IHS Holding Limited (NYSE:IHS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Williams: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Eric Luebchow from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Eric Luebchow: Hi. Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Could you talk about the build-to-suit program a little bit? I just — it sounds like perhaps you are deprioritizing some of the builds in Nigeria. I am just wondering if that has come from higher hurdle rates and the more material increases in cost of capital, you have seen in that market?

Steve Howden: Hi, Eric. Simple answer is yes to the points you raised. We — earlier at the beginning of the year, to be honest, we said to people that Nigeria, whilst has a phenomenal amount of growth left in it as it comes to allocating capital by ourselves, we wanted to allocate capital into Project Green, which was a key initiative, a key project for us, which comes with the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing our scope to emissions over time, but also happens to have a very good financial return profile as well, remember we have been saying that it would be a 30% IRR project. So, yes, we diverted capital from Nigeria BTS into Project Green. So the BTS in Nigeria will be lower this year, for sure. But where we are spending capital and growing the business from a tower count point of view in Brazil.

where we continue to forecast approximately 750 new build sites this year. That program is ramping nicely. It ramped at the end of Q1 and then really has been ramping up through Q2 and onwards. So that remains on track and that’s a part of the business where we want to continue adding to the tower count through building.

Eric Luebchow: Okay. Great. Thanks. And then just one more question, you talked earlier about evaluating some other balance sheet initiatives. So maybe you could give us some color on what you are looking at, whether that’s raising additional naira denominated debt, pushing out maturities beyond 2025, kind of what are you evaluating currently?

Steve Howden: Yeah. We are no different to a lot of companies around the world right now. We continue to monitor very closely our maturity profile. We have a fair bit of time before any meaningful maturities, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t kind of look around and see what’s available, strategize as to whether we can achieve some of our capital structure objectives, which include terming out maturities, but also include can we take advantage of cheaper local currency debt where possible, things like that. So it’s a moving target and something that we actually are always assessing. You will have seen over the last few quarters, we have done a few incremental bits and pieces, whether that’s at the holding level or in Nigeria or elsewhere and we just — we keep that under constant review. So we will keep people updated as and when anything happens, but continuing to monitor all of that and take advantage of things where we can.

Eric Luebchow: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Rollins from Citi. Your line is open.

Michael Rollins: Thanks and good morning. Just want to go back to the question about questions about corporate strategy, capital allocation. Can you share just where maybe some of the tension has come from major shareholders and at the Board? Is it a question of whether or not being a public company with the markets you serve and currency impacts of that and the low float is kind of raising the question of whether being public is the right solution for the company or is it other more maybe tactical decisions or ideas that are the source of attention?