Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Helios Towers H1 2022 results. My name is Nadia, and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Tom Greenwood, CEO of Helios Towers, to begin. Tom, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, Nadia. Welcome everyone today. Great to be speaking to you, and thank you very much for your time. I'm on page two in the presentation. As usual, alongside me, we have Manjit Dhillon, our CFO, and Chris Baker-Sams, our Head of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations. The presentation takes a normal format. I'll take you through some of the key highlights. Manjit will take you through some of the financial detail, and then we'll open up for Q&A at the end. Overall, very pleased to be presenting you our H1 performance highlights here.
I think it's been a really strong start to the year for us, demonstrating both the continued growth and sort of rollouts from mobile operators across our markets, combining that with demonstrating the company's resilience and protection mechanisms embedded within our contracts with some of the uncertain macro environments out there, plus some really good progress on our sustainability strategy. Look, I'm on page five now, which just shows the key highlights. As mentioned, number one, very strong tenancy growth, both organic and inorganic. So far this year, we've delivered, you know, 24% year-over-year site growth, of which 9% is organic and 20% year-over-year tenancy growth.
In terms of the last 12 months, organic additions, so year-over-year organic additions were at 1,767, which for a 12-month period in our business, is fairly strong. In terms of our financial performance, obviously that is showing similar traits to the tenancy performance. Revenue up 25% year-over-year, 12% organic. EBITDA up 19%, 9% organic. Our margin at 51%, as very much expected, given some of the dilution with the new acquisitions coming on board. Q2 was our first full quarter of Malawi, which we closed right at the end of March. Margins very much where expected. Very strong portfolio free cash flow growth of 36%, as well, which we're very pleased with.
In terms of our progress on the M&A, as everyone knows, I think we have Oman and Gabon that we're still working on. Oman is nearing completion with the license hopefully coming soon, imminently now. Gabon, we continue just to progress. Of course, we're fully funded, more than fully funded for closing these announced deals. Finally, our tenancy additions, as we had guided to at the start of the year, 1,200-1,700. We maintain that guidance for now, but you know, I think are confident of it and have a good pipeline, such that we may be looking at more directionally for mid to high points here. Moving on now to slide six. Here again, we see the last few years' progression.
Obviously, tenancy is growing 9% year-over-year and up quite significantly from 2020. Our EBITDA, again, growing 15% year-over-year, when you look at the Q2 annualized of $278 million. This is showing good progress from our FY 2021 figure of $214 million. Of course, portfolio free cash flow driving that upwards by 20% when compared to the full year of FY 2021. All in all, we're progressing sort of in line or slightly ahead of expectations, and we're pleased with the progress so far this year. If I now move on to slide seven.
Clearly we're at a time of the world where there's quite a lot of uncertainty out there, and some of the headline figures that everyone's reading about, particularly, say, in the U.K. or U.S. from an inflation point of view is looking quite staggering as compared to the last few years or even the last few decades. What we wanted to do on this page is really draw out a some of these features of our markets, which may be a little bit different to some of the headlines that people are reading, in, say, U.K. or U.S. Also demonstrate how our business is very robust and protected against certain macro pricing movement out there.
Look, first of all, on the left-hand side, what we're seeing at the moment, and as sort of demonstrated, I guess, from our H1 tenancy rollout, we're seeing good rollout from our customers. As I mentioned before, we also have a good pipeline in hand for the second half of the year and even going into next year. You know, subscriber growth across our market really is very strong at 4.4%. Which, you know, as demonstrated here by some of our key customers as well, they're clearly investing. You know, we're supporting all of our customers in their continued rollout to gain even more subscribers going forward. There's quite a good kind of industry backdrop, if you like, within most of our key markets.
You couple that with the general macro GDP. Actually across our markets on average, GDP forecast is 5%. You compare that with global forecast of 3.2%. Actually, you know, a number of our markets are growing very strongly. Some indeed are actually net beneficiaries of the increase of sort of mineral and commodity and food stuff prices that we're seeing. They're actually getting quite a lot of inflows. We do have some markets though, such as Ghana and Malawi, where we have been seeing a bit more FX volatility and sort of CPI increases. Of course, our business is largely insulated against those through, A, our CPI and general sort of power price escalators that we have, and B, our hard currency mix.
Again, our business and our contracts is largely hedged against those. Of course, finally, there's the rising interest rate environment. Well, you know, we have, you know, long-term debt at fixed rates, so we're not looking at any refis or anything like that around them. Of course, we're already fully funded for our position. Again, we're in quite a strong position there from a both business operating perspective and a capital, so balance sheet perspective, again, underpinned by $5.3 billion of contracted revenues from our customers. You know, the business in a fairly strong position, I would say. Moving on now to slide eight. Look, a quick reminder on the recent acquisition journey we've been on. The first three, Senegal, Madagascar, Malawi, obviously now closed.
Malawi off to a really good start, having closed just at the end of March, and really getting off to a good start in Q2, both operationally, with power uptime improving. We're building sites now, having received our first large Build to Suit order, as well as Colo order. You'll see that coming through later this year and into next year. As I mentioned earlier, Oman is very much nearing closing. We have extended the long-stop date with Oman to September 30th. Albeit what we have would guide to is the simplicity in all your models and forecasts, just put Oman starting from January the 1st. Just given the slightly unknown timing that we've been experiencing there. I think that would be prudent to do so.
