Crown Castle

Phase A — Understand the business

Company Overview

Crown Castle owns, operates and leases shared wireless communications infrastructure across the United States: "more than 40,000 towers and other structures". The model is dead simple and exceptional: it leases vertical space on each tower to multiple wireless carriers ("tenants") under long-term contracts, and because adding a second/third tenant to an already-built tower costs almost nothing, incremental tenancy drops to cash flow at very high margins ("tenant additions … achieved at a low incremental operating cost, delivering high incremental returns" ).

The defining event of this dossier: on March 13, 2025 management signed the "Strategic Fiber Agreement" to sell the entire Fiber segment (fiber solutions → Zayo Group; small cells → EQT Active Core Infrastructure) for $8.5 billion aggregate. That sale closed May 1, 2026 for ~$8.4B net of preliminary adjustments. Consequently the Fiber business is reported as discontinued operations, and Crown Castle now has one reportable segment — Towers. CCI is now a pure US tower REIT. Every continuing-operations number below excludes fiber.

Contract structure (the moat in one paragraph): tenant contracts run 5–15 year initial terms with fixed or CPI escalators and tenant-option renewals; weighted-average remaining term ~6 years representing $23.7B of expected future contracted cash inflows (ex-DISH). Site rental is 95% of net revenues and overwhelmingly recurring. The contracted cash-flow ladder: $2.9B (rest of 2026) → $3.86B (2027) → $3.72B (2028) → $3.01B (2029) → $2.83B (2030) → $6.87B thereafter.

Customers — extreme concentration: the three national carriers T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon collectively = ~90% of 2025 site rental revenues. The fourth would-be carrier, DISH, is now in default and litigation (Lens 10). REIT structure (90%+ taxable-income distribution; minimal cash taxes via NOLs).

Supply Chain

A tower REIT's "supply chain" is a real-estate-and-rent stack, not a manufacturing one. Mapped upstream → company → end customer with named parties:

• Land underneath the towers (the key input): ~40% of towers Adjusted Site Rental Gross Margin sits on land Crown Castle owns (fee/perpetual easement); ~60% on leased/subleased/managed/licensed ground, average remaining ground-lease life ~35 years incl. renewals. Ground-lease cost (rent paid to landowners) is the single largest recurring operating input. Crown Castle also holds options to purchase ~54% of its towers at the end of their lease terms — a structural cost lever.
• The asset itself: towers are commoditized steel; construction/augmentation is outsourced to contractors. CapexCapital expenditureMoney spent on long-lived things — buildings, machines, servers — rather than on running costs. is minimal — discretionary capex was just $149M in FY2025 and sustaining capexCapital expenditureMoney spent on long-lived things — buildings, machines, servers — rather than on running costs. <1% of net revenues; Q1 2026 continuing-ops capexCapital expenditureMoney spent on long-lived things — buildings, machines, servers — rather than on running costs. was $57M.
• Tenants / end customers (downstream chokepoint = concentration): T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon (~90%). Their network-equipment vendors (Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung) sit one layer beyond — they drive what gets hung on the tower but pay nothing to Crown Castle.
• Capital markets as a supplier: as a 5.9x-levered REIT, Crown Castle's true upstream input is debt financing — $24.7B of it (Lens 5). Lenders/bondholders are de-facto suppliers of the capital that buys land and towers.

Chokepoint: the single-source dependency is the demand side — three carriers. There is no upstream bottleneck; the entire risk vector points downstream at carrier consolidation (T-Mobile/Sprint already cost ~$200M of revenue) and a failed fourth carrier (DISH). Names present → lens passes.

Competitive Advantages (moats)

The moat is real, durable, and second only to AMT/SBAC's identical moat. Sources of advantage:

• Irreplaceable real estate + zoning. You cannot easily build a new tower next to an existing one — local zoning (US Telecom Act of 1996 preserves municipal siting authority ), FAA/FCC permitting, and NIMBY opposition make the installed footprint a near-permanent local monopoly. ~56% of towers are in the top-50 US BTAs and ~71% in the top-100.
• Switching costs. Once a carrier hangs equipment on a tower and integrates it into RF network design, moving is operationally painful and coverage-degrading. Contracts are long with escalators and tenant-option (not landlord-option) renewals — the tenant is locked in, the landlord is not.
• Operating leverage / incremental-tenant economics. Adding tenant #2 or #3 is ~100% incremental margin. This is the core value driver management names repeatedly.
• Bargaining power — the honest read: weaker than the asset quality implies. With ~90% of revenue from three sophisticated counterparties who are themselves an oligopoly, the towercos and the carriers have roughly symmetric power. The carriers can (and did) consolidate (T-Mobile/Sprint) and walk from a fourth-carrier build (DISH). Crown Castle's pricing power is real on renewals but capped by carrier capex discipline.

