By Alessandro Parodi
(Reuters) -Helios Towers forecast on Thursday its adjusted core earnings would continue to rise in 2025, as 5G and 4G adoption in Africa and the Middle East leads to growing numbers of tenants using towers in its key markets.
The British-based firm still plans to start returning capital to shareholders in 2026, its Chief Executive Tom Greenwood said.
“We’ll be engaging with investors over the coming months to gather all the thoughts on that and look to embed that in an updated plan”, Greenwood told Reuters.
He added that the company should bring its leverage – its net debt to core profit ratio – from around 4 now to about 3 in 2026, a threshold which in November he identified as a necessary step before paying out dividends.
Helios Towers said it expected 2025 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to rise to between $460 million and $470 million this year after they grew by 14% to $421 million in 2024.
Analysts had in average expected them to be $420.7 million, in a consensus provided by the company.
Helios Towers “continues to deliver across its metrics,” Jefferies said in a note.
The number of tenants, or operators using the group’s tower infrastructure, grew by 9% to 29,406 in the year, helped by growth in Tanzania and Oman, compared with analyst estimates of 29,379.
The tower company builds, owns and operates infrastructure for mobile network operators in Africa and the Middle East, a region where data consumption and cellphone users have shown the highest penetration growth worldwide, according to the company.
Its customers include Airtel Africa, Vodafone, Orange and Axian, with its biggest markets the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Tanzania and Oman.
Greenwood said that he does not expect instability in the DRC to affect phone services, which he sees as essential for people and humanitarian organizations.
“We’ve operated in DRC for 15 years, so we’re very experienced at this”, he said.
(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi in Gdansk, editing by Tomasz Janowski)