That would very much be what we recommend there. Of course, Gabon is moving. I would say on Gabon, earlier in the year, we were moving quite well. I think with the discussions there with the regulator, obviously alongside Airtel, that kind of slowed a little bit the last couple of months. We still very much are working on it. It has slowed down from earlier in the year, but we continue to push on with that as well. Moving on to page nine, you know, Senegal was the first acquisition in our recent acquisition journey, and we recently had our anniversary there. We thought it'd be good just to highlight some of the key features of our first year of operation there.
You know, I would say it's really been a good success, Senegal, and continues to be. So here on the top right, you see Karim, who's our Senegal Managing Director, and Phil, who's our Regional CEO, who covers Senegal and supports Karim and the team there. The team have really done a great job over the past year or so. First of all, operationally, we've improved power downtime per tower by 96% since starting. When we took over the network, the downtime per tower per week was five minutes, 57 seconds. We've reduced that in a year to 14 seconds. And you can see a very nice comment there by the CEO of our main customer. Tenancy growth has been good, 7%. And you know, that continues.
We will be seeing further Build to Suit rollout and Colo rollout through H2 this year in Senegal, so that's moving well. Then obviously, EBITDA growth has been strong at 12%. What I would say though is, remember Senegal uses the Central African franc, which is euro-pegged. What this EBITDA growth represents, the EUR 21 million there you see in Q2, that's euro EBITDA. Now, euro's depreciated 9% against the dollar since we closed. Actually, on a constant currency basis, you'd see that $21 million, actually at about $23+ million, which would equate to about a 20% growth. You know, obviously, the dollar has been very strong recently. Potentially, maybe that rebounds and the dollar weakens slightly as we move into next year and the euro becomes a little bit stronger again.
Actually, that would be 20% growth on a constant currency basis with the dollar/euro. Really great progress there by the team. You know, we're hoping to replicate this kind of thing in all of the markets that we close. Indeed, next year. What we'll present to you at one of these calls will be a round-up of all of our recent acquisitions in the same vein as this. Moving on now to slide 10. I mentioned earlier, we're making really good progress on our sustainable business strategy, and I'm very pleased to say that we received our first rating from MSCI, which actually was Triple A, which I believe is their top rating. We were very pleased about that.
Huge well done there to Seema, our head of sustainability, along with Manjit. To be honest, a huge amount of the team from across the group who contributed to this. Also, we've been included in the FTSE4Good index. You can see there on the bottom left, again, demonstrating our strong focus on sustainability practices and processes across the group. As you will remember, we launched our sustainable business strategy at our capital markets day in May. You know, that is generally progressing well through to 2026. On the right-hand side here, what we've done, we've actually just shown you a few of the kind of internal KPIs that we're looking at.
These cover everything from sort of network performance to rural connectivity to female empowerment, to investment in people, staff training, et cetera, as well as the carbon emission reductions, which we've set up to reduce on a per tenant basis by 46% by 2030. These are the kind of KPIs that we follow internally, and we thought it'd be useful to show them here. Look, without further ado, I'll hand over to Manjit to take us through the next section. Over to you, Manjit.
Thanks, Tom. Hello, everyone. It is great to speak with you all today. I'll be going through the financial results and starting on slide 12. Continuing on from what Tom mentioned earlier, we've had a strong first half of the year, and that really reflects continued organic tenancy growth, complemented by integration of our acquisitions in Madagascar, Senegal, and Malawi. On this slide, you'll see that we've summarized the main KPIs, which I'll be talking through in more detail over the next few slides. In general, we're seeing good growth across a number of these key metrics. Jumping into the detail, moving on to slide 13, our site and tenancy growth. Again, we've seen strong organic and inorganic tenancy growth in Q2.
From a site perspective, we saw a 24% increase year-on-year, reflecting organic growth of 9%, which is + 878 sites, and complemented by 1,213 acquired sites across Madagascar and Malawi. From a tenancy perspective, we've added 3,459 tenancies, which is a 20% increase from Q2 2021. Organically, we added 1,767 tenancies, again, a 9% increase year-on-year. Inorganically, we added 1,692 tenancies, again, coming from Madagascar and Malawi.
Our tenancy ratio has dropped slightly on a group basis, and this is due to the lower tenancy ratio of the acquired sites that we've brought on board, which had a combined tenancy ratio of 1.4x, so diluting the overall tenancy, the overall group tenancy ratio slightly. Excluding these acquisitions, our tenancy ratio has remained flat year-on-year, and that really reflects the strong site growth across our markets, which provides an enlarged base for driving lease up and therefore returns going forward. On to slide 14. We've seen continued growth in revenue and EBITDA with 27% revenue growth and 19% EBITDA growth year-on-year, up organically 14% and 9% respectively. The revenue growth is principally driven by tenancy additions, in addition to a 3% increase in lease rates per tenant.
