Activist Investor Elliott calls for a management reboot at Crown Castle

Elliott Investment Management is taking a close interest in US wireless cell tower provider Crown Castle, disclosing a $2 billion stake in the company and pushing for a change of leadership to counter a "value-destructive strategy." Crown Castle is one of the largest operators of shared communications infrastructure in America …

[Pascal Monett]

Activist investor

As soon as I read those words, I think of some asshole whose only interest is gutting the company to bolster the stock price, selling at immense profit and leaving everyone who actually worked in the dust.

Not a ringing endorsement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Activist investor

With the article's 2 billion invested on 45 billion market cap, the implication is that Elliot owns just 4% of the company. This the tail thinking it can control the dog if it wags hard enough, we'll see if it works.

[David 132]

Re: Activist investor

One of those “we can sell the tower assets to a shell company and lease them back, giving us as shareholders an immediate windfall but costing the company $$$$$$ in the longer term, but who cares because by that time we’ll have moved on to asset-stripping the next company” type plans, presumably.

For some reason, the name “Reacher Gilt” comes to mind.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: Activist investor

'One of those “we can sell the tower assets to a shell company and lease them back ..."'

But Crown Castle is one of those shell companies. There's only so many holding companies that you can stuff assets into like Matryoshka dolls before you end up with collateralization like 2008.

[NeilPost]

Re: Activist investor

There is some schadenfreude in ‘Tower Asset Management’ company being pursued by Vulture capitalists.

[Roland6]

Re: Activist investor

And a particularly stupid one. I would like to see Elliott Investment Management‘s pitch to Crown Castles customers: we as “activist investors in Crown Castle” want you to pay more, just so that we can take a bigger slice of the cake.

[NeilPost]

Re: Activist investor

Yup …it it was that bad, surely there are better places for Elliot's shareholders money ?

[Mayday]

Elliott

As soon as I see this I know there will be something I won't approve of. Hate these arseholes. That includes now, where they have their teeth into a company I haven't even heard of before.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Elliott

"a company I haven't even heard of before."

For a while they owned the ex-BBC transmitter network in the UK after the British Broadcasting Corporation decided it didn't want to do any actual broadcasting.*

* Quite reasonable. It meant they had to employ men who hadn't been to Oxbridge and who wore brown overalls with pens in their breast pockets. What was worse, most of it was outside London.

[Mayday]

Re: Elliott

Thank you for qualifying - should have mentioned my lack of familiarity is mainly due to my geography and lack of exposure being Aussie.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Elliott

I doubt many people in the UK were aware of it. I wouldn't have either if it hadn't been due to there being several such sites within a few miles of where I live and having had a cousin in law who worked at a couple of them.

[Xalran]

Re: Elliott

Don't worry, if it's not done already Telstra, Optus and friends will create a shell company to dump their towers into...

All the operators around the world are doing it ( or have done it ). In some case, they also dumped the fiber network too.

It's the good old CAPEX Vs OPEX scheme...

Companies hates CAPEX as it's money that depreciates over time, incurs taxes, stays in the bottom line and it's blocked in actual physical assets.

they prefer OPEX, because they can adjust it as they see fit, it's flexible, it's not in the bottom line and it's only tied to the paper it's written on.

As for Elliot, they are like a Hyena gang, they find a target and kill it by stripping it of everything that has any amount of value leaving a skeleton that has no internal real value.

Vultures have a better behaviour, they only swoop in when the target is dead and removes the interesting bits from the dead body.

[nulldis]

Re: Elliott

"Don't worry, if it's not done already Telstra, Optus and friends will create a shell company to dump their towers into..."

Yep,

Telstra -> Amplitel

Optus -> Indara

TPG/Vodafone -> Waveconn

Telstra's gone one better by selling various exchanges and its entire Global Operations Centre in similar deals.

[Doctor Syntax]

Crown Castle must be doing things right.