CenturyLink Purchases Property In Miami, Expands Footprint

Per media reports, CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE:CTL) has purchased a land property in Miami’s Allapattah for $18.8 million. The communications company, which provides Internet services in South Florida, intends to use this newly-bought property for office purposes. Management is likely to release more information about the company’s expansion plan in the coming weeks.

The deal was brokered by Brown Harris Stevens. CenturyLink’s property is about a block north of the Santa Clara Metrorail station. Reportedly, Miami Avenue Holding Co. sold the 1.4 acre site. The property presently has 93,259 square feet of commercial buildings.

Apart from expanding its footprint in emerging markets, CenturyLink is progressing well with its transformation initiatives, which are aimed at improving the experience for customers and employees, and reducing costs. It has long-term EPS growth expectation of 8.7%.

CenturyLink’s Key Focus

CenturyLink focuses on transforming its business operations through product evolution and digitizing of customer interactions. It is working toward generating healthy revenue growth in its business markets. The company expects the scale of its global assets combined with innovative product portfolio to be accretive to earnings. CenturyLink is also working with its large customers to enable their 5G roadmaps while extending its fiber footprint.

Backed by a decent start in capturing synergy and cost transformation savings, CenturyLink reiterated its financial outlook for 2019. It expects adjusted EBITDA of $9.00-$9.20 billion. While free cash flow is expected in the range of $3.10-$3.40 billion, free cash flow after dividends is projected between $2.025 billion and $2.325 billion.

Further, CenturyLink is committed to its de-leveraging objectives and reaching the target leverage range of 2.75x-3.25x (net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA) in the next three years owing to healthy growth dynamics. It plans to return significant value to shareholders while investing in revenues and EBITDA growth drivers.

Share Performance

Shares of CenturyLink have lost 22% against the industry’s rise of 4.2% over the past three months, largely due to high debt.



Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

CenturyLink currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked stocks in the broader industry are T-Mobile US, Inc. (NASDAQ:TMUS) , Ubiquiti Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:UBNT) and Juniper Networks, Inc. (NYSE:JNPR) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

T-Mobile has long-term earnings growth expectation of 15.1%.

Ubiquiti has long-term earnings growth expectation of 19.8%.

Juniper has long-term earnings growth expectation of 6.2%.

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