The lease rates per tenant movement reflects a 4% increase across our established markets and partially offset by our new markets coming in with lower lease rates on average. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 19% year-on-year, 9% organically. Again, really driven by organic tenancy growth of 9% and again, contributions from our new markets. EBITDA margin declined 3 percentage points year-on-year to 50% for the second quarter, with one percentage point being due to increased corporate SG&A investments as part of our ongoing expansion to 10 markets which we've already included as part of our overall guidance for the year. The remainder of the margin impact is driven by the timing of higher fuel costs, particularly in DRC.
There can be a lag between the local fuel price increasing when we escalate customer lease rates for those increases. That's what we've seen a little bit in the quarter, a bit of a higher OpEx base from fuel increases in Q2. That will normalize as our customer escalations kick in in Q3 and thereafter. Moving on to slide 15. Excuse me. We highlight how the macro environment has evolved across our markets and demonstrate how our earnings and revenue is well protected from these movements. Starting on the top left of the table with fuel, we can see that on average, local fuel prices are up 31% year-on-year in 2022. We have power price escalators embedded in all of our customer contracts and accordingly seen a 4% increase in our revenues.
Some of the more recent local price increases, again, specifically with DRC, occurred shortly after the last contract escalation date, so there's been a bit of a lag in catch up. However, we'll see further quarterly escalations kick in in Q3 and Q4. From a fuel perspective, though, the escalators have worked such that the revenue increase has broadly offset the increase in OpEx, so largely, EBITs are neutral from a dollar perspective. Local CPI is up 6% year-on-year in our markets, which is actually lower than what we've seen in the U.S. and U.K., for example, and that's principally driven due to markets like Tanzania, where we're seeing inflation around the 4% level year-on-year.
Our revenues are up 3% from our CPI escalators, which occur annually, and that's in line with what we would expect, given that just over half of our customer lease rates are tied to CPI. Further currency movements on a revenue blended basis, we've seen a depreciation against the dollar of approximately 3%. As Tom mentioned, that's principally related to both movements in the euro and also the Ghanaian cedi. With circa 50% of our revenues either being in euro pegs or in local currency denominated, that impacts on our revenue base is just under 2%. Here we see the CPI escalators offsetting the FX impact really quite effectively with - 2% FX impacts being offset by 3% CPI increases.
While there have been macro movements, the contracts have escalated as expected, which when combined with 9% revenue growth from organic tenancies and 14% from inorganic growth, leads to 27% year-on-year revenue growth. Moving on to slide 16. Here you'll see the usual breakdowns provided, which are very consistent from previous updates, and again, further demonstrate our robust business structure underpinned by long-term contracts with a diverse quality customer base with strong hard currency earnings. 98% of our revenue come from large blue chip MNOs comprising mainly Airtel Africa, MTN, Orange, Tigo/AXIAN, Vodacom, and Free Senegal. Our single largest customer exposure is 27%, and that's spread across five different markets.
We have strong long-term contracts with our customers, and as at the end of H1, we had long-term contracted revenues of $4.2 billion with an average remaining life of 7.2 years. This increases to $5.3 billion pro forma for Oman and Gabon. What this effectively means is that excluding any new wins and rollouts, we already have that revenue contracted, and that provides a strong underlying earning stream to the business. We also have 63% of our revenues in hard currency being either U.S. dollars or euro-pegged. As a reminder, this will increase to 68% pro forma for the announced acquisitions, which are due to close, which from an EBITDA perspective translates to 73% in hard currency. A fantastic natural FX hedge for the business.
This is further complemented by escalators, which we have in all of our customer contracts, which we demonstrated on the previous slide. Finally, on the slide, with the new market expansion, we're seeing a more diversified split of revenue per market and pro forma for acquisitions, no single market accounts for more than 32% of revenues. Moving on to slide 17 and a look at our cash flow. As mentioned earlier, we've seen solid free cash flow of portfolio free cash flow of $100 million. This is up 36% year-on-year, and that's principally driven by Adjusted EBITDA growth in addition to the timing of non-discretionary CapEx. Portfolio free cash flow conversion was 74%.
By year end, with further non-discretionary CapEx outflows expected in H2, in line with our CapEx guidance, we'll expect this to be a touch lower towards 65%-70% conversion level by the year end. With regards to working capital, we've seen a $53 million working capital outflow, and that just reflects the timing of customer payments, which is lumpy and can travel period end, and that's typical for our business. Finally, some working capital is also related to CapEx prepayments as we go into the second half of the year. Importantly, receivable days remains in the range of 45-55 days, which we've seen is consistent over the past few years. On to slide 18 and a look at CapEx. For H1, we incurred total CapEx of $132 million.
This includes $43 million of acquisition CapEx, principally related to our entry into Malawi and $89 million of organic CapEx. Our guidance for the full year remains unchanged, and that reflects $650 million related to the acquisitions across Oman and Malawi, in addition to some deferred consideration for Senegal and Madagascar. Our organic CapEx guidance remains unchanged at $160 million-$200 million, and we've incurred $89 million against that in H1. Non-discretionary CapEx remains, again, unchanged at roughly $30 million for 2022. So far, we've spent $9 million in the first half, so the majority should come through in H2. Moving on to slide 19, which shows a summary of our financial debt.
