Mobile tower operator Helios Towers is embarking on a new five-year strategy that was unveiled at its Capital Markets Day in November 2025, and includes a new tenancy ratio target and capital allocation policy, among other aspects.
One of the key goals of the IMPACT 2030 plan will be to achieve a group tenancy ratio of over 2.5 occupants per site (2.5x) in 2030. The aim under the previous five-year strategy was to reach a tenancy ratio of 2.2x in 2026, but this was effectively achieved by the end of 2025 when rounding up the actual figure of 2.17, the company said. In East and West Africa, and Central and Southern Africa, Helios reported 2.23x and 2.31x respectively.
UK-based Helios has focused on the Middle East and Africa with the lofty goals of helping drive mobile communications growth and “contributing to social and economic development,” as the towerco says. It is currently present in eight markets in Africa (Congo Brazzaville, DRC, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania) and one in the Middle East (Oman).
Following a period of expansion from 2020 to 2022, when it doubled the number of towers, the towerco has focused more on improving tenancy ratios in order to increase the utilization of towers, and that strategy is set to continue. At the end of 2025, the number of sites was 14,746, up from 14,325 a year previously.
Chief financial officer Manjit Dhillon confirmed that M&A is at the “lower end of our priority rankings at the moment … We’ve really got a very diversified, well-structured portfolio … and we don’t need to go further afield.”
Dhillon noted that there is plenty of growth to be had in the eight markets as mobile network operators continue to densify and expand their mobile networks to meet growing demand. In addition, MNOs will take increasingly more space as they add 4G and eventually 5G network equipment to the sites.
“Africa and Middle East will be the most populous place on the planet by the end of the century. The growth of that market is really phenomenal. I think it’s something like a billion more people will be in that market by 2050. It’s huge. And of that billion it’s forecast there is going to be 800 million new mobile subscribers … when you’ve got that kind of momentum in terms of mobile subscribers, you’ve got to improve the network capacity,” Dhillon said.
Because of its market focus, Helios certainly faces different challenges to towercos in more developed markets where growth is much slower. Compared to towercos in Europe and the US, “we’re probably in the early to mid 2000s,” Dhillon said.
Power to the towers
Owing to the unreliability of energy grids in some of its markets, Helios has also become something of an expert in energy supply and network resilience.
“One of our key products we provide is power,” Dhillon said. “We’re almost a tower- and powerco” that is able to provide back up for 24 hours at a stretch.
“Either the grid doesn’t work 24 hours, or in certain locations, they don’t have a grid at all. So you’ve got to think about that kind of temporary power management solution on a site-specific basis. So that will be solar panels, batteries, diesel generators where required, all supplementing the overall power system. So we are very much focused on that power piece,” he said.
In the meantime, Helios is also looking at digital solutions that it “can utilize internally to make ourselves more efficient, and we’ll look to provide those to the customer, because ultimately, if we can provide a better product to the customer, they’ll roll out more so there’s always that kind of self-fulfilling cycle,” Dhillon said
These solutions include digital twins, with the aim of providing more proactive site management that focuses on preventative maintenance. Although Helios is “still in the earlier stages” here, it ultimately aims to have digital twins of all sites.
Dhillon also noted that “every single site has remote monitoring. These things are pinging hundreds of data points every single day, every single hour. So the quantity of data that we and other companies are all getting is just growing exponentially. You’ve got to make sure that you have a very, very efficient and accurate digital tool that’s going to be able to ingest all of that, because otherwise you’re going to drown in the data.”
In 2025, Helios reported a +0.12x rise in its tenancy ratio from 2.05x in 2024 to 2.17x. The number of tenancies increased by 9% to 31,944. Adjusted EBITDA rose 12% to $471 million. Revenue grew by 7.8% to $854.1 million.
In 2026, the company is expecting adjusted EBITDA of $510 million–$525 million. According to a statement from CEO Tom Greenwood, “we look ahead to a strong year in 2026, which is seeing strong structural demand trends, and guidance demonstrating meaningful progress towards our IMPACT 2030 targets, with continued growth, cash flow generation and shareholder distributions, which have already begun.”
source : www.lightreading.com
