Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Anterix Investor Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Natasha Vecchiarelli.

Ma'am, the floor is yours..

Thank you, Catharine. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us. With me today are Morgan O'Brien, our Executive Chairman; Rob Schwartz, our President and CEO; Ryan Gerbrandt, our COO; and Tim Gray, our CFO.

Before we begin, please note that any statements we make during this call that are not based on historical facts constitute forward-looking statements and our actual results could differ materially from those implied.

Information regarding the risk factors that could cause such differences can be found in our public filings, report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on May 18, 2020 and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2020 filed with SEC, August 6, 2020. Form 10-K and Form 10-Q can be found on our Investor Relations webpage.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Morgan O'Brien..

Thanks, Natasha. Welcome back, and good afternoon to our investors. Today is my first opportunity to address this audience since in July, Anterix promoted Rob Schwartz to the role of CEO and made me as the Executive Chairman of the Board. In my new role, I'll continue to pursue my highest priority of building shareholder value.

But I'll do that by assisting Rob and his team to run the company. At the outset, let me say that the transition has been seamless, and I could not be happier with our progress and outlook.

I want to reserve the bulk of our time this afternoon for Rob and for Ryan Gerbrandt, our Chief Operating Officer, to report on the many areas of progress that they're managing. So, I can't pass up the opportunity after all these years to share one last report on the FCC Report and Order.

As expected, the FCC rulemaking process, which included the issuance of that order came to an end on August 27 without any party asking the FCC to reconsider the rules that are adopted to create the 900 megahertz broadband opportunity, or the FCC changing its mind on its own motion.

So, this date passing means finality for the rules, which are foundational to our business case and gives us the unique position at 900 megahertz to bring nationwide broadband to the critical infrastructure industries.

Our analysis of the new rules, plus constructive further discussions with FCC staff, corroborates our view that this outcome could not have been better for our shareholders. We believe your patience has been rewarded amply. A quick introduction from my chair, this afternoon’s reports from Rob, Ryan, and Tim includes these highlights.

Our message of the availability of new wireless broadband spectrum has been promulgated extensively by media of all types. It would be hard to mention a corner of our intended audience that has not become aware of what the FCC has done and what it means. Of course, awareness precedes the desired outcome of signing long-term leases.

I'm impressed by what our team has been able to do in a few short months to get our message out.

A new Advisory Council is up and running with the strong guidance of former FCC Commissioner and former California Public Utility Commissioner, Rachelle Chong; and former Governor of Delaware, Jack Markell and an impressive group of our employees and consultants. Just to give a flavor of what this council is achieving.

We've partnered with SmartPower, a non-profit renewable energy marketer and with the American University's Center for Environmental Policy to pursue a federal grant from among a $1.5 billion pool of stimulus funding in the Department of Commerce.

Our objective on this initiative is to work directly with utilities in Virginia to help them win stimulus funding, to pay for private LTE networks for grid management, and to leverage those facilities to assist in supporting rural broadband. As many of you know, funding in utility infrastructure has generally all been at state level.

This Federal opportunity in our view is the harbinger of what may come as the Federal government begins to take a much larger role in infrastructure funding. The second council initiative of which I am very proud of is a resolution we're supporting at the Southern States Energy Board, that's the SSEB.

This is an interstate compact composed of governors and state legislators from 16 Southern states, plus two US territories and a Presidential appointee. The important function of the SSEB is to formulate policy for the region relating to energy.

The resolution, if passed, would encourage the region's utilities to deploy private, cyber secure, wireless broadband networks to support grid modernization and where feasible for utilities to support consumer broadband to rural homes by making their infrastructure available.

This policy guidance from as important a group as the SSEB will help Anterix penetrate to the leadership of utilities throughout the Southeast as we seek to make our spectrum available and hopefully to make that availability regional. Let me finish up my remarks today by conveying my enthusiasm for where we are.

Momentum throughout our target markets is palpable. Our team has been strengthened by new talents who are broadening our reach. Everything I read convinces me that regardless of the outcome of November's election, a major federal effort will be undertaken to supply huge financial resources for grid security and modernization.

Anterix is working to position its unique spectrum as a key beneficiary of such funding. The giant companies that make up our target market are aware of the challenges and opportunities they face. Our job is to convince them individually and as an industry that our unique spectrum position is crucial as the foundation for broadband connectivity.

