Good day. And welcome to the IHS Holding Limited Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Results Call for the three-month and full year periods ended December 31, 2024. Please note that today’s conference is being webcast and recorded [Operator Instructions] At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Robert Berg. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator. Thanks to everyone for joining the call today. I'm Robert Berg, Head of Investor Relations here at IHS. With me today are Sam Darwish, our Chairman and CEO; and Steve Howden, our CFO. This morning, we filed our annual report and Form 20-F for the full year ended December 31, 2024 with the SEC, which can also be found on the Investor Relations section of our Web site and issued at related earnings release, presentation and supplemental deck. These are the consolidated results of IHS Holding Limited, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol IHS, and which comprises the entirety of the Group's operations. Before we discuss the results, I would like to draw your attention to disclaimer set out at the beginning of the presentation on Slide 2, which should be read in full along with a cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements set out in our earnings release and 20-F filed as well today. In particular, the information to be discussed may contain forward-looking statements which, by their nature, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors, some of which are beyond our control that are difficult to predict and others which may cause actual results, performance or achievements or industry results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements or industry results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including those discussed in the risk factors section of our Form 20-F filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our other filings with the SEC. We'll also refer to non-IFRS measures, including adjusted EBITDA that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business and ALFCF, which we view as important in assessing the liquidity of our business. A reconciliation of non-IFRS metrics to the nearest IFRS metrics can be found in our earnings presentation, which is available on the investor relations section of our Web site. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Sam Darwish, our Chairman and CEO.

Thanks, Robert. And welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings results call. We're reporting a strong performance in 2024, ending the year on a high with a strong Q4. Our key metrics, revenue, adjusted EBITDA and ALFCF, all coming in ahead of our guidance while CapEx was below expectations. And we saw a drop in our consolidated net leverage ratio. Our positive momentum reflects the continued strong secular trends we are seeing across our business, a more stable macroeconomic environment, strong operational focus, as well as the significant commercial and financial progress we have made during 2024 as part of our ongoing strategic review. I'll go into more details on these important drivers on the next slide. Looking at our revenue, we saw 48% organic growth, driven by 6.5% constant currency growth, as well as a significant benefit from our ForEx resets and power indexation, which play a vital role in helping to offset the currency devaluation we faced during the year. As you can see from the slide, this was above our guidance range and was aided by 9.2% constant currency growth in the fourth quarter 2024 compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, driven by growth in revenue from co-location, lease amendments and new sites. We continue to benefit from strong structural trends with growth underpinned by continued 5G deployment across our markets and importantly macroeconomic stabilization within our largest market Nigeria. Turning to profitability. Our adjusted EBITDA reached $928 million in 2024 with a margin of 54.3%, up 100 basis points compared to 2023. Again, this came in ahead of our guidance on the back of strong momentum in Q4 where we achieved a 56.3% margin. This performance against the backdrop of the macroeconomic headwinds we have been navigating highlights the resilience of…

Thanks, Sam. And hello, everyone. Turning to Slide 10, here we show our full year '24 and fourth quarter 2024 performance. Our results came in better-than-expected against a challenging but improving macroeconomic environment in Nigeria where we saw higher levels of stability in the latter part of the year. As we look at the results, please note the year-over-year comparisons are in some cases impacted by the Kuwait disposal that closed in December 2024 and we've called these out where relevant. In terms of the results, both towers and tenants are down approximately 2% and 1% respectively year-over-year while lease amendments increased by high single digit percentages. Both tower and tenant figures would have grown year-on-year in the absence of the Kuwait disposal. On a reported basis, in the fourth quarter, revenue declined by approximately 14% year-on-year, impacted by the very different FX environment versus the fourth quarter of 2023 and the new financial terms with MTN Nigeria but increased 4.2% compared to the third quarter of 2024. As a reminder, naira average FX rate to the dollar was NGN815 in the fourth quarter of 2023 and was NGN1,629 in the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA was down 10% year-on-year but adjusted EBITDA margin was up 250 basis points, reflecting our continued cost control and the resilience of our financial model. Fourth quarter 2024 adjusted EBITDA was in line with third quarter adjusted EBITDA. Meanwhile, ALFCF declined by almost 9%, impacted by similar factors affecting revenue and adjusted EBITDA in addition to the higher interest cost following our bond refinancing in November. Fourth quarter 2024 ALFCF increased again though by 23% versus third quarter 2024 ALFCF. Our level of CapEx investment decreased by 37% in the quarter and 56% for the year, largely driven by the pullback in CapEx…

[Operator Instructions] We now begin the Q&A session. Our first question for today comes from Richard Choe of JPMorgan.

