Phoenix Tower International (PTI) closed its transaction to buy or get management rights to more than 600 T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) cell tower sites, including the exclusive right to manage and operate the sites from T-Mobile via PTI's local U.S. subsidiaries. Terms of the deal, which was first announced in August, remain confidential.
T-Mobile sold most of its towers to Crown Castle in a $4.2 billion deal that was announced in September 2012. However, these remaining sites were acquired by T-Mobile when it purchased MetroPCS.
PTI also announced that it closed off a five-year credit facility for its U.S. subsidiaries, which was primarily arranged by TD Securities. The credit facility was used to finance the T-Mobile tower acquisition and provide additional financing for new tower development and acquisitions of wireless infrastructure in the United States, PTI said.
In an interview with FierceInstaller shortly after the T-Mobile deal was announced, PTI CEO Dagan Kasavana said that part of the motivation for the deal was so PTI could gain scale in the U.S. Before the T-Mobile deal TI had fewer than 50 towers in the U.S.
Historically, PTI has primarily focused its efforts on Latin America and the Caribbean, where PTI currently has more than 600 towers, including its work in Brazil with an affiliated company.
In addition to towers, PTI assets include land parcels and rooftop rights. The company is not currently working in the small cell market.
Kasavana said that the T-Mobile deal would help increase PTI's stature as a major multi-national owner and operator of towers. He signaled that the company was looking to grow via a combination of deal-making as well as organic growth. PTI has been more active since it received an investment in July 2014 from Blackstone Group.
As Inside Towers notes, Kasavana is a former senior vice president of merger and acquisitions at Global Tower Partners, and founded PTI in 2013. GTP sold its U.S. tower assets to American Tower in September 2013 for $4.8 billion.
For more:
- see this release
- see this Inside Towers article
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