Just as our patience was rewarded with a win at the FCC, so too are we determined that our patience will be rewarded by winning leases within this industry. Ending on a personal note, I want to stress my day-to-day role in continuing to make Anterix everything it can be.

With Rob as CEO and me as Chairman, I think our Board has selected exactly the team to lead us to amazing success. Now, I'll pass the microphone to Rob..

top tier, the federal government; then comes the recent Priority Access Licenses or PAL auction winners, with up to 7 of those 10 megahertz licenses. And last but not least, there remains a significant amount of unlicensed spectrum available under General Authorized Access or GAA.

We see this unlicensed spectrum as very useful for a low cost overlay on licensed 900 megahertz to provide this added capacity and functionality when needed. We're also continuing to work closely with key OEM infrastructure providers to help customers find their best solutions for private LTE.

As many of you know, Motorola recently announced their innovative approach to LTE with a high power 900 megahertz solution that can cost efficiently be overlaid on the footprint of an existing two-way radio LMR system. With a growing confidence in mission-critical Push to Talk over LTE, thanks to all the development efforts around FirstNet.

We see more interest in using LTE as an evolutionary path from LMR. In this segment, where Motorola has always been a powerhouse, we expect this solution will bring in new demand. In fact, we're working with Motorola and a potential customer on a pilot showcasing this new technology.

And importantly, to address a question I know is on many investors’ minds, I wanted to provide an update on our Ameren contract process. As you know, we announced our Letter of Intent in April, and I've been working actively to conclude our agreement and support Ameren's network deployment planning.

At this time, all material terms have been agreed upon, including the long-term lease of spectrum at fair market value, and the contract is working its way through Ameren’s corporate execution process. The contract will be subject to customary closing conditions including Board approvals.

While there's always uncertainty in these corporate processes, we are optimistic that we will see this contract executed over the coming weeks, and we will then be able to share more details. With that, I'll turn it over to Ryan..

convert these indicators of demand and interest into long-term revenues. And with that, I'll turn it over to Tim..

Thanks, Ryan, and good afternoon, everyone. How does our current pipeline relate to our previously stated revenue projections? Even without the assumption of additional customers coming into the pipeline, based on our current pipeline, we believe we will meet the fiscal year 2024 revenue goals that we have previously laid out.

Note that our focus on fiscal 2024 factors in spectrum clearing and the fact that we have always understood that the decision-making and approval processes at utilities, as Ryan just explained, are time-consuming, and we built these into our model. Turning to our cash position.

We ended June 2020 with approximately $125 million of cash and are debt-free.

As a reminder, during our last update call in May, I stated that we expect to spend a total of $50 million to $60 million during our current fiscal year, which is inclusive of $20 million to $30 million in spectrum-clearing investments and approximately $30 million of operating expenses. We remain on track to spend within this forecasted range.

And as I've discussed previously, we do expect our expenses to continue to gradually rise over this fiscal year as we add resources to enhance our organizational capabilities. The funding of our business plan would be assisted by the initial demand that we are seeing for prepaid leases.

Based on our current discussions with our potential investor-owned utility customers, we now believe some of these customers will opt to prepay their spectrum lease there upfront or over the first 2 years of the lease.

Prepayments of IOU spectrum leases appear to be an easier path forward for them, providing them the ability to capitalize their spectrum investment. It is still too early to tell that this will be a trend for a majority of our utility customers going forward. But as we've discussed, utilities have a strong preference to capitalize these leases.

To be clear, the IOU's decision to prepay their leases is not intended to reduce the cost of their spectrum lease. Therefore, we expect that the discount rate for these prepayments will be based closer to the IOU's cost of capital than to ours.

No matter how the customer chooses to pay their lease, even if we receive upfront payments representing the entire terminal lease, we will use the GAAP straight-line method of accounting to recognize revenues over the full term of the lease.

Again, I'll repeat that it's too early to tell if this early indication will continue for every utility customer, but it does potentially mean that we could get to free cash flow faster and provide us with additional strategic options.

Having a significant cash balance will provide us with the ability to invest in the growth of our business without tapping the financial markets and could even give us an opportunity to return cash to shareholders, including share buybacks earlier than anticipated.