I wanted to get an update on the Airtel new tenancies in Nigeria, how that's going so far and how much of that is planned for this year?

So yes, the Airtel contract is progressing. We've got quite a bit done in the second half of 2024 and that never got that comes through in 2025 and into 2026. So we haven't kind of given specific guidance around numbers but that contract is flowing nicely. And as a reminder, most of that's colocation and 5G lease amendments. There is a little bit of BTS, a handful of sites in 2025 and 2026 but most of it's colocation lease amendments.

And then in talking about the potential for stock buybacks and dividend, is there a preference? And how should we think about the timing of that evolving this year?

I mean, I think that continues to be under evaluation. And what we have said for a little while is that we're in the process of disposing of $500 million to $1 billion of assets that's ongoing and that's the first target. We want to get that done. Kuwait disposal was obviously a first step along that path and more work to do there. And then once we've got a bit further into that disposal program then we'll look to reassess that option. We've said that the first amounts will primarily be reduced by reducing debt and that remains the case. But then we are obviously starting to think through what a share buyback and dividend program could look like. As a reminder, we did -- we have had a small share buyback program in place. We didn't utilize it for most of 2024 given we were under the strategic review. And so there is a history of doing that. But there's no real preference at this point between those eventual capital allocation decisions between share buyback and dividend. We'll evaluate that over the coming months and quarters.

I do want to add something on the first question that you had on Airtel in Nigeria. Look, last year was a very tough year for everyone. But as we're seeing now Nigeria fighting back helped by the fact that it was maybe not tied or affected by the US tariff, new tariff policies, its currency has increased by 7% since the November elections. It's probably the top performing currency in the world at the moment. Stock markets in Nigeria are delivering 4% growth in dollar terms since the beginning of this year better than many bigger markets. Inflation is subsiding. So we've seen the carriers beginning to be more bullish about their CapEx plan, both carriers have announced that. So we are extremely bullish about Nigeria at the moment, about the rollouts of both MTN and Airtel and others and you can see that in our numbers and in our guidance.

One follow-up to that, Sam. Do you expect the carriers -- because of the new tariffs to implement network spending this year that will help IHS or is that more of a 2026 event?

The what, I didn't get the question.

Well, the spending from the new tariffs by MTN and Airtel and other carriers, do you think that's an impact for 2025 or more for 2026?

I believe it will be partly in 2025. It has to be partly in 2025, because several of -- they have service, quality of service and rollout, soft rollout obligations. In in my view, it wasn't really public. But I do believe that the government would like to see better quality of service, better rollout in certain areas, especially rural areas. I do think, it's not crystal clear at the moment, but I do think that, we will see a positive impact this year also.

Our next question comes from Jim Schneider of Goldman Sachs.

Just on the strategic review, you've obviously made very good progress on some of the portfolio optimization activities already. You're already within the high end maybe of your target leverage range. So maybe could you characterize how much more is there to go in terms of portfolio optimization? Are we more than halfway done here or are we even closer to that, to the end of that process? And then, maybe you've been very clear about your desire to do either share backs and/or dividend policy. But can you maybe talk about your appetite for incremental acquisitions of assets to maybe bolster your portfolio in areas where you already have a lot of scale?

So in terms of the first part, we've been pretty public and pretty consistent since May of last year that we were targeting $500 million to $1 billion of asset disposals. We've done one around $230 million for Kuwait. So that indicates we're not done yet. We've managed to get through a significant amount of work and lots of progress in other areas as well. Last week, as you heard Sam talked about earlier in the earnings call around the commercial side, the operational side. Specifically, in relation to balance sheet, yes, we're now starting to see all of that cash flow generation and disposals come to fruition in reducing debt, reducing leverage. We're down at 3.7 times now. And I'll just make clear again, reiterate, our target range is 3 times to 4 times leverage but we do expect to be in the bottom half of that range by the end of 2025, that's without any further disposals. So obviously, one would assume that future disposals would supplement that positively as well. So that's kind of where we are on that piece. In relation to wider capital allocation decisions, look, acquisitions are not on the agenda at this point in time. We're very focused on increasing cash flow generation, utilizing that cash for debt paydown and more focused around potential share buybacks and dividend in due course before we think again about acquisitions. But as we've said, we keep evaluating that through the course of the year. We're very pleased with where things have come operational in the business and also macroeconomically starting to look better and better in a variety of markets. So we'll keep that under evaluation. But yes, M&A is probably at the end of the queue at the moment.

And then in the answer to the prior question, Sam, I think you referenced the desire for MTN and other carriers in Nigeria, maybe start increasing CapEx spending as early as the end of this year and into next year. Can you maybe talk about maybe the one or two other markets where you see the most positive macro indicators and specific signals from carriers outside of Nigeria where they might start to increase CapEx?

