American Tower is selling 5.25 million of 5.25% mandatory convertible preferred stock for US$100 a share to raise US$510m.
Underwriters Goldman Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays and JP Morgan have also been granted a greenshoe option which could…
American Tower is selling 5.25 million of 5.25% mandatory convertible preferred stock for US$100 a share to raise US$510m.
Underwriters Goldman Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays and JP Morgan have also been granted a greenshoe option which could see the size of the deal rise to US$583m.
The US tower giant is issuing the convertibles to fund recent acquisitions. The company has drawn on its multi-currency US$2bn senior unsecured revolving credit facility to finance deals, chiefly its US$386m purchase of 60 sites from Richland Properties.
American Tower will use the takings from the convertibles sale to top-up the revolver. If holders of the convertibles do not convert the shares then the stock will switch automatically in May 2017, into between 0.9174 and 1.1468 shares of the towerco’s common stock.
Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche wrote in a note yesterday that it was common for a Reit like American Tower to fund a deal on their respective equity line and raise equity later. She described the offering as “opportunistic” and said that the company has taken advantage of its share price, which has risen 8.3% since 1 April.
American Tower owns and operates 68,000 sites, primarily across the US, but also in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Ghana, India, Mexico, Panama, Peru, South Africa and Uganda.
