IHS Towers’ Nigeria delivered a 14.5 per cent increase in reported revenue in the second quarter of 2026, but the headline growth conceals a weaker underlying performance that is more relevant to investors assessing the company ahead of its proposed takeover by MTN Group.
Nigeria generated $298.3 million in revenue in the three months ended June, up from $260.4 million a year earlier. But the $37.9 million increase was driven primarily by the stronger naira used to translate the company’s Nigerian earnings into US dollars rather than an expansion of the underlying business.
IHS said Nigerian organic revenue declined by $2.9 million, or 1.1 per cent, despite continued growth in colocation, lease amendments, new sites, escalations and diesel-related revenue.
The decline was driven by customer churn and lower revenue from foreign-exchange resets following the appreciation of the Naira.
The company recorded an average Naira exchange rate of N1,366 to the dollar in the second quarter, compared with N1,581 in the corresponding period of 2025.
The currency movement alone contributed a $40.7 million, or 15.6 per cent, non-core increase to Nigerian revenue.
In other words, the reported increase in dollar revenue was larger than the improvement in the underlying commercial performance.
IHS Towers’ Nigeria Growth Is Being Tested By Customer Churn
The most revealing part of the results is the movement in IHS Towers’ Nigerian tenant base.
The company said Nigerian tenants declined by 2,321 year-on-year. Growth from colocation added 590 tenants and new sites added another nine, but this was more than offset by 2,920 churned tenants.
A significant portion of that churn relates to the restructuring of IHS’s relationship with T2, formerly 9mobile. The company said 2,576 tenants associated with the customer were removed following an updated agreement signed in the third quarter of 2025.
IHS had already disclosed that the 2024 renewal and extension of its agreements with MTN Nigeria resulted in approximately 1,050 sites being vacated as part of the contract renewals.
This is significant because MTN remains IHS Towers’ largest customer in Nigeria.
In August 2024, the two companies renewed and extended all Nigerian tower Master Lease Agreements to December 2032, covering about 13,500 tenancy contracts.
The agreement also changed the commercial structure, including the mix of Naira and dollar-linked payments and the introduction of a diesel-linked component.
The renewal gave IHS long-term revenue visibility, but it also demonstrated that tower economics in Nigeria are increasingly being reshaped around affordability, currency risk and energy costs
The second-quarter results also demonstrate an unusual consequence of Naira appreciation for a dollar-reporting infrastructure company.
IHS reported that movements in the Naira increased Nigerian revenue by $40.7 million and segment Adjusted EBITDA by $22.6 million compared with the second quarter of 2025.
But the same currency appreciation reduced some revenue generated through foreign-exchange reset mechanisms.
This matters because IHS does not simply collect a fixed dollar amount from its Nigerian customers. Its contracts contain different currency and escalation mechanisms designed to share or manage the risks created by inflation, foreign exchange and energy costs.
The 2024 MTN agreement, for instance, introduced a more balanced local and foreign currency structure alongside CPI-linked escalators and a diesel-linked component.
MTN’s Pending Takeover Changes The Investment Story
The results arrive at a particularly important point in IHS Towers’ corporate history.
MTN Group agreed in February to acquire the shares in IHS Towers it does not already own in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $6.2 billion, with shareholders offered $8.50 per share. MTN already owns about 24.7 per cent of IHS.
IHS’s second-quarter report said shareholders subsequently approved the proposed acquisition at an extraordinary general meeting in August, with completion still subject to remaining closing conditions.
The deal is strategically important because MTN is not merely an investor in IHS. It is also one of the company’s largest customers.
MTN has previously said the acquisition would allow it to reintegrate critical tower infrastructure, internalise the margin currently paid to IHS, improve cost predictability and capture value from third-party tenants.
That creates a different lens through which to view the Nigerian numbers.
The 1.1 per cent decline in organic revenue matters to IHS shareholders today, but once MTN takes full control, the economics of the tower portfolio will be considered within a larger telecoms ecosystem rather than solely as the performance of an independent tower company.
For MTN, the attraction is precisely that IHS’s towers do not depend only on MTN.
IHS had 37,672 towers and 55,205 tenants globally at the end of the quarter, with a group colocation rate of 1.47x. Excluding the effects of the Rwanda disposal and T2 churn, the company added 1,079 net new tenants year-on-year.
That third-party revenue base is potentially important to the value proposition of the acquisition.
IHS ended June with $1.09 billion in cash, up sharply from $533.1 million at the end of the second quarter of 2025, helped partly by proceeds from asset disposals.
