CCI - Crown Castle sees higher AFFO site rental revenues in 2023 after strong Q3

Crown Castle ( NYSE: CCI ) has issued its 2023 outlook on Wednesday, which called for a boost in site rental revenues, adjusted funds from operations and adjusted EBITDA after the REIT turned in mixed Q3 2022 results .

The company expects site rental revenues to be $6.5B at the midpoint in 2023, rising 4% from the prior year guidance. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $4.5B, compared with $6.23B in the 2022 outlook. AFFO is targeted at $7.63, up from $7.36 from the previous year outlook but down from the $7.77 consensus.

In his assessment on Crown Castle's ( CCI ) third-quarter results, CEO Jay Brown highlighted that "our customers continue to upgrade their macro tower networks, and we expect another year of strong growth in 2023 with 5% organic revenue growth in our Towers segment."

"Further, we expect small cell growth to accelerate in 2023 by doubling our small cell deployments to 10,000 nodes, more than half of which will be collocated on existing fiber with returns in line with our expectations for lease-up economics," he added.

As a result of its expected cash flow growth in 2023, the company raised its annualized common stock dividend by 6.5% to $6.26 a share.

Meanwhile, Q3 AFFO of $1.85 fell short of the $1.91 average analyst estimate, but rose from $1.77 in the year-ago period.

Revenue of $1.75B topped the Street consensus of $1.73B and climbed from $1.62B a year before.

Adjusted EBITDA advanced to $1.1B from $976M in the prior quarter, mostly due to growth in site rental revenues and higher services contribution.

Income from continuing operations was $419M vs. $351M in Q3 2021.

Earlier, Crown Castle AFFO of $1.85 misses by $0.06, revenue of $1.75B beats by $20M .

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