We will provide more updates on the emergence of this trend as we sign customer contracts. I'd also like to provide a detailed update on our 900 megahertz spectrum clearing process and the investments we made both in the past quarter and in the current quarter to bring broadband to the market.

In our fiscal first quarter that ended on June 30th, we spent $6 million with the spending representative of initial deposits and final payments for channel acquisitions and spectrum swaps to relocate for what we refer to as retune incumbents out of the broadband allocation.

In addition, in our current fiscal quarter through August 31, we spent $1.4 million on incumbent transactions and have an additional $2.2 million committed to complete these transactions. Through August, we have agreements with approximately 20% of the nationwide 900 megahertz incumbents.

While much of our spectrum clearing work is focused on targeted territories with potential near-term customer opportunities, we continue to clear incumbents opportunistically around the country.

Our clearing costs to-date continue to run in line with those of our total clearing cost estimates of $130 million to $160 million, which will mostly be spent over the next 5 years.

As mentioned in the past, following the FCC's issuance of the Report and Order, we are now capitalizing all spectrum-clearing investments, which will increase the value of our intangible asset over time.

Finally, I want to mention that the FCC's final rules allow us to get a credit for license exchanges with the American Association of Railroads, or AAR. And in June, we began that transaction resulting in a $4.7 million loss we recorded in the quarter ending June 30, 2020.

Post Report and Order, we moved forward with canceling the channel licenses necessary for the relocation of AAR existing operations so that the AAR is now able to move their operations outside of the 900 megahertz broadband segment. Due to this cancelation, we recorded the loss.

However, going forward, we do expect to record gains as we turn in our narrowband channels to the FCC to receive a broadband license.

These gains will vary in size based on several factors, including the value of the licenses we are turning in, the value of the respective county and the amount of any anti-windfall payments associated with the license. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn it back over to the operator for questions..

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question is coming from George Sutton. Your line is live..

There was more discussion on rate cases and infrastructure funding and sort of the help that I think you'll provide the utilities in moving forward.

And I'm just curious if -- was that an expected part of the process or has that been added as you're finding that to be part of the friction towards getting deals done?.

Hey, George, it's Morgan. Let me give a brief answer and then turn it perhaps to Rob. I would say we knew from the outset what a complex environment the investor and utilities operate within.

So on the one hand, you have their great advantage that they can invest huge amounts of capital if they prove that it's a prudent investment and they can actually earn a return on it. So that put them solidly in our sites from the beginning. So we knew the complexity of the process.

But of course, we're getting more and more savvy as we bring in all these experts.

Rob, how do you want to amplify that?.

Yes. I think it's spot on, George. No, I would not say it's anything new, it's just the opposite. We've been talking about our top-down and our bottom-up strategy approach to the segment from really when we started in that.

We always saw that having top-down is our regulatory team, which was spread between the FCC and the industry now with the completion of the FCC process, we're really laser-focused on the industry regulatory.

And on this advisory council, I talked about, we have former commissioners from California, as we mentioned, but also Texas and Illinois and experts from different areas of the utility industry, really helping what I think considered grease the skids and prepare the elements so that the rate cases get approved quicker so that regulators understand this.

And the last piece you asked about sort of the federal funding. Obviously, you're reading as everyone else is about all of the potential for stimulus funding that's going to come through on a bipartisan basis potentially.

And we definitely see -- just like history, I talked about it in 2009, the way money came through and flowed to a lot of the smart grid deployment, the smart meters that got deployed throughout the industry, we see another opportunity to be able to capitalize on this important need with the potential for more funding.

And so, we're also helping and focusing those resources on driving to make sure they get their fair share of that for -- to put out broadband private networks..

Yes. And I would say that partly, we're now in response mode because we're getting more and more awareness as a result of the education coming from the PoCs. They're now asking us. We used to feel like fish out of water at NARUC meetings. Now we're right in the thick of things with high-quality advisers we’ve brought on.

But it's a complex process to bring in a whole new category of capital investment into this space and demonstrate that it's prudent in an industry in which following is a lot more prevalent than leading. So nothing new. But for now, this is part of the sign of momentum. We're now in it.

We're in that big dimension of getting these things to real term contracts..

Got you. I'm curious on the timing of the CBRS auction and the decisions.

Do you think that, that had some complicating factor? While it's simply complementary to what you're doing, it may have held up some moves forward by some of the utilities until they knew what their position would be?.

