SBAC Is a Great Business. Here's Why I Don't Own the Stock

There's little wrong with investing in SBA Communications (NASDAQ: SBAC). It has a proven business model and a great track record in a growth industry that still has a lot of room to run.

Along with rivals American Tower (NYSE: AMT) and Crown Castle (NYSE: CCI), it's one of the pioneers in the cell tower business, and it, too, is investing in its own mix of traditional cell towers, data centers, distributed antenna systems for buildings and rooftops, fiber, and the other apparatus of the 5G rollout. All three of these tower operators went public in the late 90s, and SBAC's normalized total return, in fact, has handily outpaced American Tower and Crown Castle so far this century, as the chart below shows.