American Tower To Buy Brazilian Peer BR Towers For About $978 Mln

(RTTNews) - Communication tower sites operator American Tower Corp (AMT) agreed Sunday to acquire Brazilian peer BR Towers S.A. in a deal valued at about 2.18 billion Brazilian Reais or about $978 million. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Boston, Massachusetts-based REIT American Tower noted that the purchase price will be satisfied with a combination of cash and the assumption of certain existing indebtedness.

The Brazilian telecommunications REIT is backed by GP Investments, Ltd., FIP Multisetorial Plus, a private equity fund managed by Bradesco BBI, and other shareholders.

The deal is expected to see American Tower owning about 2,530 towers and gain exclusive use rights for about 2,110 additional towers in Brazil at closing.

American Tower noted that it anticipates the acquisition to be immediately accretive to its adjusted funds from operations upon closing.

American Tower expects the additional towers to generate about 292 million Brazilian Reais or about $131 million, in annual run rate revenues and about 181 million Brazilian Reais or about $81 million in annual gross margin.

For the deal, Banco Santander (Brasil) S.A. was the financial advisor to American Tower, while Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP was its U.S. legal advisor and Koury Lopes Advogados was its Brazilian legal advisor.

American Tower had in November acquired up to 2,790 towers in Brazil and 1,666 towers in Mexico in two separate transactions, for a total consideration of about $811 million from NII Holdings, Inc. (NIHD).

AMT closed Friday's regular trading session at $88.44, up $0.54 or 0.61% on a volume of 1.30 million shares.