Carriers Spending Less on Tower Deployment, Wells Fargo Says

Tower companies are reporting a general slowdown in carrier investment, Wells Fargo’s Jennifer Fritzsche told investors Thursday. Fritzsche cited discussion at a recent dinner she hosted for tower and wireless executives. AT&T is investing but not at the same level as the end of 2018, she said: T-Mobile is still building out its 600 MHz licenses, but there's “somewhat of a pause of lighting up new capacity sites until it sees how the [Sprint] merger plays out” (see 1904110026). Verizon is “taking a breath” on macro towers, she said. It seems "Q1 is not as robust as we hoped earlier the year in terms of carrier activity,” Fritzsche said. “All executives were positive as to the long term outlook on the business but our sense is muted expectations should be in place for the March quarter.”