Well, I think absolutely, yes.

What do you think, Rob?.

Yes. I think, as we mentioned, the ones that we're working with, which is most of those who have received -- got winning bids through the auction process as everyone has seen have had really multi-band approaches.

And really, when you look at the broader telecom landscape of utilities, they're using fiber, they're using lease lines, they're using commercial systems as well. And so private LTE is going to be a critical important element, but they're going to continue to use other bands, other technologies in filling out the full gamut of what they require.

CBRS is a piece of that. And so yes, absolutely, I think there were utilities who were watching to see what happened in an auction.

Again, our view that there was real capital put down in that auction by utilities that shows for the first time publicly about the -- beyond Southern Company that there's lots of other utilities that are interested in building private LTE.

And CBRS has a very specific use case that I talked about, but if you really want to do service territory wide coverage, you have to have low band and really 900 as the ultimate solution right now in the marketplace, we think it puts us in a really great position.

And again, the CBRS auction has not just increased awareness within the utility sector, which it has, the ecosystem that's growing of vendors and solution providers continues to expand. And those are providers of LTE technologies that typically are working across multiple bands. And so we're also going to see real benefit from that as well..

Let's take another last perspective on this. I think it's extremely positive. Historically, the utility industry took the position, they took it at the FCC repeatedly. We can't participate in auctions. We're not able to raise the capital to invest in spectrum. And we just saw a number of them obviously having overcome that participate in this auction.

They'll participate in additional auctions, I am sure. We -- looking at the utility industry, there's something where we seek to be a long-term partner, we're fine with this movement. We think it's absolutely positive as the industry steps up -- finally, you might say, steps up to begin making considerable investments in spectrum.

And since ours is foundational, we think it all bodes well for us..

One more question, if I could. This is directed to Ryan. You mentioned that there are a number of others planning pilots and would love to have number of quantified, if possible.

And also, any sense on the pilot cycle? Like what is the timeframe of contemplating a pilot to just simply getting a pilot in the works and announced?.

Yes. Excellent. Let me tackle the second half. Just give an expectation of kind of how utilities contemplate their cycles and what they're doing would be with pilots. They typically -- if you think about just the pilot cycle.

So after all this, you’d have gone through some exercises, I mentioned, in the educational process, kind of the prework of getting to the point of the pilot, it's pretty common that what we're going to see is that, that testing time might take between 3 to 6 months.

And so you have kind of a total duration in there of that plus whatever that incremental time is upfront and on the back. What you generally see with time, and I kind of made this point, is that the way that utilities pilot and test, it will be something that generally comes down with time.

They do tend to share information on test outcomes and the process associated with those conclusions. And so it's been helpful in general, I'll say, in terms of with experience and with the level of sharing across the utilities. We're generally going to see the industry collaboration shorten that time.

Now back to your first -- the first part of your question. Unfortunately, I can't get into the specific number of it.

But safe to say, it's a handful of additional ones to the utilities that we already have with the experimental licenses, and we'll certainly hope to see more and be able to talk about them as the experimental license comes out here in the future..

Just let me just make one last point. Keep in mind that for a lot of these super conservative utilities, we've had rules authorizing us to go forward for exactly 1.5 week or 2 weeks. So this is new to them..

Your next question is coming from Phil Cusick. Your line is live..

A couple of things.

So first, as you think about the market -- reasonable market price for Ameren, how can you comp that to CBRS? And does that have any impact on how you talk to customers about potential spectrum prices?.

Rob, do you want to do that or Tim?.

I'm sorry, Morgan. My phone actually cut off for a second. So if you can either repeat the question or -- I apologize..

Maybe Tim, did you -- Tim, did you hear the question?.

Yes, Rob. I'll just repeat it real quick and then we can between the two of us tag team it. How is CBRS impacted when we look at regional pricing? And is there any real impact there? So -- and as Rob mentioned…. .

And how does that compare to the price on the Ameren contract?.

Yes. I don't think there's any significant impact on pricing or really any real impact on pricing as it relates to under 1 gigahertz wide area of coverage spectrum.

So -- but Rob, do you want to add to that?.

Yes. Sure. Look, so as you know well, Phil, and we've read your research about the difference of valuation on spectrum in low band, mid band, high band. I don't think there were any surprises from CBRS. On the aggregate, there clearly were some counties where there were anomalies. But overall, I think we saw what we expected.

