Houlihan Lokey Advises Arcadian Infracom, Inc.

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Arcadian Infracom, Inc. (Arcadian), a fiber infrastructure company, has received an investment from TIAA, a leading provider of secure retirements and outcome-focused investment solutions. TIAA will invest up to $140 million to accelerate fiber projects in the Southwest and grow the Arcadian digital infrastructure platform. The transaction was announced on October 4, 2021.

Arcadian was founded by veterans of the telecommunications industry to build long-haul fiber to support the demand for diverse, lower latency fiber routes. In 2018, Arcadian and the Navajo Nation entered into a value-sharing partnership for the construction of long-haul fiber routes through the Navajo land. Arcadian’s highly anticipated fiber routes will connect Phoenix to Salt Lake City and Phoenix to Denver, converging through the Navajo land. The new fiber routes provide greater network diversity, resiliency, security, and reduced latency for Arcadian’s global cloud, content, carrier, cable, and ISP customers. This routing strategy synergistically enables high-speed broadband access and creates economic development opportunities in rural and tribal communities.

Nuveen, the investment manager of TIAA with over $1 trillion of assets, originated and will manage the investment. TIAA’s commitment to working with Arcadian will help meet the increasing global demand for responsible infrastructure investments that also aim to provide alternative sources of attractive returns. The investment will enhance Nuveen’s existing private infrastructure platform, which manages $5 billion across renewable energy, digital, telecoms, transportation and social infrastructure sectors globally and has delivered consistent investment performance for over 10 years.

Dan Davis, CEO of Arcadian, commented, “The Houlihan team was a great and valued partner of Arcadian as we traveled together down the road of finding the right financial partner for our business. Their tenacity, creativeness and openness to innovative approaches to structuring the right relationship with TIAA was impressive.”

Houlihan Lokey was engaged as the exclusive financial advisor to Arcadian. This deal further demonstrates Houlihan Lokey’s leading position in advising premier fiber-based, broadband companies in the United States.