Crown Castle International CCI
The three reasons
- 1
Crown Castle's fiber capex earns just 3% ROI versus ~20% for its tower business
- 2
CCI spends 149% of fiber EBITDA on fiber capex — ~2x industry peers like Zayo and Lightower
- 3
Entrenched board (8 of 11 non-execs >13 years tenure) has failed to discipline capital allocation
Primary demands
- Commit to a 40% capex ROI target on $600M of annual fiber discretionary capex
- Introduce ROIC into the executive incentive plan and restore TSR-vs-peers metric in LTIP
- Increase dividend to $7.00/share in 2021 (46% hike) growing 7-8% annually thereafter
- Refresh the Board with new directors, greater diversity and fiber-industry expertise
- Restructure key Board committees and reduce entrenched long tenures
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Notable slides (6)
Notes
Classic Elliott campaign deck with its own micro-brand ('Reclaiming The Crown' + ReclaimingTheCrown.com standalone site). Purple palette, consistent editorial typography, strong data viz with annotated call-outs. Elliott approached CCI privately in May 2020; this July 6, 2020 deck is the first public presentation. Rhetorical spine is a 'tale of two businesses' — the 'Best Business Ever' towers vs the dilutive fiber/small-cell investment — repeatedly using CEO Jay Brown's and CFO Dan Schlanger's own past statements as contradictions. Board critique is structural rather than personal (directors listed anonymously as 'Director 1-12' with tenure/age/gender). Appendix (p.66) contains an implicit SOTP calculation isolating fiber EV at $11B at 12.2x multiple. No explicit proxy fight yet — framing is collaborative-adversarial hybrid asking the Board to act.