And we really look at the -- when we talk about fair market value spectrum, as we've talked about before, the previous auctions, 600 megahertz AWS to come up with -- in other private market transactions, what we think is fair market value.

And as I mentioned in my comments, the Ameren agreement, as we see it coming to completion is going to be within what we think of as a very fair range of fair market value. So I think it's supportive.

So no surprises for us from CBRS and it keeps us in line with what we think for the value of low-band spectrum separately from CBRS with Ameren specifically..

Okay. Okay. And then second, there was a comment -- I'm sorry, the guy who is new on the call..

Ryan..

Talking about principles making it into -- Ryan, planning documents.

And is that sort of principles you've been espousing that are making it into RFPs? And maybe you can give us some examples of things like that?.

That's for you, Ryan..

Yes. Got it. Yes. They make their way into a broad set of documents.

But definitely, as we see, not just the language and the principles that Anterix is defining, but the broader understanding, some of the points I mentioned around this intersection between the importance of connectivity and the other kind of grid programs that are tend to be aligned to the outcomes that are associated with those use cases.

And we'll see those come out. Sometimes they're in the form of technical documents that we may see in terms of a description of how those pieces come together.

We can also see in other areas, as you suggest, more formal proceedings that preempt some of the regulatory process that just describes utility programs and how they envision the pieces coming together.

And that's usually at a stage that before, obviously, they're doing the formal regulatory recovery programs in general and covers, like I said, the general principles around kind of how the avenues of spectrum and private LTE might fit in..

Your next question is coming from Simon Flannery. Your line is live..

So on the Ameren deal, where are we on clearing in that geography? And how should we be thinking about revenue recognition assuming you do close that one, let's say, in the kind of before year-end? Would that mean you'd start recognizing revenues in the December quarter? Or what's the right way to think about that? And if you've got any color on whether they might be one who might consider the upfront payments? And then I think in the spring, you'd said that you hope to sign another one to two deals beyond Ameren by March of '21.

Given what you've been saying about the kind of the time line here, is that still your expectation or has that got pushed a bit?.

Hey, Rob, do you want to try it?.

Sure. So on Ameren's clearing, Simon, I'd say we're on track. It happens to be a very good market. And that we always talked about the spectrum being underutilized, that's a market where there are less incumbents, and we've been making great progress.

And so I think we're on the right path to be able to deliver based on what is the build schedule that we know of, of Ameren. So I don't think there's any surprises there. On the revenue recognition, Tim, maybe you want to talk about that a bit. I know we can't reveal the detail, but how we would recognize at least..

Yes. So Simon, I would expect in our -- in the first quarter of our next fiscal year, we would start to be able to recognize revenue assuming they sign in relative short order..

Is that the June quarter, is it?.

Yes. Exactly..

Okay.

And anything on the upfront payment? Is that something they're talking about?.

Yes. Unfortunately, Simon, we can't reveal the details of that because we are still under NDA. But again, as I said, I'm hoping we'll be able to do that soon when we come to a conclusion. And then, at that point, we'll give a lot more details about the terms..

And on retuning, I think we mentioned this before, but if we did -- there's sort of one dominant player in St. Louis. And so it was important to get a deal with that player, which we did. And so now it's working through the process of moving around the various operations to get them off broadband and on to narrowband. So that's all very positive..

And Simon one of the technical things, I know you appreciate also. As we do clear our 3x3 is that because of the LTE standard configuration of starting with a 1.4, the smallest, I think we've been going up to a 3x3, we actually have the opportunity to utilize that part of the band in advance of clearing the full band.

And we've looked with a number of utilities at the way in which that could be used. Because you can imagine, when they first put in service, they don't need the full 3x3. And so we actually have a glide path in our clearing very often that allows us to deliver the 1.4 first and then get to a 3x3..

Okay.

And on subsequent leases?.

So I would say that we're -- you heard Ryan's comments about the pipeline. And Ryan, feel free to add any more comments. We're on course as we gave you all the right qualifications that these are difficult beasts to predict in the process of getting from -- getting to yes.

But based on the robustness of our engagement with a lot of utilities at the bottom end of the -- of our pipeline, we're optimistic we'll be able to reach those targets..

And then you talked a lot about LTE. Obviously, 5G is ramping here.