Our net leverage at H1 was 3.9x and continues to be comfortably within the target range of 3.5x-4.5x. We do expect this to tick up towards the higher end of the range as we close the other markets during the course of the year, as we previously discussed. In general, leverage very much under continued tight control. As it stands today, we currently have $730 million of available funds, which is sufficient for our announced acquisitions and our organic growth, which for our established markets is self-financing. One thing to mention as well, which Tom spoke about earlier, is that we partnered with Rakiza in Oman, a great local infrastructure investor with significant local experience and expertise.
They're investing 30% pro rata in the local business, which not only de-risks the investment for us, but assists with our leverage. A great overall development, and we look forward to working with and partnering with Rakiza over the coming years. Another good development to mention, last month, we worked with Fitch for our first rating and received a rating of B+ with a stable outlook. This rating, which is our highest across the rating agencies, reflects our recent diversification into new markets, our leading market positions, and long-term earnings and cash flow visibility. We are now rated by all three rating agencies. Finally, a quick comment on balance sheet.
We sit on a very strong balance sheet with long tenor debt, as Tom mentioned, with the nearest maturity for drawn group debt not until the end of 2025. Our drawn debt has a weighted average remaining life of four years. We have very limited floating exposure, with 96% of drawn debt being fixed, again, giving us good protection against the rising interest rate environment. Overall, we're in a great position to say that if we do choose to do any financings or refinancings, we'll be doing this for strategic reasons, and where possible, continuing our trend to reducing the cost of debt. Finally, on to slide 20. Again, as Tom mentioned, our guidance remains unchanged, and the group continues to target organic tenancy additions of 1,200- 1,700 in 2022.
We have exceeded our seasonality guidance for H1, with 675 organic tenancies delivered year to date. From a financial perspective, we're tracking in line or ahead of guidance with lease rate per tenant at 3% and EBITDA margins at 51%. All in all, we're progressing well against our targets and remain very focused on continued delivery for the years ahead. With that, I'll pass back to Tom to wrap up.
Thank you very much, Manjit. Just on 2021, a quick wrap up here. Number one, you know, we've had a really strong start to 2022 with H1 operational and financial performance very much robust and moving in the right direction. I think we're demonstrating the resilience of our business and the robustness of our contracts in the midst of some moving macro elements here. Of course, we're seeing good progression with our tenancy rollout and investment from our customers. Last but not least, our guidance is being reiterated. Look, with that, I will hand back to Nadia, and we'll take some questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. If you choose to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from John Karidis of Numis. John, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. If I may, I'd like to ask three questions, one at a time. Firstly, aside from Airtel and Vodacom, you gave us some quotes at the beginning. Have you had any meaningful signals from customers of any plans for them to delay tenancy orders to Helios because, for example, of macro uncertainty? Setting aside what Airtel and Vodafone said, please.
Hey, John. Tom here. Thanks for the question. The short answer is no. I can't actually think of any customer who's said that to us. We're for sure in conversations with basically most of our other major customers about new rollout at the moment. Indeed, we have some orders in hand which, you know, you'll see coming through in the second half, and others that we're trying to win at the moment. No, we haven't seen any sort of specific holdback from them, as of now.
Thank you, Tom. The next one, have you experienced any meaningful change, positive or negative in your supply chain versus previous periods?
Thanks again, John. Look, the supply chain continues to be, you know, different to what it was 2.5 years ago pre-COVID. What that means is that typically shipping times are longer, and shipping is more expensive. Albeit it's sort of relatively small dollars in terms of what we invest in CapEx. You don't really see that sort of in our numbers as such, but it is. It is more expensive for a container on a ship. No, we haven't seen any real changes up or down in the past few months, John, since the last update. You know, we're continuing to really plan ahead six to nine months at the moment, whereas, you know, before it was more like three months or maybe six months maximum.
Things have extended by about three months. You know, we've already put out a lot of our orders for 2023, for example, already. We did that in June and July. Whereas three years ago, we would have probably been doing that in September and October. That's the main change.
Awesome. Thanks, Tom. Lastly, the closing of your tower acquisition in Oman could be as much as a sort of year late. If that is possible for you, have you at least been able to build some sort of shadow order book with the likes of Vodafone, for example?
Yes. Yeah, the short answer is yes. We always try and do that in any market, to sort of get off to a good start on closing. We'll have a sales process going on pretty much from when we first get on the ground and start opening an office and recruiting a team there. Yeah, Oman is no different in that sense. We are seeing traction from Vodafone there, in Oman, even prior to closing. Yeah.
That, that's great. Thanks. Well done to the Helios team for another good set of results. Thank you.
Thanks, John. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jerry Dellis of Jefferies. Jerry, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Two questions, please. When we think about your full year guidance on tenancy adds, the 1,200-1,700, suppose that implies quite a wide range of outcomes for the second half. 60% of full year tenancy adds guided to come from new sites. I think you probably have quite good visibility then on that sort of element of the guidance. How should we think about the reasons why the full year guidance range on tenancy adds remains so wide? Where is the sort of uncertainty in where you might land within that wide range in the second half?
