Telco tower company Helios Towers reported revenue growth of eight percent for the full 2025 financial year.

Helios, which operates close to 15,000 towers across nine markets, said the growth was driven by an increase in tenancy ratio across its sites.

The company's tenancy ratio (the number of tenants operating at each site) climbed to 2.17 last year, up from 2.05 the year before.

In total, Helios increased its tenant numbers by 2,538 in 2025, up nine percent to 31,944.

"We delivered record tenancy additions and continued to focus relentlessly on customer experience excellence, resulting in strong financial performance. We were delighted to achieve our 2.2x tenancy ratio target one year ahead of plan, underlining the quality of our markets and our operational capability," said Tom Greenwood, Helios Towers CEO.

That target had previously been outlined by Sainesh Vallabh, group commercial director and regional CEO for Southern Africa, Helios Towers, to DCD, noting that the company was focusing heavily on colocating its infrastructure.

Helios owns and operates more than 14,000 towers across nine markets, including Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Brazzaville, Ghana, South Africa, Senegal, Madagascar, and Malawi.

The company is now aiming to execute its new five-year strategy, dubbed Impact 2030, which aims to increase tenants per tower to 2.5 by 2030 during Helios' next five year cycle.

During Helios' earnings call, Greenwood acknowledged that most of the markets the company operates in have focused on 2G, 3G, and 4G connectivity in recent years, with a particular push on the latter.

The next five years will see more 5G opportunities, he said.

"Some of the markets have now started 5G, and the ones that haven’t, we expect to probably in the next two years," said Greenwood. "As we look at this five-year 2030 Impact 2030 strategy, you know, a big part of that is the 5G cycle for most of our markets, which we’re really excited about, and we’re already working with our key customers in terms of planning that, and really supporting them in terms of the densification required for that."

When asked if Helios will explore M&A opportunities, Manish Dhillon, chief financial officer, said it's not a key priority for the business.

"M&A is lower down in the priority rankings. We don’t need to do M&A to get growth. We have more than enough of it in our markets," he said.

Building the infrastructure in preparation of population boom

Dhillon highlighted opportunities for the future to serve Africa's forecasted population boom.

At present, the continent's population is estimated to be just shy of 1.6 billion. By 2050, estimates suggest this will soar to 2.5 billion.

"Those people will want to be connected and want to use the mobile, and so that means your addressable market is always growing," Dhillon told DCD at the MWC 2026 conference, held in Barcelona earlier this month. "You need to develop the infrastructure and the networks to make sure you can facilitate that."

He reiterated Helios' desire to push colocation opportunities, noting that AI will also generate opportunities at its sites. Dhillon notes that this includes the usage of climate data, which will monitor weather conditions across Helios' portfolio of towers, potentially warning of any issues such as flooding or high winds.

"No towerco really wants to build for one tenant, and no MNO will arguably want that either, because it's the highest cost to do so. If you're looking to try and maximize that fixed cost, you want to try to maximize multiple companies," added Dhillon.