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Text: In addition, today's call includes discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Tables reconciling these non-GAAP financial measures are available in the supplemental information package in the Investors section of the company's website at crowncastle.com.
As you saw from our results yesterday, we remained on track to generate an anticipated 12% growth in AFFO per share this year.
We expect to be at the high end of our long-term growth target in 2022, with 8% AFFO per share growth.
Being driven in large part by our expectation at tower core leasing activity will be approximately 50% higher in 2022 than our trailing 5-year average.
And we increased our annualized common stock dividend by approximately 11% to $5.88 per share, marking the second consecutive year of dividend growth that meaningfully exceeds our long-term target.
Given that our dividend payout ratio has remained largely unchanged since 2014, our dividend remains the best indicator of how we are performing both financially and operationally.
Our significant out-performance in 2021 combined with our forecast for 2022 enabled us to raise our dividend 11%, well above our stated goal for the second year in a row.
In essence, we've achieved three years of targeted dividend growth in just two years.
Since we established our common stock dividend in 2014, we have grown dividends per share at a compounded annual growth rate of 9% with growth ranging from 7% to 11% in each year.
We aim to provide profitable solutions to connect communities and people.
And our carbon-neutral goal builds on our commitments to deploy our strategy sustainably.
Our business model is inherently sustainable, shared solutions limit infrastructure in the communities in which we operate and minimize the use of natural resources.
Further to the point, our core value proposition, since we began operating more than 25 years ago has centered around our ability to provide our customers with access to mission-critical infrastructure at a lower cost, because we can share that infrastructure across multiple operators.
In addition, our solutions help address societal challenges like the digital divide in under-served communities by advancing access to education and technology.
To-date, we have invested nearly $10 billion in towers, small cells and fiber assets located in low-income areas.
As a way of quantifying how our business model minimizes the use of natural resources, our business in it's just one ton of CO2 per $1 billion of enterprise value, which is 90 times more efficient than the average company in the S&P 500 based on industry estimates.
Although we are proud of our limited environmental impact, we are focused on making even more strides by reducing our energy consumption and sourcing renewable energy to help us achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by 2025.
We are excited about this announcement and look forward to continuing to find ways to help our communities and planet while driving significant returns to our shareholders.
Turning back to our 2022 outlook.
We are benefiting from record levels of activity in our tower business with our customers upgrading thousands of existing cell sites as a part of their first phase of 5G build-out.
Adding to the opportunity, we are seeing the highest level of tower co-location activity in our history with DISH building a nationwide 5G network from scratch.
I believe our strategy and unmatched portfolio of more than 40,000 towers and approximately 80,000 route miles of fiber concentrated in the top U.S. market, have positioned Crown Castle to capitalize both on the current environment and to grow our cash flows and dividends per share in the near term and for years to come.
We are focused on generating this growth while delivering the highest risk adjusted returns for our shareholders.
By investing in shared infrastructure assets that lower the implementation and operating costs for our customers while generating solid returns for our shareholders.
To execute on this strategy, we are providing our customers with access to our 40,000 towers and 80,000 route miles of fiber help them build out their 5G wireless networks.
We are investing in new small cell and fiber assets that meet our disciplined and rigorous underwriting standards to expand our long-term addressable market.
And we are identifying where wireless networks are going and investing early to position the company to capitalize on future opportunities, as we have done with small cells, edge computing and CBRS.
One of the core principles underpinning our strategy is to focus on the U.S. market, because we believe that represents the best market in the world for wireless infrastructure ownership, since it has the most attractive growth profile and the lowest risk.
And we believe this dynamic of higher growth and lower risk will continue into the future, which is why we expect our U.S. based strategy will drive significant returns for shareholders.
With that in mind, we have invested nearly $40 billion in towers, small cells and fiber assets in the top market that are all foundational for the development of future 5G network.
We believe our unique strategy, portfolio of the infrastructure assets and proactive identification of future opportunities provide a platform for sustained long-term dividend growth as wireless network architecture evolves and our customers' priorities shift over time.
Today, our customers are primarily focusing their investment on macro sites as towers remain the most cost-effective way to deploy spectrum at scale and established broad network coverage.
With our high quality towers concentrated in the top markets, we are clearly benefiting from this focus with an expected 6% organic growth for our Tower segment in 2021 and an expected 20% increase in tower core leasing activity next year when compared to these 2021 levels.
With history as a guide, we believe the deployment of additional spectrum on existing cell sites will not be enough to keep pace with the persistent 30% plus annual growth in mobile data traffic.
As a result, we expect cell site densification to remain a critical tool for carriers to respond to the continued growth in mobile data demand as it enables our customers to get the most out of their spectrum assets by reusing the spectrum over shorter and shorter distances.
When the current cell site upgrade phase shift to densification phase, we believe the comprehensive offering of towers, small cells and fiber will be critical for our customers and provide us with an opportunity to further extend the runway of growth in our business.
While we expect the densification phase of build out will drive additional leasing on our tower assets for years to come, we believe small cells will play an even greater role as the coverage area of cell sites will continue to shrink due to the density of people and therefore the density of wireless data demand.
With more than 80,000 small cells on air or committed in our backlog, high capacity fiber assets and the vast majority of the top 30 markets in the U.S. and industry-leading capabilities, we believe we are well positioned to deliver value to our customers as their priorities evolve, driving meaningful growth in our small cell business.
Bigger picture, when I consider the durability of the underlying demand trends we see in the U.S., how well we are positioned to consistently deliver growth through all phases of the 5G build out with significant potential upside in our comprehensive asset base as wireless networks continue to evolve.