Secondly, related to the sort of Oman situation, we obviously read about other parcels of mobile network operator towers that might be available or becoming available within your footprint. At what stage do you think that there's a sort of an opportunity cost tied up in Oman which doesn't enable you to move for alternative acquisitions that might be sort of easier to complete and at what stage do you decide to maybe strike out in another direction? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Jerry. So yeah, look, on the tenancy guidance, yeah, look, we're aware that the 1,200-1,700 is fairly wide. You know, I think we're feeling fairly confident about it. You know, as I said earlier, I think sort of directionally mid to upper half of that range is, I think, sort of where we're tending to, which is obviously good. I mean, you know, at this point of the year, there's basically a couple of things which can drive that sort of up or down. One is the timing of rollout. Particularly when you're doing a lot of build to suits, you're reliant on a huge amount of external parties to actually get the build to suits up and running and therefore recognized.
Principally, you're reliant on a bunch of external agencies who need to provide permits, such as environmental agency, local municipality for a building permit, and more often than not, the Civil Aviation Authority. Those three agencies all operate at different paces. Sometimes they're quick, sometimes they're slow. And it can just provide variability. Often as well, they're processing sites in batches. If we're doing a whole bunch of sites at one time, for example, the Civil Aviation Authority in a given market may be processing 50 or 100 sites at the same time. If they process it quickly, great. If they don't, then, you know, that probably means they're going into next year.
It can be a bit binary from that perspective, which is why at this point of the year, we're still a little bit cautious about things like that. You know, the other factor, obviously is the sales process itself. There's a number of opportunities which we're in fairly advanced stages on. We're feeling quite good about them, but you know, they haven't signed on the dotted line yet. Again, that brings a bit of variability into it as well. All in all, we're feeling quite good about the progress, certainly so far this year in H1 and the pipeline that we've got for H2, we're feeling reasonably good about. The second question on Oman, basically, when would we walk away? We're not in that head space, to be honest.
At least not at the moment. While things have moved slowly there, they are moving. You know, we're just sort of coming out of the summer break where, you know, a lot of things slow down or sort of shut down for a month or two. We do understand that our license is kind of imminently to be signed. We're waiting eagerly for that. Once that has come through, then we'll be in the kind of the closing straight proper, as it were, which is effectively just getting all the legal things ticked off, and money drawn from our partner, Rakiza, prior to closing. We are confident of closing Oman.
We're not looking at sort of dropping it at all in any way. You know, I'm confident that we'll close that you know reasonably soon. I think, you know, there are opportunities out there in terms of other tower deals. You know, they come up obviously you know generally quite regularly. Again, you know, we always assess them. You know, we're very happy with what we've signed and announced and we're just super focused on closing them and moving forward.
Thank you very much. That's very clear. Could I just ask a follow-up on a different question, please?
Sure.
You mentioned again, you know, planning ahead with inventory levels six to nine months.
Mm-hmm.
Are you confident that current inventory levels are sort of enough? Could there be a scenario in which you might decide that you have to sort of raise stock levels a bit further in order to sort of be very comfortable that you can sort of deliver on build to suit objectives?
Yeah, we are comfortable with current inventory levels, I would say. We're actually quite well-stocked in some of our key markets where we either believe or know that we've got roll-outs coming soon. I think we're quite happy at the moment. You know, as always, there can be peaks and troughs on this from time to time. We're looking at a few potentially very large roll-outs which are more next year's business, to be honest, rather than this year's. That may mean that we need to increase inventory levels a bit for a short-term period, in which case we would do that. Yeah, nothing kind of out of the ordinary, to be honest, Jerry.
We're just keeping things roughly at this level with the sort of natural peaks and troughs that occur as it's utilized and new inventory brought in.
That's great. Thank you very much for that.
Yep. Bye.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Roncier of Bank of America. Alex, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I will have actually three, most of them actually following up on some of the earlier questions. The first one is just on KPIs and where, you know, it's on traction in H1. Just wondering if it just, you know, and you highlighted to some points, but is it faster build? Is it just faster permits from regulatory agency? Or is it just higher demand from MNOs? You know, largely, obviously, you've talked a little bit about no change in guidance, confidence in, you know, mid to high range. But I do believe that MNO budgets are kind of set in Q3, Q4 every year. Do you think implicitly that means they're kind of front-loading their BTS program this year?
Secondly, just on Oman, and I think for you know, this is kind of more of the blueprint and, you know, test for Middle East. Are you already discussing with new partners there? Will the partnership actually with Rakiza help the Oman? Is it just mostly locally focused? Lastly, it's maybe, you know, a bit more holistic, but obviously given the volatility we're seeing on energy markets, looking backwards or, you know, even forwards, anything you think you should have done or could have done better and differently in terms of matching energy costs and your contract rates and escalators? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Alex. Great question. Let me take them in order. Yeah, look, in terms of the KPI, I guess the question is sort of why the higher tenancy rollout this H1, is it quicker? Is it just more orders? Yeah, look, I think it's largely more orders in hand at the start of the year. Quite a lot of these tenancies that have rolled out in H1 were, you know, obviously negotiated or ordered towards the end of last year or very early this year. And you know, I think that's just a factor of MNO demand and their need to both expand their networks and upgrade their or increase their density.
