Is this article FAKE or FACT??

 

Tower studies

 

Our finding on the global key listed towercos study suggested that; (i) a pure towerco’s EBITDA margin is likely to be within the range of 50-60%, and (ii) Asia towercos tend to have a higher forward: (a) financial leverage, (b) PATAMI margin (which we believe could be partially due to favourable interest and taxation rate environment), and (c) ROE (as a result of better PATAMI margin) as compared to the peers in the CALA (Centra and Latin America) and EUROPE regions. Nevertheless, Asia towercos’ forward PER ratio tend to be lower given the EBITDA/site is less compelling (which we believe could be due to higher number of roof-top towers vs. monopoles) as compared to other regional peers. In addition, we also downplay the likelihood of edotco and OCK to list their tower assets under the REIT structure in view of the limitation of the financial leverage (where REIT companies typically have a low gearing ratio of <1x, thus constrainting the towercos from expanding their tower portfolio further) and land ownership issue (where towercos tend to lease rather than acquire the land for their towers).       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Independent Tower Market  In Asia 

 

TowerXchange, an open community for thought leaders in the emerging-market towers industry, indicated that about 65% of Asia’s towers (c.3.05m towers) are operated by towercos as of 3Q17. The world’s largest towerco China Tower Corporation (CTC, an infrastructure-sharing joint-venture that owned by network operators - China Mobile (which owned 38% stake), China Unicom (28.1%), China Telecom (27.9%) and China Reform Corporation (6%)) celebrated its third anniversary in July last year and is believed eyeing to list in Hong Kong Stock Exchange in coming months. It was reported earlier by Reuter that China International Capital and Goldman Sachs were selected by CTC in August last year to lead a planned Hong Kong IPO worth about USD10b. 

 

The regulatory environment for towercos and infrastructure sharing varies from different countries as the mature tower markets’ (such as India and Indonesia) regulatory regime is well established as compared to those immature tower markets (i.e. Bangladesh and Nepal where independent towercos are a relatively new business model and thus, still in drafting policy stage to regulate the industry).  

 

Myanmar, being one of the new but yet growing tower market in the Asia region, is seeing a surge of new entrants rolling out BTS for fourth operator Mytel. On average, most of the mature towers that are two-plus years old would have a tenancy ratio around 1.6x and is expected to surge beyond 2.0x once Mytel goes online in 2018 and more co-locations are shared among the industry incumbents’ (MPT, Telenor and Ooredoo), according to the research outfit.

 

The Indonesian tower market, on the other hand, remains strong with new builds and co-locations being added. Valuation-wise, there are about 407k towers being transacted during the 2008-2017 period in Asia with an aggregate deal value of c.USD17b, implying a cost per tower of USD114k, according to TowerXchange.  

 

(Source: Extracts from Kenanga Research 16 March 2018, sector update)

 

OCK playing catch-up.

 

 

Anyone can confirm? FAKE or FACT??