US tower giant Crown Castle has ruled out an acquisition of tower assets from Verizon.

It follows reports linking Verizon with a sale of up to 6,000 telecom towers last week.

Crown Castle currently operates more than 40,000 telecom towers across the US, a similar figure to rival American Tower Corporation.

When asked during an earnings call if Crown Castle is interested in buying towers from Verizon, the company's CEO Steven Moskovitz said that M&A opportunities aren’t on their immediate radar.

“In terms of M&A, you know, we're aware of different assets that are either in the market or coming to market in the US,” said Moskovitz.

“And, if it's a truly compelling proposition for us, which we would consider compelling being highly strategic and cost-effective, so we have confidence in delivering future shareholder value, then if it has those types of characteristics, we definitely have interest. But overall right now, M&A is not necessarily the priority for us," he said, without directly naming Verizon.

Verizon was separately asked this week about a potential sale but declined to comment on the reports, as it did to DCD last week.

The reports, initially shared by Bloomberg, said that Verizon has hired advisers to gauge interest from potential buyers for a package of roughly 5,000 to 6,000 towers, according to people familiar with the matter. A potential sale could bring in more than $3 billion.

Crown Castle previously snapped up 9,700 towers from AT&T in 2013 for $4.8bn.

Fiber review ongoing

Crown Castle also acknowledged its strategic fiber review during the earnings call, noting that the process is still "active and ongoing."

It was reported in April that Crown Castle was in talks with multiple parties over a sale of its fiber and small cells business.

"As part of the operational review of our fiber segment, which we conducted earlier this year, we affirm that greater opportunity exists to provide additional customer solutions to enterprise fiber connections and small cell locations that are on or near our existing high-quality fiber footprint, which allows us to add revenue without the requirement to invest as much capital as we've done in the past," said Moskovitz.

“Now, we can't share much more about the process and the timing. What we can share is that we remain actively engaged with multiple third parties who continue to show a lot of interest in our fiber solutions and small cell businesses."

The company has increasingly identified small cells as a big growth area for the business, as it becomes harder to deploy new towers.

As the name suggests, small cells are much more compact than typical telecom towers which can be anything between 50-300 ft (15-91m). They are often located on existing structures, such as lampposts or buildings, and tend to blend in more discreetly than tower structures.

Crown Castle currently operates around 120,000 small cells on air or under contract to go on air.

Crown Castle reported a drop in net income for the second quarter of 2024 of $251 million, compared to $455m YoY, with profits down around 45 percent.

The company said that this included $45m charges incurred as part of its restructuring plan it announced last month.

Crown Castle noted at the time that it has lowered its capital expenditures on what it calls "lower-return opportunities," this year by $275m, to $325m.

The company is set to reduce its headcount and close offices, in a move to deliver approximately $100m of annualized run-rate operating cost savings, approximately $60m of which is expected to benefit full year 2024 results.

Site rental revenues were down nine percent YoY to $1.5 billion, which it said was impacted by former Sprint site cancellations.

“Having implemented the operational changes announced in June, we delivered second-quarter results in line with expectations and remain on track to meet our full-year guidance,” said Dan Schlanger, Crown Castle’s chief financial officer.