BOSTON—American Tower Corp. has closed on its $5.1-billion deal to lease or acquire 11,448 cell phone towers from Verizon Corp. The acquisition expands the wireless REIT's portfolio to 40,000-plus cell towers across the US. It's also the first of two major divestitures of non-core assets announced concurrently by Verizon in early February.

Boston-based AMT funded the Verizon transaction with proceeds from its concurrent registered public offerings of 25,850,000 shares of its common stock and 13,750,000 depositary shares, borrowings under its revolving credit facilities and cash on hand. When the deal was first made public, AMT CEO Jim Taiclet called the Verizon portfolio “a unique asset.”

Thanks to what “outstanding design and management by the Verizon Wireless network operations team,” Taiclet said last month that the portfolio boasts attributes that will facilitate “robust leasing opportunities.” Among them are average tower heights approaching 200 feet, “ample structural capacity and ground space, very attractive transmission locations with relatively few competing sites, a solid ground lease profile and excellent documentation and technical information.”

Under terms of its deal with Verizon, which includes the outright purchase of 165 of the towers, AMT will have the exclusive right to lease and operate the towers for a weighted average term of 28 years. In addition, the REIT will have fixed-price purchase options to acquire the leased towers based on their anticipated fair market values at the end of the lease terms.

When Verizon announced the AMT deal, it separately reported that it would sell its local wireline operations in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications Corp. for approximately $10.54 billion, including the assumption of $600 million in debt. The network that Stamford, CT-based Frontier is acquiring supports 3.7 million voice connections, 2.2 million broadband connections and 1.2 million FiOS video connections, and is 54% FiOS enabled. The sale is expected to close in the first half of 2016.