Jeff Thompson CEO of Towerstream $TWER said today on the quarterly conference call that within the next few weeks or even days, he will announce a carrier offload deal using Towerstreams' wifi nodes, that are close to the ground, alongside the carriers small cell radio. The two work well together, as the small cell technology interferes with a macro cell spectrum but not with Towers nodes. So Towers network solves the problems for carriers in highly congested areas where Tower's realestate assets are located. Essentially, Towerstream will add 3000 new nodes by the first quarter of 2013 in 5 of Tower's markets.
Jeff said that the LTE small cell technology can handle 32 simultaneous users while WiFi can handle hundreds. LTE small cell cannot yet handle voice. Wifi has handled voice for years. For the 3,000 new nodes, Towerstream has been working with the carriers on where to place them. Jeff said that it will cost Tower between $12-$15 million for the 3000 nodes and said that the cost will go up as they bring the other carrier customers into the fold.
This is a new wave of tower companies from the traditional tower companies. Look at what your returns would be if you bought into American Tower 10 years ago.
This new opportunity will help Tower rapidly grow revenue. In fact, EPS could come in neighborhood of $0.80 annually by ramping revenue to $100m per year. Factoring up a PE of 15, we could see TWER trade in the $11-$15 area very very soon. In fact, tomorrow morning, I suspect that we will see 3+ millions shares trade on a stock that normally trades only 250k. 2.3million shares are short, or almost 9 days worth of volume. We will likely see large buy volume at the open. It would be good purchase if you can pick some up at less than $3.25. It will trade up all day with intermittent big volume spikes. Most of the time though, activity will be brisk and sellers will come in to sell their $.20 cent gain. But don't worry, try to hold on to it at least until most of the shorts get out. When volume reaches around 4 million (it may take a few days) if you MUST get out, then do it after that point. But wait for the shorts to cover. It would be much better to hold it for 9 months, or when the price gets into the low teens, I can see that Tower is now going to be, at the very least, a utility. But more likely, a REIT structure and kick off some great dividends in the future.
JWells