News Details

Provides Full Year 2019 Outlook

BOCA RATON, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- SBA Communications Corporation (Nasdaq: SBAC) ("SBA" or the "Company") today reported results for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.

Highlights of the fourth quarter include:

• Net income of $57.2 million or $0.50 per share
• AFFO per share growth of 15.2% over the year earlier period on a constant currency basis
• Added 221 sites to our portfolio during the quarter, growing our portfolio 6.0% for the year
• Repurchased 2.2 million shares during the quarter
• Tower cash flow and Adjusted EBITDA margins of 80.2% and 70.5%, respectively

“We ended 2018 with our best quarter of the year, posting strong results and seeing solid momentum as we move into 2019,” commented Jeffrey A. Stoops, President and Chief Executive Officer. “In 2018 we saw increased leasing activity domestically and internationally and we executed well. We had our best domestic leasing year in four years in terms of revenue added per tower. Tower cash flow margins continue to climb both domestically and internationally, evidencing the quality of our assets and the strength of our performance. We stayed fully invested, allocating capital in substantial amounts to both portfolio growth and stock repurchases. We met our portfolio growth goals, growing the portfolio by 6% in 2018. We have moved into 2019 with solid customer activity and backlogs right from the beginning of the year. We intend to continue to work hard to capture that business. We anticipate staying fully invested to our target net debt leverage range of 7.0x to 7.5x annualized adjusted EBITDA, and to do so through a mix of portfolio growth and stock repurchases. We believe that the combination of favorable customer demand, our strong execution against that demand and smart capital allocation will once again allow us to produce materially increasing amounts of AFFO per share as we move through 2019.”

Operating Results

The table below details select financial results for the three months ended December 31, 2018 and comparisons to the prior year period.

Total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2018 were $483.8 million compared to $443.1 million in the year earlier period, an increase of 9.2%. Site leasing revenue in the quarter of $444.7 million was comprised of domestic site leasing revenue of $358.2 million and international site leasing revenue of $86.5 million. Domestic cash site leasing revenue was $356.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to $332.9 million in the year earlier period, an increase of 7.1%. International cash site leasing revenue was $85.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to $77.2 million in the year earlier period, an increase of 10.5%, or 23.3% excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates.

Site leasing operating profit was $351.3 million, an increase of 8.5% over the year earlier period. Site leasing contributed 97.2% of the Company’s total operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2018. Domestic site leasing segment operating profit was $291.7 million, an increase of 8.6% over the year earlier period. International site leasing segment operating profit was $59.5 million, an increase of 8.2% over the year earlier period.

Tower Cash Flow for the fourth quarter of 2018 of $354.1 million was comprised of Domestic Tower Cash Flow of $295.4 million and International Tower Cash Flow of $58.7 million. Domestic Tower Cash Flow for the quarter increased 7.7% over the prior year period and International Tower Cash Flow increased 11.6% over the prior year period. Tower Cash Flow Margin was 80.2% for the fourth quarter of 2018, as compared to 79.7% for the year earlier period.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $339.3 million, a 9.4% increase over the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA Margin was 70.5% in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to 70.6% in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Net Cash Interest Expense was $96.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to $83.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2017, an increase of 15.1%.

Net income for the fourth quarter of 2018 was $57.2 million, or $0.50 per share, and included a $24.0 million gain, net of taxes, on the currency related remeasurement of U.S. dollar denominated intercompany loans with a Brazilian subsidiary, while net income for the fourth quarter of 2017 was $7.7 million, or $0.06 per share, and included a $20.4 million loss on the currency related remeasurement of U.S. dollar denominated intercompany loans with a Brazilian subsidiary.

AFFO for the quarter was $229.9 million, an 8.6% increase over the prior year period. AFFO per share for the fourth quarter of 2018 was $2.00, a 12.4% increase over the fourth quarter of 2017.

Investing Activities

During the fourth quarter of 2018, SBA purchased 79 communication sites for total consideration of $28.5 million. SBA also built 169 towers during the fourth quarter of 2018. As of December 31, 2018, SBA owned or operated 29,578 communication sites, 16,263 of which are located in the United States and its territories, and 13,315 of which are located internationally. In addition, the Company spent $21.5 million to purchase land and easements and to extend lease terms. Total cash capital expenditures for the fourth quarter of 2018 were $92.8 million, consisting of $9.9 million of non-discretionary cash capital expenditures (tower maintenance and general corporate) and $82.9 million of discretionary cash capital expenditures (new tower builds, tower augmentations, acquisitions, and purchasing land and easements).

