IHS Holding Limited Ordinary Shares

Good day and welcome to the IHS Holding Limited third quarter 2025 earning results call for the three-month period ended September 30th, 2025. Please note that today's conference is being webcast and recorded. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your telephone keypad at any time. 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 unaudited, condensed, consolidated interim financial statements for the three-month and nine-month periods ended September 30th, 2025 with the SEC, which can now be found on the investor relations section of our website, and issued a relating 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 the disclaimer set out at the beginning of the presentation on slide 2, which should be read in full along with the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements set out in our earnings release and 6K filed as well today. In particular, the information to be discussed may contain forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that are difficult to predict and that may be beyond our control, including those discussed in the risk factors section of our Form 20F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our other filings with the SEC. as a result actual results performance or achievements or industry results may be materially different from any future results performance or achievements or industry results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements we'll also refer to non-ifrs measures including adjusted ebitda that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business ALFCF that we view as important in assessing the liquidity of our business and Consolidated Net Leverage Ratio that we view as important in managing the capital resources 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 website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Sam Darwish, our chairman and CEO.

Thanks, Rob. Good morning everyone and welcome to our third quarter 2025 earnings results call. I'm pleased to report that we've delivered another quarter of strong results out of expectations with strong performance across all our key metrics revenue adjusted EBITDA and ALFCF while at the same time continuing to deliver our balance sheet. This performance again underscores the effectiveness of our strategy. which is centered on driving organic growth, enhancing efficiency through continued cost controls, and maximizing cash flow generation. The operating environment is also providing a tailwind, particularly from favorable foreign exchange movements, but also from a strong fundamental telecom market performance, especially in Nigeria and Brazil. Given this strong year-to-date performance, we are again raising our full-year 2025 outlook for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and ALFCF. Steve will take you through the details shortly, but the headline is clear. Our top-line momentum is strong, our focus on profitability is yielding results, our cash generation is accelerating, and we continue to deliver the balance sheet as planned. Let me walk you through the quarters highlights, which saw our strongest quarterly financial performance since 2023. Despite a large devaluation in quarter 124. And with us selling our Kuwait and Peru businesses over that period. Revenue came at 455M dollars ahead of plan. with constant currency revenue growth of almost 9% driven by CPI escalators, co-location, lease amendments, and new sites. Adjusted EBITDA came at $261 million with a margin of 57.5%, an increase of over 6% reflecting our ongoing commitment to cost control and driving profitability. ALFCF came at $158 million A very strong result driven by targeted actions to enhance cash generation. And total capex came at 77M dollars. Up 16% year on year, reflecting the quarterly phasing of capex predominantly in Nigeria. During the 3rd quarter, we also continue to advance our deleveraging efforts. reducing our consolidated net leverage ratio to 3.3 times, down 0.6 times year on year, and well within our three to four times target range. This improvement has been further supported by the initial $175 million of proceeds received from the Rwanda disposal shortly after quarter end. Liquidity remains strong, over 950 million dollars again excluding the Rwanda proceeds received in October which will take it to well over a billion dollars so looking ahead our priorities remain clear first maintain our focus on reducing debt while driving continued organic growth across the business Second, remain disciplined in how we allocate capital and as we near the lower end of our leverage target, consider introducing dividends and or share buybacks. Third, accelerate efficiency gains by integrating more technology and AI into our operations. Fourth, proactively identify and pursue the most attractive organic growth opportunities in response to strong customer demand, prioritizing opportunities with the highest returns. And finally, further disposal activity remains under consideration, and we are continuing to assess additional value creative disposal opportunities. We remain excited by the substantial opportunities for organic growth across our markets, especially Brazil and Nigeria. Our expanded partnership with TIM in Brazil, up to 3,000 new sites, highlights how well positioned we are to take advantage of the ongoing rollout of 5G within our footprint. In Nigeria, carrier tariff hikes and strengthening Naira are underpinning our growth story. With robust demand across our footprint, we're set for sustained growth and strong returns. As we move forward, we'll stay disciplined, building the business, boosting free cash flow, and strengthening the balance sheet, all with a clear focus on delivering shareholder value while we continue to grow. With this in mind, we expect to share a comprehensive update on our capital allocation priorities at the full year 2025 results. So we look forward to sharing that with you soon. And with that, I'll hand it over to Steve.