BOSTON-American Tower Corp. is having a busy start to the new millennium, announcing a new merger and adding more towers to its portfolio.
The merger, with Galaxy Engineering Services, will provide American Tower with a global turnkey provider of engineering consulting services.
“We view Galaxy as a strategic addition to our company,” said Jim Eisenstein, chief development officer of American Tower. “Galaxy’s engineering expertise will further enable American Tower to provide turnkey services solutions to carriers and should improve the quality of our site selection efforts. We look forward to working with Joe Forbes, chairman of Galaxy, and his team as we pursue the many opportunities ahead of us.”
American Tower also announced that its subsidiary, American Tower Corp. de Mexico, entered into an agreement with Nuevo Gruppo Iusacell to provide American Tower the opportunity to construct approximately 200 build-to-suit towers and market a portfolio of approximately 400 existing towers.
The deal with Nuevo Gruppo, the second-largest telecommunications provider in Mexico, allows American Tower to retain the exclusive rights to acquire the approximately 400 existing towers through 2005, or earlier at Iusacell’s option.
The new towers will be constructed over the next two years in metropolitan areas where Iusacell’s expansion plans are most aggressive.
American Tower also reported that in January the company completed previously announced transactions involving more than 1,800 sites. The transactions included deals with Vodafone AirTouch plc, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and a merger with Unisite Inc.
In addition, American Tower filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register the public offering of 8.5 million class A shares of common stock. The offering excludes an overallotment option of nearly 1.3 million shares that has been granted to the underwriters.
The offering price will be determined based on the current market price of the class A common stock, with proceeds being used to repay bank borrowings, finance tower acquisitions, finance construction projects and for general working capital purposes.
Credit Suisse First Boston is the lead underwriter for the offering.