And how has 5G sort of played into your conversations?.

Yes. So well, my answer is that our conversations always assume that there's going to be a migration from 4G to 5G in some way or another.

Rob, anything you want to amplify?.

What sticks in my mind, we've mentioned previously, but Southern Company’s Alabama Power hosted the Utility Broadband Alliance. And the keynote speaker was Tami Barron, the CEO of their telecom business, Southern Linc.

And really addressing that question right upfront, she had talked about that they have a 4G system in place built by Ericsson, and that it's software upgradable from their view to 5G. And they said, currently, every use case they have is being well solved by it. But when it makes economic sense for them to upgrade, they will.

And so we kind of take the same approach that that's why we're using LTE, that's why we go with the global standard, and especially those utilities that are now looking at that -- at new technology and equipment for 4G systems that most of the vendors are talking about the software upgradability of those systems.

And so we believe that there's a natural glide path when they need it -- if they need it and when they need it. So we definitely see 5G on the radar as the technology gets optimized for the use of private networks..

Your next question is coming from Mike Crawford. Your line is live..

Mike Crawford from B. Riley Securities. So I understand your reticence to talk about exactly what you consider to be fair market value in a more quantifiable aspect. But maybe if we get back to, Tim, when you were reiterating your continued guidance of $125 million to $150 million of revenues by 2024.

But you didn't say whether that was still through contracts of 6 to 11 of the top 20 IOUs or some different mix, given the other discussions you had about -- the other disclosure you had about now being in discussions with three quarters of the nationwide value packages?.

Yes. So when we talk about the $125 million to $150 million, Mike, it was using 6 to 11 of the top 20 IOUs. That mix maybe slightly different to get the $125 million to $150 million to where the pipeline looks right now. But from a revenue perspective, we're still on track..

Maybe on a up or down level of -- directionally, what’s your consideration of the fair market value of the spectrum? Has that changed?.

Yes. I can jump in there. Mike, yes, I think as I said earlier, it hasn't changed. We -- our pricing model that we’ve develop our leases on and really get supported by numerous third parties often in our conversations with utilities, it's valuable to have other entities that come in.

And really, I think Ryan talked about, the education of these customers is a key part of the first stage. These utilities have not been through all the work that all of us have, understanding value of spectrum, following spectrum auctions. And so just the education of historical pricing and what is fair market value.

So our view is that there's still strong support for the rationale for the pricing we have, which is based on, as I talked about, all the elements of fair market value.

Just going back to the 6 to 11 that we talked about a while back, that was really an illustrative example that you could take 6 to 11 of the top 20 customers to say that's the range of mix of the top 20.

Obviously, as we talk about a much bigger pipeline now beyond those top 20, the mix could be different, but our objective of hitting those targets are still the same..

Okay. And then, Rob, you also talked about this 1.4 glide path that we talked about in the past as well.

But given that, that is the way that many of these potential agreements might roll out, does that also mean that even in the case where you're getting the upfront, well, how is that going to affect potential cash flows coming in from leases?.

Yes. It -- unfortunately, it depends, and there's some of the details, which I can't really put out there yet because we're in different discussions and different mechanisms to be able to do that. I don't mean to be too vague. But absolutely, we could have pro rata pricing based on the spectrum that we deliver in some cases.

So you may see a ramp-up in payments to get the full payment at a 3x3. Others were that we talked about where there might be prepayments, it's going to be less consequential. And others are looking for more spectrum upfront that could be in markets where there's more spectrum available.

So I think you're going to see a range of outcomes relative to that issue..

Your next question is coming from James Ratcliffe. Your line is live..

Two quick ones, if I could. Just on the FY '24 revenue goal. Is reaching that affected at all about whether leases are prepaid versus pay-go or is the revenue recognition essentially the same? And second, just a follow-up on the CBRS spectrum.

Anything in this auction that has caused you to change your view not just about absolute spectrum value, but about the relative value of spectrum in various markets when you look at that mix?.

Rob?.

I think I'm going to -- I'll take the second one first, the CBRS one, because I think I addressed that earlier and, Tim, I'll pass the revenue recognition to you. Now as I said previously, the CBRS auction, I think -- and honestly, I'm reading all of your research, so it's great to be answering the question to the analysts about it.