You know, general volumes through networks have obviously increased in the past couple of years, particularly on the data side. That really drives the need for more tenancies or more antennas, which means a tenancy for us. Yeah, I think it's just simply more volume rather than any specific speed to rollout point. You know, I think it's probably worth making the point that often, particularly Q1, and to some extent H1 for us, can actually usually be quite quiet because MNOs typically get their budgets done in Q1 or Q2, and then that leads to orders being placed and then more rollouts in the second half of the year for us.
This year has been slightly different on the upside for us. That which has been good, and I think it's just down to sheer volume of demand, basically. Yeah, in Oman, you know, there are other tower portfolios in that market. There are other tower portfolios obviously around the Middle East, which may well, you know, be on offer for sale at some point. We'll always look at, you know, key portfolios that come up for sale in both our countries and also the regions in which we operate. You know, there could be potential there for expanding our network, either in Oman or across the region at some point.
We do know, though, that these deals tend to take quite a long time as we always experience. You know, in terms of our strategy and what we're focused on right now, as we articulated previously at the capital markets day, you know, the focus for this year, 2022 and going into next year is very much focusing on closing the deals we've signed and announced, integrating them into our business, getting our business excellence processes going across all these markets and driving the organic growth with a view of potentially more acquisitions in the, you know, slightly more medium-term horizon.
Of course, what that means is that work, you know, needs to start now from a business development point of view because the gestation period on these deals typically is, you know, one to two years. It's good that there are opportunities out there. Of course, we'll always look at them. Sometimes we'll like them, sometimes we won't, and we'll walk away, very happy to do that. We'll look at, kind of assess each opportunity one by one. Just your last point there on Rakiza. Yeah, for sure, Rakiza, our partnership we have there with Rakiza, I think is a great partnership. We're very pleased with Rakiza as our partner in Oman and, you know, look forward to a very long and fruitful relationship with them in the country.
Just one final point, energy volatility, anything we could or should have done better. I mean, I think, you know, I think what we've done well, I think, is our customer contracts are, I think, very well hedged, you know, both from an energy point of view, but also from a currency point of view. I guess here we're speaking specifically about energy. You know, we have energy pass through basically in all of our major contracts across the group, which does mean that we're pretty well insulated, whether prices are going up or down. Obviously, at the moment they're going up. Now it's not 100% perfect. There is obviously a short time lag there with some of our contracts being quarterly and some being annually.
It's not an absolute perfect hedge, but it's fairly good, I would say. I think what we're really focusing on now and, you know, have been focused on for the past few years, but very much, probably even more so now, is reducing reliance on fuel in general. You know, we've articulated that through our carbon reduction strategy. You know, today, we have some form of renewable technology, either hybrid batteries or solar on about 30% of our sites if you exclude the very recent acquisition. As we articulated last November in our carbon investor presentation, we're aiming to take that up to about 75% of our entire portfolio over the coming years.
That will really help to even reduce further our exposure to diesel pricing as well as obviously reducing carbon, which is the key aim of it. Yeah, I think that's our real big focus going forward.
All right. That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. The next question comes from Omar Maher of EFG Hermes. Omar, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, gents, and thanks a lot for the presentation and the insights. Just two questions from my side. One is on Congo Brazzaville. I guess if I look at the last nine months, the pace of expansion in site additions has been faster than what we've seen in that market. At the same time, we're not seeing any meaningful pickup in number of tenants essentially. If I look at the tenancy ratio, it's been largely sort of like sliding soft, you know, a little bit down. I wanted to understand, like, what is. If you could provide some highlights and explain what's happening in that market.
Like you're obviously probably seeing some future demand coming, and that's why I'm guessing you're expanding the number of sites. But at the same time, what is delaying this pickup in the tenancy in that market? My second question is on Ghana, actually. The recent news that we saw on potential acquisition of Vodafone Ghana, how does that change things for you?
Yeah. Thank you very much, Omar, and thanks for the question. Look, taking the first one, Congo B. Yeah, look, we've seen some good site growth there, and this has been through build to suit orders, which to be honest, we haven't seen much of in the previous five or six years. It's been great to be getting those build to suit orders in. The thing about build to suits is typically they will be a one tenant site from day one, and then over time, we aim to put colocation tenants on them. We usually expect the build to suits when we underwrite it to get a second tenant on between three to five years. That's roughly the sort of normal or the sweet spot.
Obviously, we try and push harder on that from a sales perspective and try and get them on, you know, within six months or one year or even from day one in some cases. The norm is three to five years when we underwrite the build to suit. That's why initially you see when the site growth is happening, you see that grow, but the tenancy ratio will get diluted a little bit because unless you're adding Co-location as well at the same time, inherently the sort of fraction that calculates tenancy ratio will drive a slightly lower ratio initially, but a larger asset base. Then over time, as you put more C olos on, that tenancy ratio should grow. We're very much on plan in Congo Brazzaville.
