American Tower expects zero billing growth in India

American Tower CEO Jim Taiclet said the global telecom tower company is expecting lower levels of new business in India in 2020, as carriers will not be able to make huge network investments due to AGR issue.
Nokia AirScale base stationIndia Carrier Consolidation-Driven Churn has subsided. From a planning perspective we’ve layered in some additional churn for 2020 as a result of the uncertainty created by the recent India Supreme Court ruling on the definition of adjusted gross revenue, Jim Taiclet said.

American Tower India expects tenant billings growth will be essentially zero in 2020 versus 20 percent decline in 2019. This includes churn assumptions of around 12 percent in 2020 as compared to 33 percent in 2019 given that the impacts of the Carrier Consolidation process are largely over.

American Tower said it expects Indian mobile network operators will deploy significant levels of capital into their networks, as 4 G penetration grows and mobile data usage continues to expand.

Nokia MBiT report today said Indian mobile operators achieved 47 percent increase in data consumption in 2019 with 4G constituting 96 percent of data traffic

American Tower revenue

American Tower Corporation reported 9.8 percent drop in revenue to $1.924 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2019.

American Tower’s revenue increased 1.9 percent to $7.580 billion, while net income rose 51.5 percent to $1.917 billion.

American Tower said its Q4 2019 and full year 2019 growth rates were impacted by the nonrecurrence of the company’s settlement with Tata Teleservices, which resulted in a net positive impact of $334 million to property revenue, $327 million to Adjusted EBITDA and $313 million to consolidated AFFO.

Telecom tower business

U.S. property revenue to grow in mid-5% range
International property revenue to grow at more than 11%
Latin America tenant billings to grow at around 7%
Africa tenant billings to grow at around 11%
Europe tenant billings to grow at 1-2%
India tenant billings to grow at zero

American Tower CEO Jim Taiclet said: “We added nearly 14,000 communications sites to our portfolio via high quality acquisitions in the U.S., Latin America, and Africa and the most substantial build-to-suit construction program in the company’s history.”

American Tower expects to make sustained progress in each of the key elements of Stand and Deliver strategy to advance the company’s vision of making wireless communication possible everywhere.

American Tower’s capital expenditures during the fourth quarter were approximately $275 million. Capital expenditures for 2019 were approximately $1.0 billion.

American Tower during the fourth quarter of 2019 spent $2.6 billion to acquire 8,218 communications sites. This included approximately 5,800 sites in Africa through the acquisition of Eaton Towers Holdings and approximately 2,400 sites in Chile and Peru from Entel.

American Tower in 2019 spent approximately $3.3 billion, including the assumption of existing debt, to acquire nearly 9,200 communications sites and other communications infrastructure assets.

American Tower will be spending approximately $200 million in business on innovation related initiatives, including additions of lithium-ion batteries and solar in certain international markets, as well as selective expansion of fiber infrastructure largely in Latin America.