Morgan Stanley Overweight On Crown Castle Corp. (CCI)

Morgan Stanley has an Overweight rating on shares of Crown Castle Corp. CCI after the company reported earnings. In a note to clients, Morgan Stanley writes, "Commentary on current leasing activity was perhaps somewhat less bullish than expected, although guidance implies upside to our 2Q estimates. We await further details around management's expectations for an increase in activity from a diversity of carriers exiting the year, which may suggest some progress in network sharing negotiations with Sprint. Site leasing revenue was roughly in-line with our estimate (stripping out $6.7M in non-recurring items), while EBITDA came in 1% ahead of our forecast. The strong Australian dollar helped results as well, with a $2.6M revenue benefit and $2M EBITDA benefit relative to guidance. Buyback activity was a positive but came in significantly lower than expected at $42.2M versus our $81.4M (however, Crown repaid $50M of its revolving credit facility in the quarter)." Shares of CCI gained 67 cents yesterday to close at $44.45, a gain of 1.5%.