Helios Towers H1 Earnings Call Highlights

Key Points

• Helios Towers reported strong first-half growth, adding 2,511 tenancies and more than 500 sites. Revenue rose 11% to $237 million, adjusted EBITDA increased 14%, and recurring free cash flow grew 52% year over year.
• The company raised its 2026 outlook, targeting 3,500–4,000 tenancy additions, adjusted EBITDA of $520–$535 million and recurring free cash flow of $220–$235 million. Discretionary capital expenditure was also increased to $215–$245 million to fund growth.
• Helios Towers highlighted substantial long-term demand from rising mobile data use, urbanization and 4G/5G deployment, estimating about 72,000 additional addressable tenancies through 2040. It maintained planned 2026 shareholder distributions of $76 million while reducing leverage to 3.4 times.

Helios Towers LON: HTWS reported record tenancy additions in the first half of 2026 and raised its full-year outlook, citing accelerating customer investment in network coverage, capacity and new mobile technologies across its African and Middle Eastern markets.

The company added more than 2,500 tenancies in the first half, including more than 500 new sites, lifting its tenancy ratio by 0.2 times year over year to 2.3 tenants per site. Management said the order pipeline remained strong and that demand was already building for 2027.

Revenue rose 11% year over year to $237 million, while adjusted EBITDA increased 14%. Recurring free cash flow rose 52%, and return on invested capital increased by 0.8 percentage points, according to the company. Helios Towers said tenancy additions accounted for seven percentage points of revenue growth and 12 percentage points of EBITDA growth.

Guidance Raised as Demand Builds

Helios Towers raised its 2026 tenancy-addition target to 3,500 to 4,000, representing expected growth of 10% to 12% from the prior year. The company had added 2,511 tenancies in the first six months, nearly matching its record 2,538 organic tenancy additions for all of 2025.

Group CFO Manjit Dhillon said the latest upgrade included an additional 500 tenancies, split evenly between 250 new sites and 250 co-locations. The incremental sites are expected to be rolled out mainly during the latter part of the year, contributing roughly $5 million of EBITDA in 2026 and more than $10 million on an annualized basis from 2027 onward.

• Adjusted EBITDA guidance was raised to $520 million to $535 million.
• Recurring free cash flow guidance was raised to $220 million to $235 million.
• Discretionary capital expenditure guidance increased to $215 million to $245 million to fund additional growth.
• Non-discretionary capital expenditure guidance remained unchanged at $50 million.

Dhillon said the company spent $115 million in total capital expenditure during the first half, including $102 million of discretionary investment. Helios Towers said its organic investments in co-locations, operating-cost initiatives and selective new builds generate blended returns on invested capital of more than 30%.

Balance Sheet and Shareholder Returns

Net leverage declined by 0.4 times year over year to 3.4 times. Helios Towers said it had reduced its blended cost of debt to 6.7% and maintained an average debt maturity of about four years. It also secured a $250 million undrawn term loan to provide flexibility around the potential maturity of its convertible bond in March 2027.

The company said it had more than $500 million of available liquidity across cash balances and undrawn debt facilities.

Helios Towers has repurchased $34 million of shares so far in 2026 and $58 million cumulatively since its buyback program began in November 2025. It also announced its inaugural interim dividend of GBP0.006 per share, totaling $8 million. The company expects to pay $25 million in dividends for the full year, subject to customary approvals.

Management said its planned shareholder distributions of $76 million for 2026 were unchanged despite the increase in growth capital spending. Under its IMPACT 2030 framework, Helios Towers intends to prioritize high-return organic investment, balance-sheet strengthening and shareholder distributions, with a target of more than $400 million in cumulative shareholder returns through 2030.

Long-Term Network Investment Opportunity

The company used the call to outline its view of the long-term mobile-infrastructure opportunity in its nine markets. Management said mobile data consumption in those markets had increased sixfold over the past five years and is forecast to rise a further 12 times by 2040, compared with a projected sevenfold increase globally.

Helios Towers estimates that its addressable organic market includes about 72,000 additional tenancies through 2040, roughly twice the size of its current footprint. The company pointed to projected regional growth of about 600 million people, 800 million additional mobile subscribers and approximately 1 billion more smartphone devices between 2025 and 2040.

Chief Commercial Officer Sainesh Vallabh said social-media adoption across the company’s footprint had grown 18% year over year, compared with 4% in the rest of the world, while video traffic had increased 14%. He said mobile operators had collectively increased capital expenditure by more than 33% since 2023 as subscriber numbers and average revenue per user grew.

Management said new-build demand is primarily tied to suburban expansion, urban infill, added capacity and the deployment of technologies such as 4G and 5G. The company highlighted rapid urbanization in African cities including Dar es Salaam and Kinshasa as a driver of future network densification.

Satellite Seen as Complementary

Senior Technical Advisor Marcus Weldon said terrestrial networks would continue to carry the vast majority of mobile traffic because their smaller coverage areas allow spectrum capacity to be concentrated among fewer users. Helios Towers estimates terrestrial infrastructure will carry 97% of data demand in 2040.

Weldon and Chief Technology and Digital Officer Allan Fairbairn described satellite connectivity as complementary rather than competitive with terrestrial tower networks. Satellites can provide direct-to-device coverage in sparsely populated regions and can serve as backhaul for tower sites where fiber and microwave connections are impractical, they said.

Fairbairn cited a remote tower in Madagascar where satellite backhaul links the site to an operator’s wider network while the tower provides radio coverage and capacity to surrounding communities. He said Helios Towers plans to deploy satellite backhaul at a small number of sites across the group this year.

The company ended the call by emphasizing that its $5.9 billion of contracted future revenue, with an average remaining initial contract life of 6.5 years, provides a base for continued investment and growth.

About Helios Towers (LON:HTWS)

Helios Towers is a leading independent telecommunications infrastructure company, having established one of the most extensive tower portfolios across Africa and the Middle East. It builds, owns and operates telecom passive infrastructure, providing services to mobile network operators. Helios Towers owns and operates telecommunication tower sites in Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, South Africa, Senegal, Madagascar, Malawi and Oman. Helios Towers pioneered the model in Africa of buying towers that were held by single operators and providing services utilising the tower infrastructure to the seller and other operators.

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