Harmoni buys tower assets to create new company with 2,000 tower sites

A sale of tower assets from one private equity company to another will result in the fifth largest tower company in the U.S. and the second-largest private tower company in the country, according to the parties of the deal.

Harmoni Towers, a portfolio company of Palistar Capital, today announced that it has agreed to buy Parallel Infrastructure, a tower platform, from funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The new tower company will have more than 2,000 built and in-construction towers with locations spanning the country from coast-to-coast across 41 states. Each company — Harmony and Parallel — is bringing about 1,000 tower sites to the deal. The parties say the new company will also have the capacity to build hundreds of towers per year in all regions of the U.S.

In 2020, Apollo acquired Parallel through a corporate carve-out transaction via its second flagship infrastructure fund (AIOF II). As part of its value creation plan, Apollo stood up the business as an independent tower platform and approximately doubled its size during the following two years. The sale of Parallel represents the first realization of AIOF II.

Palistar sees the acquisition of Parallel as a way to tap into the booming tower business as carriers deploy 5G.

"Palistar expects, over time, to deploy in excess of $1 billion via equity and debt financing into the combined platform in order to promote the expansion of the business,” said Omar Jaffrey, managing partner and founder of Palistar, in a statement. “The team at Apollo have been excellent stewards of the Parallel business and we are delighted to have partnered with them on this transaction."

The transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2022.

Executives from the top four U.S. tower companies participated in a panel at the Wireless Infrastructure Association’s Connect(X) conference earlier this year.

They were optimistic about all the work that will be coming their way from U.S. carriers deploying C-band, and from Dish Wireless building its new network.

American Tower is the largest company with about 43,000 towers, followed by Crown Castle, SBA Communications, and Vertical Bridge.

Recently, the newer tower company Tillman Infrastructure said it plans to double its nationwide footprint over the next couple of years.

A big part of Tillman Infrastructure’s focus is on rural and suburban America, where there’s still a lot of white space left to be covered and densified.