As I said, three to five years is the norm. You know, you should see that tenancy ratio grow in these new build to suit over that timescale going forward. In Ghana, Vodafone, yeah, we've seen the announcement. Obviously we continue to work with Vodafone as we do with all of our customers in Ghana. You know, from a contract perspective, there's no change essentially when the new owner comes in in any of our contracts. We just continue with that contract going forward. We're monitoring that situation, and you know, we'll be working with the new owners as and when or if and when that deal closes. You know, for now it's very much business as usual.
Thank you, Tom. Since we're on Ghana, if I may just a quick follow-up on that. I've seen the average lease rate sliding. It has been going down for a while in Ghana, so is it an issue of competition or is there something else that is like, you know, pressuring the lease rates that we're not aware of?
Yeah. In Ghana specifically, Ghana is one of our markets with probably the most exposure to the local currency, which is the Ghana cedi, and that has obviously dropped off against the dollar recently. We report in dollars, so when you're looking at the average revenue per tenancy for Ghana, you're seeing it in our report in dollars. Obviously because the cedi's appreciated, you're seeing a lower figure. There hasn't been any change to the underlying sort of lease rates there. We will be seeing power price escalators kick in in Ghana through the rest of this year, and we'll be seeing CPI escalators kick in there in Q1.
Obviously CPI is running quite high, so you'll see a bit of an uptick there in Q1 when they kick in in a few months time.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Kennedy-Good of J.P. Morgan. Jonathan, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, Tom and Manjit and Chris. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. Just a couple of quick ones from me on the level of CPI inflation that you're observing in the countries, obviously a little bit lower than what I thought it would be versus developed markets. How is that rolling over and do you think the inflation levels have peaked or, given currency devaluations in some of these markets, do you think that could rise still? Any thoughts there would be helpful? And then in terms of the tenancy seasonality, obviously you've mentioned pretty strong in the first half. You know, are there any obvious kind of drivers of that in the key markets?
I'm talking more from an organic perspective, DRC, Tanzania, and whether there are certain operators that are driving this. Then finally just on cash flow repatriation to your hold co. Are there any issues in certain jurisdictions? I think Ghana may be somewhat dislocated at the moment, so it would be interesting to know if you're experiencing any issues there. That's it for me.
Thanks, Jonathan, for the questions. Very good. Let me take them in order. Look, the level of CPI inflation, yeah, as you've seen, sort of blended average across our markets is about 6%. Clearly that's lower than headlines you're seeing elsewhere, U.K., U.S., etc. , in the world. We do have quite a wide range with those. You know, Tanzania is 4%. I think DRC is 6%. Obviously DRC is dollarized. They're our two largest markets, so have the biggest sort of impact on this on the average. At the other end of the spectrum, you've got Ghana and Malawi, which are, you know, sort of well into the 20s in terms of inflation.
Now those two markets typically run double-digit inflation anyway, so they've gone up from low- to mid-double digits to sort of twenties. Of course, those two markets are pretty small for us, particularly Malawi, which is very small from an overall group percentage perspective. So there's not much impact on us from that. The question is, has it peaked? You know, I guess that's the million-dollar question for a macroeconomic expert. Way above my pay grade. But look, I would suspect that there's probably still a bit more to come. You know, sometimes you see a bit of a ripple effect when inflation happens in sort of the U.S. and Europe, and then it maybe ripples out elsewhere. So let's keep monitoring that.
We're not sort of overly concerned about that. You know, we do have the CPI escalators in our contracts. You know, to the extent that we do see a little bit more come through, say in Tanzania and DRC, which obviously have fairly low inflation at the moment, then, you know, we'll absorb that through our escalators. But let's see. I think both of those markets, to some extent, have a fairly strong position here with the commodity and food stuff prices around the world going up because they export a lot of it. I think they may be on a slightly different track to countries like the U.K., which is obviously in a slightly different place. Let's see.
Tenancy seasonality, next question, any obvious drivers of that? Look, I think we're actually seeing. There's no sort of single one customer that's driving that, to be honest. I think we're seeing good competitive tension between the mobile operators in our key markets. You know, particularly Tanzania and DRC, they're both markets with extremely low mobile penetration today. They've both got four major mobile operators with no one of them over, I think, 35% or 40% being the max in all the sort of number one market share in both markets. They have very evenly spread market share, which is a very healthy environment for mobile operators and clearly a good environment for tower companies to operate in. We are the beneficiaries of that healthy competition between the mobile operators.
So yeah, no obvious sort of one single customer driving that. I'd say we're seeing, you know, reasonably good demand across the board or across most of the board. Then the final one on cash flow repatriation. Manjit, do you wanna take that one?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We still hold around 80%-90% of all of our cash up at group level. We're still having, you know, we've always had the ability to upstream cash. The only potential things which do happen from time to time is just the availability of dollars in the market. We've experienced this throughout our time in operation. When there is good availability at a good rate to you kind of do a bit of over conversion. When it's not, you kind of hold for a period of time. In general, there's nothing to really mention in terms of our ability to upstream. We're still doing it on a monthly basis. You mentioned Ghana.