Versus rivals: "Some of our largest competitors are American Tower Corporation and SBA Communications Corporation". The product is undifferentiated steel — competition is on location, footprint, deployment speed, service quality, price. CCI's distinctive (and now-discarded) bet was the urban small-cell/fiber strategy; having sold it, CCI is the purest, most concentrated, lowest-growth of the three towercos (US-only, three customers). AMT's moat is structurally wider (international + data-center optionality via CoreSite); SBAC's is higher-growth (international, aggressive AFFO/share compounding).

Segments

Post-fiber-sale, there is exactly one segment: Towers. No product-segment breakout exists anymore (and our figures is empty). Geographic mix: virtually 100% United States (only foreign exposure is a small Puerto Rico tower operation) — a deliberate strategic identity ("the U.S. is the most attractive market for towers" ), and simultaneously the bear case (no geographic diversification, no emerging-market growth, unlike AMT/SBAC).

Revenue split by type (FY2025): site rental $4,049M (95% of net revenue); services & other the rest. Trend is decelerating/contracting, not growing: site rental −5% YoY in FY2025 and again −5% in Q1 2026 (Lens 5). The cause is identified, transient-but-multi-year: (1) T-Mobile/Sprint non-renewals (−$204M in FY2025) and (2) DISH churn (−$220M in 2026), partly offset by escalators + new leasing. The "single segment" simplification is the whole investment thesis — Crown Castle deliberately shrank itself to one clean, high-margin, slow-growing annuity.

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Phase B — Measure performance

Earnings Result

Latest print — Q1 2026 (period ended 2026-03-31, continuing ops / towers only):

• Site rental revenue −5% YoY (−$50M vs Q1 2025).
• Adjusted EBITDA −7% YoY (−$47M).
• Income from continuing operations $220M (vs $284M Q1'25) → basic & diluted EPS $0.50 (vs $0.65).
• Net income $0.34/share basic (continuing $0.50 less discontinued-ops drag of $(0.16)).
• Operating cash flow (net, incl. disc-ops) $509M for the quarter; continuing-ops capex only $57M.
• 2026 reaffirmed AFFO guidance: $1.945B–$1.995B, i.e. $4.53–$4.65 AFFO/share — modeled on −5% site rental revenue but +1% AFFO ($+2%/share).

Full-year 2025 (continuing ops):

. The 2024 net loss was driven by a $5.0B fiber goodwill impairment (now sold). FY2025 also carried a $(1.6)B loss on disposal of the Fiber Business (held-for-sale write-down).

What drove it: revenue contraction is entirely carrier-driven — T-Mobile/Sprint consolidation (−$204M) and falling prepaid-rent/straight-line amortization (−$61M), with escalators + new leasing roughly offsetting underlying organic growth. SG&A fell 12% to $383M (post-proxy-contest legal/consulting roll-off + restructuring); D&A −6% to $690M; interest expense rose to $972M (+4%) on higher debt funding the soon-to-be-sold fiber capex.

Balance-sheet flags: total debt $24,682M at Q1'26 (up from $24,337M at YE'25), fair value only $23,323M — i.e. the bonds trade ~$1.4B below par, the mark of a low-coupon (3.9% weighted) book in a higher-rate world. Cash a thin $274M (YE'25); total deficit (negative equity) $(1,635)M — normal for a mature levered REIT. Near-term maturities are heavy: $3.75B in the rest of 2026, $5.49B in 2027, but the $8.4B fiber cash plus $4.7B undrawn revolver more than covers it.

Market reaction / what's priced in: the stock reset hard through 2025 (32% dividend cut, see Lens 8) and has since stabilized ~$91. The Q1 print was a "maintain outlook" non-event — the market is no longer trading the quarter; it is trading the post-close re-rating question (Lens 12). Unusual vs. own history: this is the first time in CCI's modern life it is reporting a single, shrinking segment with negative revenue growth — a deliberate, not accidental, contraction.

Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

No transcripts on the shelf (transcripts/ empty), so this lens is -derived and thinner than ideal. Management's narrative arc over the last ~5 quarters (Q4'24 → Q1'26): a hard pivot from "growth via fiber/small cells" to "disciplined pure-play tower REIT, free-cash-flow and balance-sheet first." Recurring themes management now leans on: capital-allocation discipline, deleveraging with the fiber proceeds, "translating high-quality long-term contractual cash flows into stable capital returns". Phrases they stopped saying: the entire small-cell/fiber growth story, urban densification, "converged" infrastructure. The tone shifted from defensive/embattled (during the 2024 Elliott/Boots proxy war) to transactional and restructuring-focused (2025–26: fiber sale, dividend reset, 2026 restructuring, DISH litigation). The honest read: this is a management team executing a shrink-to-quality mandate imposed largely by an activist, not a confident organic-growth story. Sentiment is "stabilizing under new (interim) leadership," not "accelerating."

Comps

Peer set: the two other US towercos (AMT, SBAC), the closest true comparables. All multiples (June 2026) — our figures is empty and the 10-K/10-Q do not carry market multiples.

Sources: CCI mkt cap ~$41.0B / EV ~$70.1B; CCI price ~$91, yield ~4.6%; CCI 2026 AFFO/sh $4.53–4.65; AMT 2026 AFFO/sh $10.90–11.07, yield ~3.8–4.0%, ~16.5x fwd AFFO, ~8% growth; SBAC mkt cap ~$23.0B, div $1.25/qtr, AFFO/sh $3.03 Q1'26, ~20x EV/EBITDA & ~15.7x P/AFFO. EV/EBIT and 5-yr-avg ROE for the peers: n/a (towercos run negative/near-zero GAAP equity, making ROE meaningless and EV/EBIT noisy; the industry-standard yardstick is P/AFFO and EV/EBITDA, used above).

The provenance-critical conclusion: Crown Castle trades at the highest P/AFFO (~20x) of the three towercos while delivering the lowest AFFO/share growth (+2% vs AMT ~8%) and carrying the most concentration risk (US-only, 3 customers, DISH overhang). That is an inverted risk/reward on the multiple. The market is pricing CCI as if the deleveraging + clean-story re-rating is a near-certainty; AMT offers more growth at a cheaper multiple. Goldman's stance captures it: Buy AMT, Neutral CCI and SBAC.

Stock-Price Catalysts (last ~5 years, >5% moves)

The pattern is unusually clear: CCI's stock reacts to capital-allocation/strategy events and rates far more than to quarterly operations. throughout.

• Nov 2023–2024 — Elliott Management activist campaign + Boots Capital proxy fight. Sustained driver of the stock and the strategic agenda (Lens 9).
• April 11, 2024 — Steven Moskowitz named CEO (ex-AMT).
• March 13, 2025 — Fiber sale announced ($8.5B to Zayo + EQT). The single biggest strategic catalyst; reframed CCI as a pure tower REIT.
• April 30, 2025 — dividend slashed from $6.26 to $4.25/share (−32.1%). Major negative re-rating event for an income-owned name.
• January 12, 2026 — DISH default & termination; CCI asserts >$3.5B owed. Overhang event.
• March 24, 2026 — CEO Moskowitz ousted (<1 yr); Dan Schlanger interim CEO. Governance-shock event.
• May 1, 2026 — fiber sale CLOSED ($8.4B net). De-risking event; triggers the $7B debt repay + $1B buyback.

What the tape reveals: this is a special-situations / event-driven name, not a steady compounder. The market reacts to (a) the dividend, (b) the activist/strategy, (c) M&A/portfolio surgery, and (d) rates (low-coupon bonds + high-yield equity = bond-proxy). It barely flinches at the actual −5% revenue quarters because those are now well-telegraphed.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Management — the single largest qualitative red flag in this dossier

(1) Leadership instability — there is no permanent CEO. Crown Castle has churned through three CEO regimes in ~two years: Jay Brown departed → Steven Moskowitz appointed April 2024 → Moskowitz fired in <1 year, with Dan Schlanger installed as interim CEO effective March 24, 2026. A leading executive-search firm is running a permanent-CEO search. Sunit Patel is CFO (since April 2025), not CEO. An infrastructure REIT executing the biggest portfolio transformation in its history — with its largest customer in litigation — without a permanent CEO is a material governance risk.

