The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.

Crown Castle International owns and leases roughly 40,000 cell towers in the United States. It also owns more than 90,000 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 US cities. The company has a very concentrated customer base, with about 75% of its revenue coming from the big three US mobile carriers. Crown Castle operates as a real estate investment trust.

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 $45.5 billion and is part of the S&P 500.

Stocks are down sharply today, including all of the Magnificent 7 stocks. The first two Big Tech companies, Tesla and Alphabet, missed on earnings and that is shaking confidence across the board. The Nasdaq is faring the worst, down 2.5% at midday. Other Big Tech earnings are scattered with some coming next week. Chipotle and IBM report after-the-bell today.