Subsequent to the fourth quarter of 2018, the Company acquired 27 communication sites for an aggregate consideration of $10.7 million in cash. In addition, the Company has agreed to purchase in the U.S. and internationally 264 communication sites for an aggregate amount of $78.1 million. The Company anticipates that the majority of these acquisitions will be consummated by the end of the second quarter of 2019.

Financing Activities and Liquidity

SBA ended the fourth quarter with $10.0 billion of total debt, $7.4 billion of total secured debt, $176.1 million of cash and cash equivalents, short-term restricted cash, and short-term investments, and $9.9 billion of Net Debt. SBA’s Net Debt and Net Secured Debt to Annualized Adjusted EBITDA Leverage Ratios were 7.3x and 5.3x, respectively.

As of the date of this press release, the Company had $205.0 million outstanding under the $1.25 billion Revolving Credit Facility.

During the fourth quarter of 2018, the Company purchased 2.2 million shares of its Class A common stock for $342.0 million, at an average price per share of $158.09 under its $1.0 billion stock repurchase plan authorized on February 16, 2018. All shares purchased were retired. As of the date of this filing, the Company has $204.5 million of authorization remaining under the plan.

On February 1, 2019, the Company, through its wholly owned subsidiary, SBA Senior Finance II LLC, entered into a four year interest rate swap on a portion of its 2018 Term Loan. The Company swapped $1.2 billion of notional value accruing interest at one month LIBOR plus 200 basis points for a fixed rate of 4.495% per annum.

Outlook

The Company is providing its initial full year 2019 Outlook for anticipated results. The Outlook provided is based on a number of assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable at the time of this press release. Information regarding potential risks that could cause the actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements is set forth below and in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Company’s full year 2019 Outlook assumes the acquisitions of only those communication sites under contract at the time of this press release. The Company may spend additional capital in 2019 on acquiring revenue producing assets not yet identified or under contract, the impact of which is not reflected in the 2019 guidance. The Outlook also does not contemplate any additional repurchases of the Company’s stock during 2019 other than repurchases completed as of the date of this press release. The Outlook contemplates one new financing during the third quarter of 2019 to refinance the Company’s 2014-1C Tower Securities. The assumed interest rate of this new financing is 4.25%. There are no additional new financings contemplated in our 2019 Outlook.

The Company’s Outlook assumes an average foreign currency exchange rate of 3.80 Brazilian Reais to 1.0 U.S. Dollar and 1.30 Canadian Dollars to 1.0 U.S. Dollar for the full year 2019 outlook.

Conference Call Information

SBA Communications Corporation will host a conference call on Thursday, February 21, 2019 at 5:00 PM (EST) to discuss the quarterly results. The call may be accessed as follows:

Information Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release and our earnings call include forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company’s expectations or beliefs regarding (i) customer demand and its ability to capture demand, (ii) the impact of customer demand, operational performance, and capital allocation on its ability to increase AFFO per share, (iii) capital allocation and the Company’s target net debt leverage range, (iv) the Company’s financial and operational guidance for the full year 2019, (v) the timing of closing for currently pending acquisitions, (vi) additional capital spending in 2019, (vii) financing of indebtedness in 2019, and (viii) foreign exchange rates and their impact on the Company’s financial and operational guidance.

