CTI Towers is said to be launching with approximately 800 towers that were previously owned and operated by Comcast Cable subsidiaries. The unit will actively lease tower space to wireless operators and other tenants.

This may be noise to some and may be common sense to others.  If the company already had the towers as is, then it is only logical.  American Tower Corporation (NYSE: AMT) also probably knew this was coming.  Comcast named Anthony Peduto as the CEO of CTI Towers, and he has prior experience as the COO of Optasite (which was in the acquisition and development of telecommunications tower sites) and he was also Vice President of the West and Northeast regions of none other than American Tower Corporation.

Comcast has an extensive network and this seems to be only a continuation of how to add some revenues and profits on top of existing infrastructure that was already in place. 

American Tower  is worth nearly $22 billion in market value today.  Its global solutions include over 37,000 towers (about 25,000 in America), 2,300+ managed rooftops, in-building and outdoor Distributed Antenna System networks.  American Tower is also reorganizing into a REIT as well, indicating that the company will be shelling out almost all of its income as dividends.

Crown Castle International Corporation (NYSE: CCI) is worth just over $12 billion.  It said on its most recent release that it owns, operates, and manages more than 22,000 U.S. sites (in 92 of the top 100 markets) and about 1,600 wireless communication sites in Australia.

At SBA Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: SBAC), it owned 9,290 tower sites and also noted that it manages or leases approximately 5,200 actual or potential communications sites as of March 31, 2011.  SBA’s value is put around $4 billion.

Putting a raw value on a new unit with assets in place but without the knowledge of who will be customers is difficult to do immediately.  A ballpark of value add could be as little as $500 million or as much as $2 billion, but those numbers would be highly subjective and the true valuation could fluctuate wildly from source to source.  Comcast currently has a market capitalization of more than $61 billion.

JON C. OGG

What is odd is how small the disclosure was.  American Tower stated:

• On June 2, 2011, American Tower Corporation received a subpoena from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission requesting certain documents from 2007 through the present, including in particular documents related to the Company’s tax accounting and reporting. The Company intends to cooperate fully with the SEC with respect to its request.

Shares of American Tower are down 6.2% at $51.02 on more than 1 million shares in less than the first five minutes of trading.  The 52-week trading range is $41.26 to $56.84 and the consensus Thomson Reuters price target is just above $60.00.  Analysts are likely to be out with downgrades or with “temporary exceptions” in the research coverage.  Unfortunately, the time frame is wide enough and the disclosure is vague enough that no one outside of the company will yet be able to make determinations or opinions.

Shares of rival Crown Castle are down a bit in sympathy with a drop of just over 1.5% at $40.95. The smaller player is SBA Communications Corp. (NASDAQ: SBAC) and its shares are down 1.5% at $38.19.  American Tower is now worth about $20 billion after the haircut in its market cap, while Crown Castle’s market cap is almost $12 billion.  SBA Communications has a market cap of only about $4 billion.

There is an old rule of thumb that many investors heed.  When accounting irregularities or large accounting questions arise, look for opportunity elsewhere.  American Tower shares were down over 8% pre-market… Even after about 20 years of reading news releases and financial statements, it is amazing how so few words can have such a big impact.

JON C. OGG

Many of these stocks share the notion that they are close to 52-week highs and some are close to 2008 highs.  This list is also somewhat different than the list given in our “top picks from everyone” linking to a December 8, 2009 story with TheStreet.com’s top tech picks for 2010.  A brief note on each stock and the reason Cramer likes these follows herein.

On the smartphone war between Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) for Android and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) for iPhone is actually a phony war where these companies will make money.  Cramer even went as far to say that Lady Gaga had more insight than most analysts covering this.  Cramer noted that even in 2013, less than half of the phone market will be smartphones despite 256 million units being expected to sell in 2010.  Cramer thinks these companies have major room in the smartphone as there is room for far more than one player here.  Cramer thinks that Apple’s iPhone is not just another iPod and has much upside.  Google’s phone will just promote its core business and he thinks that Google will still go to $750 at the end of 2010 and Apple will still go to $300.00.  Cramer’s notion is that this is a bad romance rather than a war.