(2) Activist-driven strategy. The fiber sale, the dividend cut, and the capital-allocation reset were not management's proactive vision — they were the outcome of Elliott Management's 2023–24 campaign, which installed Elliott partner Jason Genrich (and another nominee) on the board via a cooperation agreement. Co-founder Ted Miller's rival Boots Capital proxy slate was crushed (~10% of the vote) at the May 2024 meeting. The board now reflects Elliott's influence; the strategy is the activist's, executed by a caretaker.

(3) Capital-allocation history — mixed-to-poor, now correcting. The pre-2025 record is the bear case: CCI sank billions into the urban small-cell/fiber strategy and ultimately wrote off $5.0B of fiber goodwill (2024) and booked a $1.6B loss on disposal (2025), selling the business for $8.5B after investing far more. That is destruction, not creation. The forward allocation is cleaner and disciplined: $7B debt repay + $1B buyback from fiber proceeds, dividend reset to a covered level, +2% AFFO/share targeted.

(4) Skin in the game: our figures not present → n/a at the holdings level. Structurally, insider ownership at a $41B REIT is modest; the de-facto principal driving value is the activist (Elliott), not the founders.

(5) Archetype: professional-manager / caretaker, under activist supervision. No founder-operator at the helm (the founder lost his proxy fight). For this stage — a defensive annuity being deleveraged — a disciplined operator is the right archetype; the problem is they don't have a permanent one yet.

Forensic Red Flags

Accounting quality is clean and conservative — REIT mechanics + the giant fiber items are fully and transparently disclosed. Walking the statements:

• Revenue recognition: straight-line over non-cancelable term; clearly disclosed; $437M of unrecognized (deferred) revenue, recognizing ~$32M/qtr. No aggressive front-loading.
• Discontinued-ops mechanics: the fiber held-for-sale write-downs ($1.6B FY25 disposal loss; valuation allowance $1,836M at Q1'26) are large but mechanical and well-explained — they reflect selling fiber below carrying value, not earnings manipulation.
• Cash vs. earnings: GAAP earnings are understated vs. cash because of heavy D&A and one-time losses; operating cash flow ($3.06B FY25) comfortably exceeds net income — the opposite of a red flag.
• SBC: modest and stable (~$18M/qtr) — not flattering non-GAAP materially.
• Receivables/inventory: no inventory (service business); receivables $376M, up modestly with no revenue-outrunning-cash signal.
• The one genuine forensic flag — the DISH balance-sheet position. CCI carries a ~$165M net balance-sheet position tied to the terminated DISH agreements and has recorded NO reserves, asserting full recoverability. Given DISH/EchoStar is litigating force-majeure/frustration-of-purpose (below), this $165M is at risk of write-down, and the headline $3.5B claim is contingent, not booked — do not model it as an asset.
• Bond fair-value gap: debt fair value $23.3B vs. $24.7B carrying — a real economic (rate) exposure, though not an accounting irregularity.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section):

• SEC Litigation Releases / AAERs: none. "No LR found" and "No AAER found" for Crown Castle in 2021-06-29→2026-06-29 via EDGAR EFTS.
• 10-K Item 3 / Item 1A & note disclosures: management states it "has not incurred any material fines or penalties" under FCC/FAA/environmental regimes. The material litigation is the DISH dispute: on Jan 12, 2026 CCI delivered a notice of default/termination of the DISH Master Lease Agreement, asserting >$3.5B owed.
• Non-SEC / active litigation (web): Crown Castle filed suit against DISH/EchoStar seeking a judgment that force majeure has not occurred and DISH must perform; DISH counters that EchoStar's $40B spectrum sale to AT&T/SpaceX made building/paying for a network "impossible" (frustration of purpose), echoing its defense against American Tower. An appeals court upheld a DISH lease ruling, leaving tower payments "in legal limbo"; no settlement as of June 2026. There is also litigation history around the 2024 Boots/Elliott proxy dispute (resolved).
• Net: no SEC enforcement exposure; the live legal/regulatory risk is commercial (DISH), not accounting. Verified via SEC EDGAR EFTS (LR, AAER), 10-K Item 3, and web search as of 2026-06-29.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Forward Projection (AFFO/share — the right metric for a tower REIT)

For a REIT, AFFO/share is the cash-earnings yardstick (GAAP EPS is distorted by D&A). Building from management's own reaffirmed 2026 guide and the disclosed dynamics. Fiscal year = calendar year.