I'll take that, and Sam, you can jump in as well. We're continuing to see decent momentum across a variety of our African markets. They don't add up to as much as a big market like Nigeria but we're continuing to see positive momentum, the Francophone markets, Cameroon and Cote D'Ivoire, with leasing activity, be it colocation and the want for new build sites, et cetera. So there's plenty going on in Francophone Africa. South Africa continues to sort of add incrementally. And even Brazil, Brazil's had a bit more macroeconomic softness in the last quarter or two. But even there, we're seeing some fundamental dynamics have shifted in the last six to 12 months in that market, which hopefully lead to a much more positive near term outlook. We've been going through our workings with Oi and as of some of the other telcos as well and that's kind of coming to a conclusion now. And what we're seeing is plenty of the carriers are looking at substantial 5G rollout. So although, Brazil and LatAm has been a bit softer in quarters, we can see where it could go and it's a positive longer term picture. Sam, I don't know if you want to add anything.

I think, just to reiterate that we really believe Africa could be a direct beneficiary of the impending tariff wars that we're seeing happening between more markets that are integrated with US economy, because largely Africa is not integrated in terms of manufacturing or other large kind of like economic sectors. So we're seeing that. We're seeing the impact of many of these policies that have or many of the issues that we've seen, the macro issues that we've seen kind of like coming back out of it. So we're extremely bullish and we believe the carriers will indeed increase their CapEx. The recent announcement indicated they are more bullish. It's more -- they're beginning to increase. So we expect to see much more in the coming few months.

Our next question comes from Michael Rollins of Citi.

So first, thank you for adding into the revenue bridge, the constant currency presentation disclosures. I'm curious, if you could share those constant currency performance metrics by region for 2024 and compare what those expectations are within the guidance by segment for 2025?

You're welcome. I know it's something that you're after so we added into our disclosures. I also know you like more and more. We haven't put it in, in terms of the forward looking guidance for the year, that's something that we can maybe think through for future periods. But hopefully, it's helpful for people to see. As we break down the various components of our growth, there's obviously quite a lot of moving parts, especially given we have FX resets and the impact of FX given our emerging market currency exposure. So we tried to simplify all that. It doesn't actually change the fundamental presentation of what we've shown to people before in the revenue bridges but obviously, it just compartmentalizes elements stripping out that FX. So we haven't given it for forward looking. Let us think through that as to whether that's something we could add in future. I don't see why not.

And maybe then just in the aggregate level. So if you look at what's implied in that 12% at the midpoint, are there some indications that you can give us on like how much is coming from colocation and lease amendments in aggregate for the portfolio versus your escalators or other components of the bridge just to center around where the growth is coming from for the business in '25 as it would compare to full year '24?

So if you look at -- if you look on our earnings presentation on Slide 12, you see the FY24 bridge and we just use that as a guide. So CPI for 2025 will be a little bit down, not too much down, but a little bit down versus that as we see inflation rates moderating. New sites, roughly similar. Colocation will be up versus that. New lease amendments and fiber, similar, maybe a little bit less but certainly new colocations up. And then other is really sort of the noise and that will be next to zero at this point in time and that's really 2023 items that are flushing out in the comparables. So yes, not too dissimilar but a bit more focused on colocations is what we are forecasting and seeing in the markets.

And I apologize if I missed this in the commentary. On Slide 19, the CapEx range of $260 million to $290 million. How much of that is recurring CapEx that's included in the ALFCF definition and how much of that is related to CapEx?

It's about a third, about a third of that CapEx is maintenance, which gets you to sort of within sort of ranges midpoint is about $85 million, $90 million of maintenance CapEx. And if you remember from the end of last year, we've been guiding sort of $24 million to $25 million per quarter of maintenance CapEx. We've obviously disposed of the business and some other work we've been doing. So we're trending a little bit lower than that about $22 million, $23 million a quarter at this point in time for maintenance CapEx.

And just the last question. As you think about your different markets, industry structure, possible consolidations, is there anything that you want to flag for us that's left in terms of possible churn in the business over the next few years that we all should be mindful of?

So I think everybody is aware of the MTN Nigeria piece, which is playing out through the course of 2025, that was well signposted last year. But other than that, no, we're not seeing anything else. We're seeing positive leasing trend across all major markets. So yes, more of a positive picture, to be honest.

Mike, at the moment, all our contracts are renewed into the 2030s. At the moment, we've got more than $12 billion or $13 billion deals of contracted revenue. But our exposure to Oi in Brazil at the moment is less than 1%, if any. So we feel extremely confident and comfortable with where we stand.

Our next question comes from Gustavo Campos of Jefferies.

Yes, congratulations on the results and thank you very much for the presentation and all the details. My first question is, again, to follow-up on disposals. I just wanted some confirmation if you are still going adhere to your previous $0.5 billion to $1 billion target for asset sales? And as far as your portfolio selection for these asset sales, what will be the broader criteria, any specific geographies or types of assets that you are targeting here? Any color on that would be very helpful.

The $500 million to $1 billion range is still the target. So that's fairly straightforward. We're working hard on that. And in terms of portfolio selection or market selection, we've also said historically that it could include things like minority stakes, for example. So we weren't sort of ruling out a number of different value realization opportunities. We haven't been specific on market. Clearly, we're looking to highlight the value of IHS versus its share price performance. So we are looking at a number of different opportunities and we'll keep people updated. We don't want to be negotiating these transactions in the public domain. So you'd appreciate it we're not going to give too much information on live discussions.

I may add also to [Multiple Speakers] although, at the end of the day, the reason we are conducting the strategic review is that we believe that we remain undervalued. We have sold a couple of asset portfolios at almost 3 times the multiples we are given by the public markets. I mean Kuwait sold for 14.2 times. We're at the moment at roughly 5 more or less. So we believe that is an important thing that I want to talk about there. Nigeria is coming back. Things are changing. And that's why I think it's very important to stay current and keep recalibrating our view, taking into account all the new positive reality that we are seeing. Also, if I may add, our trade [Multiple Speakers] performance in terms of cash flow generation has materially improved in the last year as we are introducing new ways, new operating methods, new operating procedures, many of which are using artificial intelligence in the way we distribute diesel and then the way we plan our operations on size. And this has had also a very positive impact on our cash flow generation. So we're comfortable where things are at the moment. But, yes, to Steve's point, we have continued with what we have promised the market.

And if you mind, if I just clarify here. Is this -- $0.5 billion to $1 billion target, is this enterprise value or is this like a consideration that you're targeting to receive?

Yes, proceeds to receive.

My second question would be around -- you were expecting to generate more positive free cash flow and potentially like deleverage more to the bottom half of your target, as you mentioned. Would you have, by chance, like a total debt target that you are expecting to be the end of the year? And as far as -- is there like -- are you expecting to like have a tender offer on your bonds, any specific maturities or part of your capital structure that you're planning to target?

No specific debt number in mind other than making sure that the leverage is down. That will obviously depend a little bit on the activity through the course of the year, including potential future M&A disposals as we've discussed. But we've been clear we want to get the leverage down to the bottom end of our target range. So that's the goal. In terms of where excess cash gets utilized, obviously, bonds are a significant part of our capital structure. I obviously wouldn't want to say anything to do with tender offers or anything like that. But there's a number of bonds that are either in call periods or coming into call periods, which is obviously an important consideration. We also have other debt in the structure outside of the bonds, which we could consider utilizing excess cash for. So we have a number of different options available to us to utilize cash as it comes through to us.

And my last question would be on working capital. We saw around $200 million in receivables outflows in fiscal year 2024, although, there was like a mature improvement in the fourth quarter. What are your expectations for 2025? Should we see like similar outflow pressure or are you expecting an improvement with -- given your updates on your commercial agreements, et cetera? That's my last question.

So as you pointed out, so there's significant improvement in Q4 with a pretty material work capital inflow in quarter four, which has reversed the trend. So the outflows have been slowing through the course of 2024 and then now back in positive territory in Q4. So I expect some continued momentum in that early part of the year and we're not forecasting particular working capital outflows in 2025 at all. There will always be a little bit of movement between the quarters. But from a total 2025 perspective, no working capital outflow forecast.

So you're -- I mean, just to clarify, your expectations to be roughly working capital neutral in 2025?

Flat to positive, yes.

Our next question comes from Stella Cridge of Barclays.

I wonder if I could just ask about Rwanda. So you were touching before on some of the outlook for some of your markets. I mean, after this -- these recent developments in DRC, there's been a little bit of political pressure on Rwanda. I was just wondering if there's anything you were monitoring there in terms of risk to the business, perhaps around currency, or upstreaming or anything that would be relevant for you, that would be great?

No, nothing too untoward, to be honest. Obviously, we're monitoring that as the sort of geopolitical situation. But no impact on our business, either operationally, financially, from an FX perspective, et cetera. So no, really watching. But no, nothing untoward, no impact on the business.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of the IHS Holding Limited fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings results call. Should you have any questions, please contact the investor relations team by the email address, investorrelations@ihstowers.com. The management team thank you for your participant today and wish you a good day. Thank you.