The Company wishes to caution readers that these forward-looking statements may be affected by the risks and uncertainties in the Company’s business as well as other important factors may have affected and could in the future affect the Company’s actual results and could cause the Company’s actual results for subsequent periods to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statement made by or on behalf of the Company. With respect to the Company’s expectations regarding all of these statements, including its financial and operational guidance, such risk factors include, but are not limited to: (1) the ability and willingness of wireless service providers to maintain or increase their capital expenditures; (2) the Company’s ability to identify and acquire sites at prices and upon terms that will provide accretive portfolio growth; (3) the Company’s ability to accurately identify and manage any risks associated with its acquired sites, to effectively integrate such sites into its business and to achieve the anticipated financial results; (4) the Company’s ability to secure and retain as many site leasing tenants as planned at anticipated lease rates; (5) the impact of continued consolidation among wireless service providers, including the impact of the potential T-Mobile and Sprint merger, on the Company’s leasing revenue; (6) the Company’s ability to successfully manage the risks associated with international operations, including risks associated with foreign currency exchange rates; (7) the Company’s ability to secure and deliver anticipated services business at contemplated margins; (8) the Company’s ability to maintain expenses and cash capital expenditures at appropriate levels for its business while seeking to attain its investment goals; (9) the Company’s ability to acquire land underneath towers on terms that are accretive; (10) the economic climate for the wireless communications industry in general and the wireless communications infrastructure providers in particular in the United States, Brazil, and internationally; (11) the Company’s ability to obtain future financing at commercially reasonable rates or at all; (12) the ability of the Company to achieve its long-term stock repurchases strategy, which will depend, among other things, on the trading price of the Company’s common stock, which may be positively or negatively impacted by the repurchase program, market and business conditions; (13) the Company’s ability to achieve the new builds targets included in its anticipated annual portfolio growth goals, which will depend, among other things, on obtaining zoning and regulatory approvals, weather, availability of labor and supplies and other factors beyond the Company’s control that could affect the Company’s ability to build additional towers in 2019; and (14) the Company’s ability to meet its total portfolio growth, which will depend, in addition to the new build risks, on the availability of sufficient towers for sale to meet our targets, competition from third parties for such acquisitions and our ability to negotiate the terms of, and acquire, these potential tower portfolios on terms that meet our internal return criteria. With respect to its expectations regarding the ability to close pending acquisitions, these factors also include satisfactorily completing due diligence, the amount and quality of due diligence that the Company is able to complete prior to closing of any acquisition and its ability to accurately anticipate the future performance of the acquired towers, the ability to receive required regulatory approval, the ability and willingness of each party to fulfill their respective closing conditions and their contractual obligations and the availability of cash on hand or borrowing capacity under the Revolving Credit Facility to fund the consideration. With respect to the repurchases under the Company’s stock repurchase program, the amount of shares repurchased, if any, and the timing of such repurchases will depend on, among other things, the trading price of the Company’s common stock, which may be positively or negatively impacted by the repurchase program, market and business conditions, the availability of stock, the Company’s financial performance or determinations following the date of this announcement in order to use the Company’s funds for other purposes. Furthermore, the Company’s forward-looking statements and its 2019 outlook assumes that the Company continues to qualify for treatment as a REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes and that the Company’s business is currently operated in a manner that complies with the REIT rules and that it will be able to continue to comply with and conduct its business in accordance with such rules. In addition, these forward-looking statements and the information in this press release is qualified in its entirety by cautionary statements and risk factor disclosures contained in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Commission on March 1, 2018.

This press release contains non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of each of these non-GAAP financial measures and the other Regulation G information is presented below under “Non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

This press release will be available on our website at www.sbasite.com.

About SBA Communications Corporation

SBA Communications Corporation is a first choice provider and leading owner and operator of wireless communications infrastructure in North, Central, and South America. By “Building Better Wireless,” SBA generates revenue from two primary businesses – site leasing and site development services. The primary focus of the Company is the leasing of antenna space on its multi-tenant communication sites to a variety of wireless service providers under long-term lease contracts. For more information please visit: www.sbasite.com.

Selected Capital Expenditure Detail

Communication Site Portfolio Summary

Segment Operating Profit and Segment Operating Profit Margin

Domestic site leasing and International site leasing are the two segments within our site leasing business. Segment operating profit is a key business metric and one of our two measures of segment profitability. The calculation of Segment operating profit for each of our segments is set forth below.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The press release contains non-GAAP financial measures including (i) Cash Site Leasing Revenue; (ii) Tower Cash Flow and Tower Cash Flow Margin; (iii) Adjusted EBITDA, Annualized Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA Margin; (iv) Net Debt, Net Secured Debt, Leverage Ratio, and Secured Leverage Ratio (collectively, our “Non-GAAP Debt Measures”); (v) Funds from Operations (“FFO”), Adjusted Funds from Operations (“AFFO”), and AFFO per share; and (vi) certain financial metrics after eliminating the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates (collectively, our “Constant Currency Measures”).

We have included these non-GAAP financial measures because we believe that they provide investors additional tools in understanding our financial performance and condition.

Specifically, we believe that:

(1) Cash Site Leasing Revenue and Tower Cash Flow are useful indicators of the performance of our site leasing operations;

(2) Adjusted EBITDA is useful to investors or other interested parties in evaluating our financial performance. Adjusted EBITDA is the primary measure used by management (1) to evaluate the economic productivity of our operations and (2) for purposes of making decisions about allocating resources to, and assessing the performance of, our operations. Management believes that Adjusted EBITDA helps investors or other interested parties meaningfully evaluate and compare the results of our operations (1) from period to period and (2) to our competitors, by excluding the impact of our capital structure (primarily interest charges from our outstanding debt) and asset base (primarily depreciation, amortization and accretion) from our financial results. Management also believes Adjusted EBITDA is frequently used by investors or other interested parties in the evaluation of REITs. In addition, Adjusted EBITDA is similar to the measure of current financial performance generally used in our debt covenant calculations. Adjusted EBITDA should be considered only as a supplement to net income computed in accordance with GAAP as a measure of our performance;