Base inputs (all labeled):

• 2026 AFFO/share $4.53–$4.65 (midpoint ~$4.59), management-guided. Drivers: −5% site rental revenue and −$220M DISH churn, offset by escalators (~3%), $7B debt repay (lower interest), $65M restructuring savings, $1B buyback shrinking the count.
• Organic leasing: management frames 2026 as the trough — DISH churn and T-Mobile/Sprint non-renewals are largely in the base by end-2026; from 2027 the ~3% escalators + modest new-carrier leasing should turn revenue flat-to-up.

FY2026 — base ≈ $4.59 AFFO/share.

FY2027:

• Base ~$4.80 — revenue stops shrinking as DISH/Sprint churn anniversaries; ~3% escalator on a $4.0B base (+$120M) less residual churn; full-year benefit of the $7B debt paydown (interest saved ~$250–300M on ~3.9% avg, partly offset by refinancing 2026/27 maturities at higher rates); buyback count reduction..
• Bull ~$5.05 — cleaner re-leasing, an incremental carrier/fixed-wireless tenant, full restructuring run-rate, some DISH recovery..
• Bear ~$4.45 — a fourth-carrier hole persists, another carrier rationalizes, refinancing drags interest, no DISH recovery..

FY2028:

• Base ~$5.05 — steady ~3% escalator-driven AFFO/share compounding once the churn cliff is fully lapped; this is the "normalized ~5–6% grower" the bulls underwrite..
• Bull ~$5.50 / Bear ~$4.55..

Arithmetic shown; output. The honest framing: 2026 is a down year, 2027 is the inflection, 2028 is where the ~5% grower thesis must prove out. Note this is below AMT's ~8% AFFO/share growth and SBAC's faster compounding — CCI is the slow horse. No our model create (unattended --watchlist rule; only log a Brier forecast on a genuinely committed base case).

Bull vs Bear

Bull case. A best-in-class, irreplaceable US tower portfolio is finally a clean, simple, fully-funded annuity. The $8.4B fiber proceeds wipe out ~$7B of debt (de-risking the balance sheet toward solid IG) and fund a $1B buyback; the dividend is reset to a covered, growable $4.25; the messy fiber losses are behind it. 2026 is the trough — DISH and Sprint churn are one-time resets, after which ~3% contractual escalators plus US 5G/fixed-wireless leasing demand drive ~5% AFFO/share compounding with <1% maintenance capex and minimal cash taxes. At ~4.6% yield and ~20x AFFO, a successful CEO hire + a clean post-close quarter or two could re-rate the multiple toward AMT's as the market re-accepts CCI as a pure compounding tower REIT. Contrarian bull: everyone hates the leaderless/no-growth story right now — that's the entry.

Bear case (2–3 things that could permanently impair or de-rate).

1. Structural growth deficit. CCI is US-only, three customers, +2% AFFO/share in 2026 — the lowest-growth towerco — yet trades at the highest P/AFFO (~20x). The market is paying a premium multiple for the slowest grower with the most concentration. Mean-reversion of that multiple toward SBAC's ~15.7x is ~20%+ downside on the multiple alone.
2. Carrier oligopsony + a dead fourth carrier. With DISH gone, US has effectively three tower customers and no new-entrant demand. Any further carrier consolidation or capex discipline hits CCI hardest (it has nowhere else to go — no international, no data centers). The DISH $3.5B claim is contingent and being litigated against a force-majeure defense that already won an appeals ruling; the booked $165M is at write-down risk.
3. Governance vacuum + rate sensitivity. No permanent CEO; an activist-set strategy executed by a caretaker; a low-coupon bond book that must refinance $9B+ of 2026–27 maturities into higher rates (bonds already mark ~$1.4B below par). As a bond-proxy yield name, CCI de-rates if long rates rise.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke): It's late 2027. CCI named a CEO who signaled "growth" and the Street feared capital-allocation drift; a second carrier began rationalizing post-5G; the DISH force-majeure defense prevailed and CCI wrote off the $165M and abandoned the $3.5B claim; refinancing pushed interest expense up; AFFO/share growth stalled at ~1%. The premium multiple collapsed to ~15x and the stock is in the low-$70s. The thing that broke it: the market stopped paying an AMT multiple for an ex-growth, single-country, three-customer annuity.

