluding the attrition Sprint. We do expect that to be a low point. I think it will get better from there going forward. We'd also, when we initially put out our guidance at the beginning of the year, talked about how we expected activity to be a little back-end loaded as we go through 2026 as well. When we think about what drives that, there are several things for Crown. One thing specifically, which is what leads here to point 2 is, we have long-term contracts with our customers that provide pretty good line of sight into activity for us going forward.
That gives us confidence that things will pick up and be better from here. There are also some positive tailwinds as well that we see. There is the spectrum acquisitions, so AT&T in particular acquiring the 600 from EchoStar. Then also as we look at spectrum auctions going out in late this year, early next, as well as sort of longer term, up to 800 MHz of spectrum that the Federal Communications Commission has talked about auctioning off. I think all of that has historically provided support for our business, and we would view that as a positive in this case as well.
Okay. Just breaking down the piece parts then, you mentioned the AT&T 600 MHz. How impactful could the deployment of 600 be for Crown Castle?
Yeah, we do not go into too much detail.
Yeah. The- Is there a way you can frame it broadly, though?
I know you are not going to sell by cell site, but even broadly frame what historic deployments making a little spectrum meant for Crown Castle so we can get some context.
Yeah, I think having low-band spectrum, it tends to be larger equipment also.
AT&T, they spent a fair bit of money on this, and I think it's something that they are likely to want to deploy. That activity and the equipment that is required is something I would expect to be a positive for towers and a positive for us specifically.
Okay. I guess historically, when carriers deployed similar low-band spectrum, what percentage of your towers was that deployed on historically?
It depends a lot on the specific plans- Yeah carrier by carrier.
But you generally would see when spectrum is made available, new spectrum of any kind, it tends to be impactful. Obviously, depends on where we are in the cycle and what the individual plans are for the customer. But again, I would certainly expect this one to be positive for us.
Okay, that's clear. In the C-band expectations, you probably don't get that cleared until, say, 2029, 2030. When do you think you'd expect to start seeing activity, though, related to C-band?
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