Our proven ability to proactively identify where wireless network architecture is heading and to be an early investor in solutions to help future networks, the deliberate decisions we have made to reduce risks associated with our strategy and our history of steady execution.
I believe that Crown Castle stands out as a unique investment, that will generate compelling returns over time.
In the near term, as I mentioned before, we expect to deliver outsized AFFO per share growth of 12% in 2021.
We expect to generate 8% growth in AFFO per share in 2022 at the high end of our long-term growth target and supported by an expected 20% increase in tower core leasing activity and we increased our common stock dividend by 11% for the second consecutive year.
Longer term, we believe Crown Castle provides an exciting opportunity for shareholders to invest in the development of 5G in the U.S., which we believe is the best market for communications infrastructure ownership.
Importantly, we provide access to such attractive industry dynamics, while providing a compelling total return opportunity, comprised of a high-quality dividend that currently yields 3.5% with expected growth in that dividend of 7% to 8% annually.
As Jay discussed, we delivered another great quarter of results in the third quarter.
We remained on track to grow AFFO per share by an anticipated 12% this year.
We expect to be at the high end of our growth target in 2022 with 8% AFFO per share growth and we increased our quarterly common stock dividend by 11% for the second consecutive year, meaningfully above our long-term target growth rate while maintaining a consistent payout ratio.
We are excited about the outsized growth we are experiencing in the early stages of 5G.
And we continue to believe our portfolio of towers, small cells and fiber provides unmatched exposure to what we believe will be a decade-long build out by our customers.
Our third quarter results were highlighted by 8% growth in site rental revenues, 11% growth in adjusted EBITDA and 13% growth in AFFO per share when compared to the same period last year.
Record tower activity level supported this strong growth, generating organic tower growth of 6.3% and higher services contribution when compared to the same period in 2020.
Looking at our full-year outlook for 2021 and 2022 on Slide 5.
We are maintaining our 2021 outlook with site rental revenues, adjusted EBITDA and AFFO growing 7%, 11% and 14% respectively.
For full year 2022, we expect continuing investments in 5G to drive another very good year for us, with 5% site rental revenue growth, 6% growth in adjusted EBITDA and 8% AFFO growth.
Turning now to Slide 6.
The full year 2022 outlook includes an expected organic contribution to Site Rental revenues of $245 million to $285 million or 5%, consisting of approximately 5.5% growth from towers, 5% growth from small cells and 3% growth from fiber solutions.
To address feedback we received to provide more detail around our expectations for future leasing -- for the leasing activity, we have introduced a new concept of core leasing activity, which excludes the impact of changes in prepaid rent amortization.
Core leasing activity is more indicative of current period activity, whereas changes in prepaid rent amortization also include activity from prior periods as prepaid rent received in those prior periods eventually amortizes the zero over the life of the associated contract.
Although we have as consistently provided disclosure on prepaid rent amortization by segment in our supplemental earnings materials.
With that definition in mind, we expect 2022 core leasing activity of $340 million at the midpoint or $350 million inclusive of the year-over-year change in prepaid rent amortization.
The 2022 expected core leasing activity includes a $160 million in towers, representing a 20% increase when compared to our 2021 outlook and an approximately 50% increase when compared to our 5-year trailing average.
$30 million in small cells compared to $45 million in $2021 and a $150 million in fiber solutions compared to a $165 million expected this year.
Turning to Slide 7.
You can see, we expect approximately 90% of the Organic Site Rental Revenue growth to flow through the AFFO growth, highlighting the strong operating leverage in our business.
As we discussed in July, we expect to deploy an additional 5,000 small cells in 2022, which is the same number we expect to build in 2021.
We expect a discretionary capex to be approximately $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion in 2022, including approximately $300 million for towers and $800 million to $900 million for fiber, similar to what we expect in 2021.
This translates to $700 million to $800 million of net capex when factoring in $400 million of prepaid rent contribution we expect to receive in 2022.
The full year 2022 outlook for capex represents an expected 30% reduction in discretionary capex for our fiber segment relative to full year 2022 when we deployed approximately 10,000 small cells.
Based on the expected growth in cash flows, for full year 2022 and consistent with our investment grade credit profile, we expect to fund our discretionary capex with free cash flow and incremental debt capacity without the need for new equity for the fourth consecutive year.
In addition, we believe our business and balance sheet are well positioned to support consistent AFFO growth through various economic cycles, including during periods of higher inflation and interest rates.
Our cost structure is largely fixed in nature as you can see, with nearly 90% of the full year 2022 expected Organic Site Rental Revenue growth to flow through to AFFO growth as I referenced earlier.
And we have taken steps to further strengthen our investment grade balance sheet, that now has more than 90% fixed rate debt, a weighted average maturity of more than 9 years and a weighted average interest rate of 3.1%.
In conclusion, we are excited about the outsized growth we are generating as a result of the initial 5G build out by our customers, which is translating into back-to-back years of 11% growth in our quarterly common stock dividend.
This dividend currently equates to an approximate 3.5% yield, which we believe is a compelling valuation given our expectation of growing the dividend 7% to 8% per year, combined with our high quality, predictable and stable cash flows.
Looking further out, we believe our unique ability to offer towers, small cells and fiber solutions, which are all integral components of communications networks provides significant optionality to capitalize on the long-term positive industry trends of network improvements and densification and gives us the best opportunity to consistently deliver growth as wireless network architecture continues to evolve and our customers' priorities shift over time.
With that, April, I'd like to open the call to questions.

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compname reports third quarter 2021 results, provides outlook for full year 2022 and announces 11% increase to common stock dividend.

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