Are multiples too high? Yes, on a relative basis — ~20x AFFO for +2% growth vs AMT ~16.5x for ~8% is the clearest mispricing in the comp set.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see): the bullish "re-rating" thesis and the bearish "value-trap" thesis both over-weight the multiple and under-weight the leadership/strategy question. The real swing factor isn't the AFFO model (well-bounded) — it's who becomes permanent CEO and whether they accept CCI's destiny as a slow, high-payout annuity or try to "grow" it again (the exact impulse that produced the fiber disaster). The market is mispricing management-strategy optionality, not cash flows.

Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case. The "AI/data-center demand" tailwind is a mirage for CCI — it owns macro towers for mobile carriers, not data centers, and it sold the only AI-adjacent asset (urban fiber/small cells) it had. The growth case rests entirely on three counterparties' 5G capex, which is mature and declining — US carrier network spend peaked. Revenue concentration is the kill-switch: ~90% from T-Mobile/AT&T/Verizon; if one renegotiates harder or consolidates, there is no offset (no international, no diversification — CCI deliberately removed all of it). DISH already proved a "tenant" can simply walk and litigate its way out — and is winning an appeals ruling on force majeure. The moat is weaker than bulls claim precisely because the tenants are a sophisticated oligopoly with symmetric power, not fragmented price-takers. Most dangerous competitor bulls underestimate: not AMT/SBAC, but the carriers' own willingness to deprioritize/decommission redundant sites post-consolidation (the T-Mobile/Sprint −$204M was a preview, not a one-off). Worst capital-allocation history: $5B fiber goodwill written off + $1.6B disposal loss — a multi-billion-dollar value incineration that the same board now asks you to trust on the next strategy, while running with no permanent CEO and an activist pulling the strings. What must hold for $91: ~5% AFFO/share compounding from 2027, no further carrier churn, DISH partly recovered, and a premium-to-SBAC multiple sustained. If growth disappoints 20–30% (i.e. flat/−1% AFFO/share instead of +5%), the premium multiple is indefensible and the stock re-rates to ~15x → low-$70s, ~20–25% downside. Single permanent-impairment scenario: a structural step-down in US carrier tower spend (network-sharing, satellite-direct-to-device offloading rural coverage, or a fourth-carrier vacuum that never refills) compresses both growth and the multiple simultaneously — plausibility: moderate, and rising with EchoStar/SpaceX direct-to-cell.

Management Questions (15, ordered by information value)

1. The permanent-CEO search: what mandate is the board hiring against — operate CCI as a high-payout annuity, or grow it? (Given the fiber history, this single answer most changes the thesis.)
2. DISH: what is your realistic recovery range on the >$3.5B claim, and why have you recorded no reserve against the $165M net position when an appeals court has upheld a DISH lease ruling on force majeure?
3. Post-2026 trough, what organic AFFO/share growth rate do you stand behind for 2027–2029, and what leasing demand underwrites it absent a fourth carrier?
4. Why should CCI trade at AMT's multiple when it grows AFFO/share at ~2% vs AMT's ~8%, with no international diversification?
5. With three customers at ~90% of revenue, what concrete leverage do you have on the next renewal cycle versus the carriers' capex discipline?
6. Are you seeing any further site rationalization risk from carriers beyond the T-Mobile/Sprint and DISH events — and how many overlapping/redundant sites exist in your portfolio?
7. How do you think about direct-to-device satellite (Starlink/AST) as a long-run substitute for incremental rural/suburban tower tenancy?
8. Refinancing: $9B+ of 2026–27 maturities roll off a ~3.9% book into higher rates — what is the steady-state interest expense and AFFO drag by 2028?
9. Capital allocation after the $7B paydown + $1B buyback: dividend growth, further buybacks, or selective tower M&A — in what priority?
10. What is the run-rate cost structure and corporate-overhead level appropriate for a single-segment pure tower REIT (vs the prior two-segment company)?
11. Do you intend to exercise the purchase options on the ~54% of towers on leased land, and what is the capital plan / return on doing so?
12. What new tenant categories (fixed wireless access, private networks, edge) are actually contributing to leasing today, and how material can they become?
13. How should investors think about your land-under-tower strategy now that capex is minimal — is ground-lease buyout still a priority use of capital?
14. What governance changes have resulted from the Elliott cooperation agreement, and how independent is forward strategy from the activist's preferences?
15. What is the single internal metric the (interim) CODM/CEO manages the company by, and how is it changing in 2026?

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