(3) FFO, AFFO and AFFO per share, which are metrics used by our public company peers in the communication site industry, provide investors useful indicators of the financial performance of our business and permit investors an additional tool to evaluate the performance of our business against those of our two principal competitors. FFO, AFFO, and AFFO per share are also used to address questions we receive from analysts and investors who routinely assess our operating performance on the basis of these performance measures, which are considered industry standards. We believe that FFO helps investors or other interested parties meaningfully evaluate financial performance by excluding the impact of our asset base (primarily depreciation, amortization and accretion). We believe that AFFO and AFFO per share help investors or other interested parties meaningfully evaluate our financial performance as they include (1) the impact of our capital structure (primarily interest expense on our outstanding debt) and (2) sustaining capital expenditures and exclude the impact of our (1) asset base (primarily depreciation, amortization and accretion) and (2) certain non-cash items, including straight-lined revenues and expenses related to fixed escalations and rent free periods and the non-cash portion of our reported tax provision. GAAP requires rental revenues and expenses related to leases that contain specified rental increases over the life of the lease to be recognized evenly over the life of the lease. In accordance with GAAP, if payment terms call for fixed escalations, or rent free periods, the revenue or expense is recognized on a straight-lined basis over the fixed, non-cancelable term of the contract. We only use AFFO as a performance measure. AFFO should be considered only as a supplement to net income computed in accordance with GAAP as a measure of our performance and should not be considered as an alternative to cash flows from operations or as residual cash flow available for discretionary investment. We believe our definition of FFO is consistent with how that term is defined by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (“NAREIT”) and that our definition and use of AFFO and AFFO per share is consistent with those reported by the other communication site companies;

(4) Our Non-GAAP Debt Measures provide investors a more complete understanding of our net debt and leverage position as they include the full principal amount of our debt which will be due at maturity and, to the extent that such measures are calculated on Net Debt are net of our cash and cash equivalents, short-term restricted cash, and short-term investments; and

(5) Our Constant Currency Measures provide management and investors the ability to evaluate the performance of the business without the impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations.

In addition, Tower Cash Flow, Adjusted EBITDA, and our Non-GAAP Debt Measures are components of the calculations used by our lenders to determine compliance with certain covenants under our Senior Credit Agreement and indentures relating to our 2014 Senior Notes, 2016 Senior Notes, and 2017 Senior Notes. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be an alternative to any of the financial measures provided in our results of operations or our balance sheet as determined in accordance with GAAP.

Financial Metrics after Eliminating the Impact of Changes In Foreign Currency Exchange Rates

We eliminate the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates for each of the financial metrics listed in the table below by dividing the current period’s financial results by the average monthly exchange rates of the prior year period, and by eliminating the impact of the remeasurement of our intercompany loans. The table below provides the reconciliation of the reported growth rate year-over-year of each of such measures to the growth rate after eliminating the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates to such measure.

Cash Site Leasing Revenue, Tower Cash Flow, and Tower Cash Flow Margin

The table below sets forth the reconciliation of Cash Site Leasing Revenue and Tower Cash Flow to their most comparable GAAP measurement and Tower Cash Flow Margin, which is calculated by dividing Tower Cash Flow by Cash Site Leasing Revenue.

Forecasted Tower Cash Flow for Full Year 2019

The table below sets forth the reconciliation of forecasted Tower Cash Flow set forth in the Outlook section to its most comparable GAAP measurement for the full year 2019:

Adjusted EBITDA, Annualized Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA Margin

The table below sets forth the reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to its most comparable GAAP measurement.

The calculation of Adjusted EBITDA Margin is as follows:

Forecasted Adjusted EBITDA for Full Year 2019

The table below sets forth the reconciliation of the forecasted Adjusted EBITDA set forth in the Outlook section to its most comparable GAAP measurement for the full year 2019:

Funds from Operations (“FFO”) and Adjusted Funds from Operations (“AFFO”)

The table below sets forth the reconciliations of FFO and AFFO to their most comparable GAAP measurement.

Forecasted AFFO for the Full Year 2019

The table below sets forth the reconciliation of the forecasted AFFO and AFFO per share set forth in the Outlook section to its most comparable GAAP measurement for the full year 2019:

Net Debt, Net Secured Debt, Leverage Ratio, and Secured Leverage Ratio

Net Debt is calculated using the notional principal amount of outstanding debt. Under GAAP policies, the notional principal amount of the Company's outstanding debt is not necessarily reflected on the face of the Company's financial statements.

The Net Debt and Leverage calculations are as follows:

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190221005782/en/

Mark DeRussy, CFA
Capital Markets
561-226-9531

Lynne Hopkins
Media Relations
561-226-9431

Source: SBA Communications Corporation