The bandwidth solutions are tower plays, which will be much more needed, are American Tower Corp. (NYSE: AMT), Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE: CCI) and SBA Communications Corp. (NASDAQ: SBAC).  As far as components, Skyworks Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: SWKS) is a winner in amplifiers for boosting signals that are needed.  Semiconductor winners for the mobile internet expansion will be Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR), Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE: CY) and Xilinx inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX). Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is not associated with the mobile internet, but it is becoming the cheap sale destination online and has the Kindle e-reader.  Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is one that Cramer has already been very ambitious on with a $216.00 target.

Cramer’s backbone of the internet pick is Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) that is now deep into wireless and in advanced communications. Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) is a 2010 pick on its Playfish acquisition for social gaming, which is now for mobile gaming as well.  QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) is another pick that makes the web faster for 3G and 4G and it has the brains for the smartphone and some smart-books.  Lastly, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is also going to be a winner because of its chip lineup and its number of quarters.  He thinks it is going to have a monster quarter.

I would like to personally invite you to join in with the thousands of readers on our free daily email distribution list from 24/7 Wall St. to hear about ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, analyst upgrades and downgrades, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and IPOs, and more.

CRAMER’S OTHER 2010 THEME STOCK PICKS FROM THIS WEEK ARE AS FOLLOWS:

• Cramer’s “Going Global” top ADRs for 2010
• Cramer’s Energy Shortage Stocks for 2010
• Cramer’s Homeland Security and Anti-Terrorism Stocks

JON C. OGG
JANUARY 7, 2010

The company also intends to use a portion of the offering proceeds to enter into convertible note hedge transactions to reduce the potential dilution to the common stock with an initial strike price of roughly 180% of the price at the time of the offering.  This will also replace a hedging transaction from 2007.

We have not seen any trade indications, but $350 million compares to a market cap of $3.12 billion and compares to total debt of over $2.548 billion and total liabilities of $2.719 billion.

Jon C. Ogg
April 20, 2009

American Tower (AMT) Cut to Sector Perform at RBC.
AXA (AXA) Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan.
Blue Nile (NILE) Cut to Hold at Citigroup.
CA Inc. (CA) Cut to Hold at Jefferies.
FactSet (FDS) Started as Sell at Auriga.
IBM (IBM) Cut to Hold at Canaccord Adams.
Interactive Brokers (IBKR) Cut to Underperform at KBW.
IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) Cut to Underperform at KBW.
Novell (NOVL) Cut to Hold at Jefferies.
SBA Communications (SBAC) Cut to Sector Perform at RBC.
Viacom (VIA) Cut to Equal Weight at Barclays.

JON C. OGG

RBC Capital Markets took the entire group from a Sector Perform rating to a higher Outperform rating. 

Among the stocks raised were American Tower (NYSE: AMT), Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI), and SBA Communications (NASDAQ: SBAC).

Jon C. Ogg
July 3, 2008

• American Tower (NYSE: AMT); stock indicated down over 1%.
• Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI); stock indicated down 1%.
• SBA Communications (NASDAQ: SBAC); stock indicated down almost 1%.

Most of these stocks were very close to 52-week highs, so this is  a group to watch in pre-market trading as we get closer to the open.

Jon C. Ogg
June 4, 2008

• American Tower (NYSE: AMT), Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI), and SBA Communications (NASDAQ: SBAC) all initiated as BUY at Jefferies.
• Baidu.com (NASDAQ: BIDU) raised to Outperform at RBC Capital.
• BE Aerospace (NASDAQ: BEAV) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at UBS.
• Gennesee & Wyoming (NYSE: GWR) raised to Outperform at Bear Stearns.
• Hologic (NASDAQ: HOLX) started as Buy at Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey.
• Safeway (NYSE: SWY) raised to Neutral from Sell at UBS.
• The Knot (NASDAQ: KNOT) downgraded to Neutral at JPMorgan.
• The Medicines Co. (NASDAQ: MDCO) raised to Buy from Hold at Citigroup.
• UBS (NYSE: UBS) downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank.
• ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK) raised to Outperform at Robert W. Baird.

Jon C. Ogg
February 14, 2008