Table of Contents
A year ago IHS Towers was sitting on a loss of $1.64 billion. Twelve months later, Sam Darwish's tower company has turned that around entirely.
IHS Towers, the communications infrastructure company Darwish co-founded in Nigeria in 2001, posted a full-year profit of $126.8 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, swinging sharply from the prior year's loss. Revenue from continuing operations rose 3.6 percent to $1.58 billion, adjusted EBITDA climbed 9 percent to just over $1 billion, and cash from operations jumped 26.7 percent to $983 million. Adjusted levered free cash flow grew 47.3 percent to $448.1 million.
Darwish called it a year of "solid revenue growth and profitability," describing the results as a reflection of disciplined execution and sustained commercial momentum across the company's key African markets.
The headline numbers, however, came with a softer note at the year's end. The fourth quarter was subdued, with revenue from continuing operations up just 1.2 percent to $397.8 million and adjusted EBITDA rising 1.4 percent to $249.8 million. Operating cash flow and adjusted levered free cash flow both declined year on year in the quarter, and the quarterly loss widened to $107.7 million from $83.5 million in the same period of 2024.
That late-year pressure did little to overshadow what the full-year results represent: a company that has meaningfully stabilized after years of currency headwinds, most acutely from the depreciation of the Nigerian naira, which had hammered IHS's dollar-reported earnings in 2023 and 2024. The relative stabilization of the naira in 2025 gave the company room to demonstrate the underlying strength of its tower network.
Much of that stabilization now becomes someone else's story to tell. In February, MTN Group announced a proposed acquisition of IHS Towers at an enterprise value of $6.2 billion, with IHS shareholders set to receive $8.50 per ordinary share in cash, representing a 36 percent premium to the company's 52-week volume-weighted average price. Upon completion, IHS Towers will delist from the New York Stock Exchange.
Darwish framed the deal as a natural progression. "The proposed sale of IHS Towers to MTN represents the next step in our long-standing partnership with MTN," he said. "The transaction brings together Africa's largest mobile network operator with one of the continent's leading digital infrastructure platforms."
IHS is not providing full-year 2026 financial guidance in light of the pending transaction. Completion is subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals and remains conditional on IHS successfully divesting its Latin American tower assets and fiber operations, both announced in February.
Darwish built IHS from a single-country startup into one of the world's largest independent tower operators, with nearly 29,000 towers across Africa. The MTN deal, if completed, ends that chapter and begins another.
