IHS Towers Delivers Strong 2024 Results, Strengthens Market Position

IHS Towers, one the world’s largest independent owners, operators, and developers of shared communications infrastructure with operations across Africa and Latin America, published its full year results this morning for the 12-month and 3-month period to 31 December 2024. As of market close last night, the company has a market cap of £1.31bn.

It was a strong set of results with revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and ALFCF all ahead of guidance, and CAPEX below expectations, reflecting continued strong secular trends across the business, a more stable macroeconomic environment, strong operational focus and the significant commercial and financial progress made during 2024 as part of the company’s ongoing strategic review.

Full year highlights

• Revenue of $1,711.2m, was ahead of guidance of $1,670-1,700m, and + 48.1% on an organic basis year-on-year
• Adjusted EBITDA of $928.4 million was ahead of guidance of $900-920m. Adjusted EBITDA Margin of 54.3%, +100 basis points year-on-year, reflecting continued cost control
• ALFCF was $304.2 million was comfortably ahead of guidance of $250-270m, with Total Capex of $255.9 million down 56.3% year-on-year, reflecting a narrowed focus on capital allocation

The company is successfully executing against the strategic review initiated in March 2024. So far this has included:

• Material commercial progress including the renewal and extension of all MTN tower MLAs and extension of Airtel Nigeria MLA
• Reduced risk in operating model by materially reducing exposure to power prices
• Significant advances made on balance sheet strategy through extending maturity profile and shifting more debt into local currency. Net leverage fell to 3.7x at December 2024, down from 3.9x at the end of Q3 2024
• Disposal of IHS Towers’ 70% interest in IHS Kuwait Limited at an Enterprise Value of $230 million, implying a multiple of Adjusted EBITDA after leases of 14.2x, a significant premium to IHS. Additionally, we completed the sale of IHS Peru.

Commenting on these earnings, Sam Darwish, Chairman and CEO, commented:

We’re reporting a strong performance in the fourth quarter, with our key metrics revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and ALFCF all ahead of our guidance, while Total Capex was below expectations, and we saw a drop in our consolidated net leverage ratio. We believe our positive momentum reflects both the continued strong secular trends we are seeing across our business, a more stable macroeconomic environment, as well as the significant commercial and financial progress we have made during 2024 as part of our ongoing strategic review. We have de-risked our business through extending commercial contracts with Key Customers into the next decade, reduced our exposure to power prices, extended our debt maturities and completed some of our disposals target.

Looking to 2025 and beyond, we remain excited by the strong structural growth opportunities across our footprint. We believe we are well placed to leverage our market leading positions and support growing demand for our critical communications infrastructure, with growth underpinned by continued 5G deployment across our markets and an improving backdrop within our largest market Nigeria after recent carrier tariff rate increases. As we enter 2025, we remain focused on further enhancing our profitability and cash flow generation, as can be seen in our FY25 guidance, and are committed to further strengthening our balance sheet, supported by potential further select asset disposals, allowing us to deliver increasing returns for all our stakeholders.

– Sam Darwish, Chairman and CEO, IHS Towers