Verizon eyes $3 billion towers sale

The US mobile operator has hired advisors to ascertain interest from potential buyers for a portfolio of 5,000-6,000 towers, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. One of those sources supplied the possible price tag.

The industry has been awash with towers sale stories in recent years as telcos have increasingly looked to monetise those assets and free up cash to spend elsewhere in their businesses. That is doubtless what is happening here, assuming this rumour proves correct... and there's no reason to believe otherwise.

What is different in this case is that we're looking at a US operator selling towers, something we haven't seen on a large scale for some years.

US telcos were ahead of the game when it came to towers monetisation, with many offloading their passive infrastructure assets a decade or more ago. It's no coincidence that Boston-based American Tower is the world's largest towers company by number of sites.

The big US telcos were in the vanguard when it came to selling off towers. Verizon made headlines in early 2015 when it agreed to sell the rights to a parcel of more than 11,324 towers to American Tower for just over $5 billion in cash. That deal came just over a year after arch-rival AT&T hammered out a similar agreement with Crown Castle covering around 10,000 towers for $4.85 billion.

Crown Castle and SBA Communications were both involved in Verizon's C-band 5G network rollout, which got underway in April 2021. And, more recently, the telco brokered a build-to-suit deal with Vertical Bridge with the latter agreeing to build mobile towers on its behalf to expand its 4G and 5G Ultra Wideband services. Those new towers are held in a limited liability company formed by Digital Bridge in which Verizon has a profits share.

Fast-forward to the present and Verizon clearly still has an eye on making some money from towers.

The Bloomberg report does not have much detail to add. We don't know, for example, whether Verizon might look to spin off the assets into a separate business and retain a stake in it, like some of its peers in Europe have done of late.

The newswire's sources point to interest from infrastructure firms and strategic buyers, which makes sense, but they have given no names at this time.

The process is clearly at a very early stage; indeed, the story itself is doubtless serving as a weather balloon for Verizon. Bloomberg added the usual caveat that deliberations are preliminary and there is no guarantee a sale will result. The telco declined to comment on the report, it said.

There is still interest in the passive infrastructure market though, so it seems likely that Verizon will draw the attention of would-be investors to its towers. The biggest question will be whether all parties can reach an agreement they are happy with.