But I think we all saw what we would say at least fair market value or full value for that mid-band spectrum at 3.5 spectrum. And to us, it just solidifies the kind of values that we're talking about for our spectrum based on some of the historical auctions. We didn't see many anomalies.

Ryan has said, there was a couple of counties that were sort of a bit out of whack for particular reasons. But otherwise, I think it continues to be supportive of both the aggregate value, but also the variation in pricing market by market, right, with places where spectrum is below average from a cost standpoint in places where it's above-average.

But on the whole, we think it was pretty supportive..

Yes. And on the recognition, James, so from a revenue perspective, it's still going to be -- even if it's prepaid, it's still going to be straight line over the life of the lease. So the dollars related to a theoretical prepayment would be built into how we'd looked at the $125 million to $150 million..

And your last question is coming from....

Hey, Rob, before we -- for one second.

Haven't you also made the point that when you look at fair market value of CBRS payments versus on valuation, you have to add the significant fees that SAS, that the coordination process impose?.

That is a good point. I think one that isn't really captured much by the research. But you all know, right, I've talked earlier about the SAS, right, the role of the spectrum coordination and the fees per endpoint.

As you deploy a significant network, actually can add up pretty significantly as an operating expense, too, versus the capital expense, which is the purchase of the spectrum. Some of the models we've looked at, we've seen almost an equivalent cost, if you take the spectrum.

So almost 50% increase of the cost when you add on those SAS costs as well, depending on -- it's based on the number of both base stations and endpoints that are higher power. So that is an important point, Morgan, I'm glad you brought it up..

And I think the other point is that if you're down in the weeds, and you guys realize it, but others not realize that the PAL license is secondary in many places to -- is a practical manner to the Navy's use of it, and it's a complicating factor in encumbrance.

And if you're in a place like San Diego or a lot of the West Coast, it's a factor impinging on value..

Your last question is coming from Chase White. Chase, your line is live..

Just a couple, if I may. So the first question I have is that any updates or feedback on -- from UPS on their testing of the 900 megahertz spectrum with their external license? And any meaningful interest from other non-utility critical infrastructure entities outside of UPS? You don't have to mention any names, but just curious..

I think that falls into your bucket, Ryan..

Rob, maybe you want to start with the UPS. I can hit the other segment..

Particularly on UPS. So not a lot of continued progress. I think what we've seen with COVID, and I think everyone sees this with the delivery of the UPS packages, UPS has been pretty busy working on some other critical efforts. And so I don't think there's a lot more report on that today. Hopefully, there will be more in the future.

But we are seeing absolutely, I think this ties into the comments on the CBRS auction, interest from a lot of other sectors. You saw a lot of the other private entities that jumped into the CBRS auction around unusually, given the results of previous auctions.

And I think as a result of that, we're starting to see segment interest continued, but increasing from sectors like oil and gas and transportation and others. And Ryan, maybe you want to talk about that and also the way you've built the team now to focus on developing some of those opportunities..

Yes. Absolutely. No, you're right. There definitely has been interest. Even some of it in the form of imbalance in terms of seeking for participation and how do the other segments take advantage of the 900 megahertz license. We've been -- as Rob said, we've been building the team.

Obviously, as I talked about our core focus in the prime component of the sales force that we're putting in place is to target larger IOUs that are the middle of the crosshairs of what we're going after. But we're starting to build out the competency for how to capture some of these adjacent spaces as they continue to emerge.

Clearly, they're a little bit earlier in the pipeline process, but will become interesting opportunities in terms of complementary, either the geographical coverage and/or picking up other prime spots depending on how the pipeline plays out with the IOUs..

And we're expecting and I think our utility customers are expecting, in some cases, that they can make the initial investment in the infrastructure and then find other users to fill in some of the capacity, so that they had a way to offset some of their costs..

Yes. Agreed, Morgan. And one other point that I'll just add is, as we expand our partner ecosystem, has been a very positive avenue in terms of getting integrated into other direct segments where they may be more direct participants historically than we are.

And as we've talked about, a lot of that activity is continuing to accelerate in addition to the customer contact..

Yes. And you may think, as we do, when you think of the utility, you may think, first of all, of electricity, but a lot of these guys have gas also. And so there are pipeline and other type of potential uses..

We have no further questions from the lines at this time..

Well, thank you, everybody. We appreciate all the questions, all your time, continuing support. Thank you so much, until next time..

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation..