Crown Castle is a communications infrastructure REIT that owns and leases 40,000 towers, 115,000 small cells, and 85,000 route miles of fiber. The company has both single-tenant and colocation towers, and operations in 49 states. While organic growth continues to be driven by tower revenue, the company added about 8,000 new small cell nodes in 2023. Small cells are comprised of a series of smaller, lower-power antennas, and may be built either indoors or outdoors. They are able to boost wireless coverage in congested regions and extend coverage to hard-to-reach areas. In 2023, the Tower segment generated about 68% of revenue with Fiber accounting for about one-third. Within each segment, annual site rental revenues account for about 95% of revenues and service fees for the remainder. About three-quarters of CCI's tower tenants are large cell phone carriers, with T-Mobile accounting for 36% of site revenues, and AT&T and Verizon 19% each.The company focuses on long-term lease agreements. The weighted-average remaining lease term is about six years, and the average number of tenants per tower is 2.5. About 40% of tower locations are land owned by CCI. Activist investment firm, Elliot Investment Management, has called for a change in the board and top management, resulting in a strategic review of fiber operations and the appointment of several new independent board members. The company is based in Houston and has about 5,000 employees. CCI has a market cap of $40.5 billion and is part of the S&P 500.

U.S. stocks finished mostly lower on Thursday. On the housing front, sales of existing homes declined 4.3% in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.19 million, just ahead of estimates of 4.17 million. The median home sales price was $393,000, which is 4.8% higher than a year ago and marks the ninth consecutive month of year-on-year increases. The average 30-year mortgage rate rose above 7%. The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index slipped 0.3%, which was below expectations of a 0.1% decline and follows a 0.2% advance in February. Negative factors for the index were a weaker consumer outlook on business conditions, and a decrease in new orders and building permits -- which more than offset positive contributions from gains in equities and credit conditions. The S&P 500 fell about 0.2%, the Dow closed just above the flat line and the Nasdaq dropped 0.5%

Crown Castle International owns and leases roughly 40,000 cell towers in the United States. It also owns more than 85,000 route miles of fiber. It leases space on its towers to wireless service providers, which install equipment on the towers to support their wireless networks. The company’s fiber is primarily leased by wireless service providers to set up small-cell network infrastructure and by enterprises for their internal connection needs. Crown Castle’s towers and fiber are predominantly located in the largest U.S. cities. The company has a very concentrated customer base, with about 75% of its revenue coming from the big three U.S. mobile carriers. Crown Castle operates as a real estate investment trust.

Value stocks -- a market segment that includes high-yield stocks -- outperformed growth stocks in 2022. That's a recent rarity, as for the past decade-plus, the performance record has favored growth. But the tide turned in 2022. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines gave a lift to some of the cyclical companies (energy and regional banks) that had lagged in recent quarters, and value stocks outpaced growth stocks that year. While growth stocks have retaken the lead since 2023, the Federal Reserve continues to keep interest rates high to fend off inflation. This could possibly cap multiple expansion for growth companies in coming quarters. In any event, the value sector is the place to achieve income.