American Tower To Buy Tim Tower Portfolio In Brazil For About $1.2 Bln

(RTTNews) - American Tower Corp (AMT), a firm that owns and develops wireless and broadcast communications real estate, Friday reached an agreement with TIM Celular S.A. ("TIM"), a part of TIM Participações S.A., a publicly traded subsidiary of Telecom Italia S.p.A., to acquire two portfolios of towers in Brazil.

The first portfolio includes about 5,240 towers. The second portfolio includes about 1,240 towers, which are subject to certain preemptive acquisition rights held by third parties. The total consideration is expected to be about 3.0 billion Brazilian Reais (about $1.2 billion at the current exchange rate), subject to customary adjustments. American Tower intends to finance the acquisition in a manner consistent with its previously announced leverage targets.

American Tower anticipates that the towers will generate about 435 million Brazilian Reais (about $171 million at the current exchange rate) in annual run rate revenues (which includes ground rent pass-through and existing collocation revenue), and about 191 million Brazilian Reais (about $75 million at the current exchange rate) in annual gross margin. TIM will be the anchor tenant on each portfolio under leases with 20-year initial terms.

The transactions are expected to close in the first half of 2015, subject to customary closing conditions, regulatory approval and for the second portfolio, expiration of the third parties' preemptive rights.