Crown Castle has hit back at co-founder Ted Miller's recent litigation against the tower company.

The company has slammed Miller, calling him "self-serving" after Miller filed a lawsuit against the company's board and Elliott Investment Management.

"The lawsuit brought by Mr. Miller is without merit and underscores that his activism campaign against Crown Castle is focused on his own self interests," said Crown Castle in a statement earlier this week.

"These interests include, among other things, the appointment to the board of himself and three of his handpicked nominees (including his son-in-law), and getting himself installed as a paid executive of the company (with the title of executive chairman) after spending more than 22 years away. After previously calling for the board to act with urgency, Mr. Miller is seeking as part of his litigation a court order to, among other things, impede progress on the company’s ongoing CEO search and the strategic and operating review of its fiber business."

In a statement last week, via his investment vehicle Boots Capital Management, LLC, Miller said he wants to invalidate the cooperation agreement between Crown Castle’s board of directors and Elliott Investment Management.

A week earlier, Miller, who co-founded Crown Castle in 1994, launched a proxy fight against the company, while outlining his vision to change the firm's strategy.

His most notable aim is to sell the firm's fiber assets, which he said could fetch as much as $15 billion.

Crown Castle also responded to Miller's comments about its cooperation agreement with Elliot, which began on December 19, 2023.

The firm said it had agreed to amend certain provisions of the cooperation agreement earlier this week, which includes the following:

• Clarify that the board retains the power at any time to change its recommendation regarding any director nominees, consistent with its fiduciary duties;
• Eliminate limitations on the sizes of the board, the fiber review committee, and the CEO search committee;
• Provide that Elliott’s shares will vote pro rata with the votes of other stockholders instead of requiring Elliott to vote its shares in favor of the Board’s recommendations.

Crown Castle also hit back at Miller's allegations that Elliot had control of the company. The company noted that the Crown Castle board comprises 12 directors, 11 of whom are independent and only two of whom were appointed with input from Elliott.

"In truth, Mr. Miller is the one who seeks to dominate Crown Castle by having the company name him executive chairman and put two of his associates and his son-in-law on the board," added the statement, accusing Miller of wanting to "dictate the outcome of the strategic and operating review of Crown Castle’s fiber business by forcing the board to “onboard Boots advisors."

"Mr. Miller seeks this unjustified degree of control over Crown Castle despite owning far less than 1 percent of the company, with the majority of his investment position held in the form of call options with less than one year of duration."

Miller says Crown Castle lacks experience

Miller had called it "unconscionable" that the current board has seven total years of tower industry operating experience.

He's also called for the opportunity to fix the company's "broken culture," and "restore and unlock meaningful value for long-suffering shareholders.”

In a 39-page plan that detailed Miller's vision at the company, he pointed out that back in 2013, the company owned 40,000 towers and employed 1,400 people. By comparison, today the company still owns around the same amount of towers, but employs more than 2,200 people, despite cutting 15 percent of its workforce.

Activist investor Elliott Investment Management has previously been critical of Crown Castle's strategy, notably against some of the board and executives. This prompted CEO Jay Brown to announce he will retire from the company this year.

Elliott, which has investments in X (formerly Twitter) and AT&T, also stated that Crown Castle had "disregarded data-driven analysis," and had not taken its previous recommended changes seriously.

This statement, part of Elliott's 2023 "Restoring the Castle" campaign, is very much a continuation of its 2020 "Reclaiming the Crown" campaign, which also called for enhanced governance and fiber-strategy improvements.

2020 was the first time Elliott publicly pressured Crown Castle, urging management to rethink its fiber and criticizing the company's returns in 2020.