CTI Towers Back in Growth Mode with Acquisitions

July 29, 2015

By J. Sharpe Smith —

July 29, 2015 — Less than three months after selling its tower portfolio to InSite Wireless Group, CTI Towers is growing again. Last week, the company completed acquisition deals with Celtic Corporation and an additional seller for an unspecified number of towers. And it has plans to start building towers, as well.

Peduto

“Our Board decided to move forward and build the company up again,” said Tony Peduto, CEO of CTI Towers. “We’re excited to again start building our portfolio after the sale of our towers in March. These acquisitions are a great start for CTI.”

Comcast Ventures, which bankrolled the first iteration of CTI, provided the funding for these acquisitions, as well. Excel Capital Advisors represented Celtic and introduced it to CTI Towers.

Based in Franklin, Massachusetts, CTI Towers was formed by Comcast Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of Comcast Corp., in the fall of 2011. It launched with a management contract for 800 towers that were previously owned and operated by Comcast Cable subsidiaries. In 2013, CTI Towers secured up to $30 million in debt financing and closed its first third-party acquisition, purchasing five towers from a major wireless carrier.

CTI Towers acquired a number of towers from Comcast that it managed, as well as from third parties, and sold that portfolio of 294 towers to InSite Wireless Group earlier this year. Peduto explained that the sale was a logical step based on positive market conditions. “We had accumulated enough scale that we were a meaningful player. There weren’t a lot of other deals out there,” he said.

CTI Towers continues to manage the Comcast portfolio of more than 500 towers and continues to seek strategic tower assets that fit its business model and will fuel the company’s growth.

“We are still very bullish on the business. What is nice is that we still have our proprietary pipeline of assets that we manage for Comcast and the ability to acquire additional assets at the right time as well,” Peduto said.

Beyond these acquisitions, CTI Towers is working on a letter of intent to get into the new-build business. And, on July 22, the State of New Hampshire awarded a consulting job to CTI Towers for managing wireless sites on Mount Washington through an RFP process.