TOWER POWER.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: Steve Clark, CEO of SpectraSite Holdings, builder of cellular telephone towers - Statistical Data Included

SpectraSite turns the volume up, betting that demand will drown out doubts about its low stock price and high debt.

Steve Clark sounds awfully chipper for a man whose company's stock has dropped to a sixth of what it traded for last summer. SpectraSite Holdings Inc., a Cary-based owner, operator and builder of cellular-telephone towers, has a higher debt level than its main competitors. It's still digesting a mammoth acquisition that, when done, will roughly double its size. And its main customer, Reston, Va.-based Nextel Communications Inc., recently announced its business is slowing down.

Clark, CEO and founder, isn't worried. His voice -- deep and with an anchorman's air of certainty -- inspires confidence. It's the same resonant, authoritative voice that has helped win big accounts for SpectraSite and other companies he has founded. "He's always been focused on customers -- and big customers," says Leiv Lea, chief financial officer of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Pharmacyclics Inc. and a former executive of a Georgia maker of supermarket-equipment that Clark started and ran for 18 years. Food Lion was one of its biggest customers. "You look back over the years he's been able to put together strategies for acquiring big customers."

Playing on Clark's strength, nearly 80% of SpectraSite's revenue comes from the nation's top six wireless-phone companies. Clark details how SpectraSite has built its collection of cellphone and broadcast towers from May 1997, when he founded the company, to the more than 9,000 in the United States and Canada it will own or manage in 2002. It bought leasing rights for 3,900 towers from San Antonio, Texas-based SBC Communications Inc. last August and is closing the deal in increments the rest of this year. It has 20,000 more antenna perches on rooftops, mostly in the United States. Employment has grown from Clark alone to more than 2,000 -- 500 in Cary. It has the most cellphone towers and rooftop antenna sites in eight of the country's top 10 wireless markets. Revenues rose from $5 million in 1997 to $347 million in 2000.

And SpectraSite is only using a fraction of its capacity. Its towers can accommodate six to eight tenants. Some rooftop sites can handle more. But the average SpectraSite tower has fewer than two. That's because most of its towers were bought from wireless-service companies who built them for their own use and didn't welcome competitors. The towers range from 200 to 300 feet tall, and each costs more than $200,000 to build. Maintenance on each costs about $12,000 a year. Each tenant averages $1,500 a month in rent. If SpectraSite can fill it up, each tower can bring in more than $100,000 a year. "This is a very attractive little money machine," Clark says.

But it's unlikely that any of that money will trickle to the bottom line anytime soon. The company lost $157.6 million in 2000 61% more than it did the previous year -- largely because it is buying and growing so fast. Asked when the company will produce a profit, Clark says, "I hope never." Well, not really never, he recants. "If we choose to, we can become net-income positive within 24 months. I just don't think it's right now a goal that makes sense, given the kind of growth prospects we see in this industry."

Clark, 56, knows about starting and building companies. He has started five. What companies haven't experienced under him is long-term profitability. Conyers, Ga.-based Margaux Inc., the supermarket-equipment maker and the only one of his creations he led longer than he's run SpectraSite, filed for bankruptcy reorganization in 1989, 12 years after its birth. It came out of bankruptcy six months later and sold its assets in 1995 -- paying off creditors in full with about 27 cents per share left over for stockholders. It made a profit just once in its last four years.

Aside from Margaux, Clark has been something of an entrepreneurial nomad, starting companies, then shutting them down or selling within a few years. His career has been one of almost continual reinvention. "Most people regard change as something undesirable, if not fearful," he says. "I have, for most of my life, not felt...