American Tower is offering 23.5 million common shares and 12.5 million depository shares to fund its purchase of the rights to more than 11,000 towers owned by Verizon Communications.
Goldman Sachs is leading the offering, the proceeds of which American…
American Tower is offering 23.5 million common shares and 12.5 million depository shares to fund its purchase of the rights to more than 11,000 towers owned by Verizon Communications.
Goldman Sachs is leading the offering, the proceeds of which American Tower will use, alongside cash on hand and borrowings under its revolving credit facilities, to pay for the sites.
The offering of common shares alone looks set to raise US$2.24bn, based on American Tower’s opening share price today of US$95.42.
BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citigroup and JP Morgan are also acting as joint book-running managers on the common stock offering, and RBC Capital Markets, Morgan Stanley, RBS and TD Securities are also joint book-running managers on the depositary shares offering.
The underwriters have a greenshoe option to purchase up to an additional 2.35 million common shares, and up to 1.25 million extra depositary shares.
American Tower is leasing the rights to 11,324 of Verizon’s wireless towers for 28 years and has fixed-price purchase options to buy the sites after that. It is also purchasing 165 Verizon towers outright.
If the transaction with Verizon does not complete, the towerco said it will put the proceeds towards financing other transactions, such as its acquisitions of infrastructure from TIM Brasil and Bharti Airtel.
