Crown Castle Raises 2005 Site Rental Rev Guidance

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Crown Castle International Corp. (CCI) raised its full-year outlook for site rental revenue after purchasing Verizon Communication's (VZ) interest in the Crown Atlantic joint venture for $295 million.

The joint venture consisted of 2,019 towers formerly part of the Bell Atlantic Mobile system.

In a press release Monday, Crown Castle said it has also reduced its share count by purchasing $36 million of common stock and a majority of its 4% convertible notes.

As of Jan. 7, the company has bought $90 million of the 4% notes for $167.2 million.

Crown Castle, which engineers shared wireless infrastructure including networks of towers, said it invested more than $580 million to purchase Verizon's interest and for the transactions that reduced its share count by 15.4 million shares.

For 2005, the company raised its site rental revenue outlook to a range of $570 million to $580 million from guidance of $565 million to $575 million.

The company also expects to report a loss of $28.7 million to $92.7 million for the year.

A survey of six analysts by Thomson First Call projects 2005 losses of $54.7 million.

For 2003, the company reported a loss of $420.9 million.

Company Web site: http://www.crowncastle.com.

-Geoffrey Rogow; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5400; AskNewswires@dowjones.com

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Posted to the site on 10th January 2005