I mean, look, in that market, we do actually receive about 20%-25% of our revenues are linked to U.S. dollars and received in U.S. dollars. We can always move that around the business as well. In general, you know, still the vast majority holds up the group, which is consistent with how we've operated since inception.
Great. Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thanks.
Thanks, Jonathan.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads now. Our next question comes from Simon Coles of Barclays. Simon, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Sorry, first one's back on tenancies. If we take a step back, last year was probably a little bit lighter than we would've hoped. And then you obviously spent a bit of extra CapEx to drive tenancies this year. If we were to, say, remove those tenancies, would we say that you're actually just running in the middle of the range? 'Cause you're saying that you're sort of hoping that you're gonna end towards the mid to the upper end. And then if we think to next year, I think you said you've got some big rollout contracts being discussed. Does that make you confident that you're sort of potentially upper end of your medium-term guidance, at least in 2023?
Understand if you can't comment too much on that, but just wondering how that's going. Then secondly, thank you for slide, I think it's 15. That's super helpful. Is there any big difference between markets, and I'm mainly thinking about DRC, on whether the escalators are quarterly or annually? Is it still 50/50 in DRC? Just because the revenue per tenant there looks a little bit mixed, whereas, say, Tanzania has been growing quite nicely, but I realize there are lots of moving parts in there. Sorry, if I can just ask one last final one. On M&A, are you seeing multiples from private sellers come down at all, given what we're seeing with interest rates globally? Thank you.
Hey, Simon. Thank you very much for those questions. Let me take them in order. Tenancies last year being light. Yeah, I think H1 last year was a little bit light, but H2 was extremely busy and, you know, I think last year we ended up with one of our highest ever years for organic tenancies by the end of the year. Albeit, absolutely H1 was light. I think we did about 170 tenancies in H1 last year, but ended well above 1,000, or around 1,100, I think. Look, I think the, you know, the progress so far this year has clearly been good.
I think that we are in a position of having a reasonably good amount of either orders in hand or conversations ongoing for new rollout, which could come into this year or could go into be sort of next year's business, depending on, you know, when the conversations finalize and when the rollout starts. You know, I feel quite good about the number of conversations that we're having with multiple different mobile operators. It's not like we're just reliant on one mobile operator, for example. We're obviously very, very diversified on that front. I think, you know, I think this year could be another strong year for tenancies.
As I mentioned before, in terms of our guidance, 1,200-1,700, you know, we could very well set directionally be going towards middle or upper of that range, which would, of course, mean that that would be our, I think, our highest rollout ever in a year, certainly higher than last year or the year before. That's sort of good directionally, I guess. In terms of the CapEx, the CapEx really follows the tenancies, particularly when it comes to build-to-suits, because build-to-suits require CapEx. That essentially kind of goes hand in hand with the tenancies. Slide 15, I think your question was about DRC escalations and, yeah, most of them in DRC are quarterly. On M&A, what are we seeing on the multiples?
I mean, look, I guess sellers, you know, may well have a preconceived idea of what they want or what they expect from a valuation point of view. That may well be based on multiples or tower values that were, you know, paid a year or two or three years ago. Who knows? We may have a different view for that. That's fine. I guess it depends on how many other buyers there are out there who have the same or different views. At the end of the day, some deals may trade or may not trade. You know, sellers may think, "Oh, well, we'll just wait a bit.
Inflation's running at 10% on the U.S. dollar, so maybe it's not the best time to do a tower sale at the moment. Maybe they'll think the opposite and think, "Well, you know, we'll look through that," and buyers will look through that, on the assumption that it comes down at some point and you know, still be confident of getting a good deal. You know, we take each one on a case-by-case basis. As I said, you know, this year and, you know, to some extent next year, is all about the integration and the consolidation of the deals that we've announced, and really starting to get the best out of them, within the Helios Towers group.
You know, we'll look at any new M&A opportunities that come through, and we may align with the seller on expectations or we may not. If we don't, then that's fine. We'll happily walk away. If we do, great, but of course, you know, these deals do have fairly long gestation periods. That aligns quite well with our focus right now on integration and consolidating what we've got.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our final question comes from Stella Cridge of Barclays. Stella, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi there. Morning, everyone. Many thanks for all the updates so far. I wondered if you could give us an update on the planned funding for the remaining acquisitions. For example, what you would consider the main sources to be and what kind of minimum cash balance you'd like to keep, you know, obviously given that we've had a bit of volatility in global markets. That would be great. Thanks.
Yeah, sure. I'll pick this one up. Really for the remaining acquisition, which is Oman in the short term, that's $575 million. We've clearly got cash on balance sheet, which will be utilized against that. Now we have Rakiza as a 30% investor. They will be investing pro rata for that. We are also investigating potentially a smaller local line in Oman. What we're finding at the moment is actually there's some really quite attractive pricing, particularly in Oman, for local debt. We may do a small portion of that. If we do that will actually, if all goes well, actually continue to reduce our overall cost of debt on a group basis.
I think a combination of the three, cash on balance sheet, Rakiza coming in, potentially a small line up at the group level. We have undrawn debt facilities that are about $270 million at the group level, and maybe also a little bit of local debt in Oman as well. All of those will be the main source of funding for Oman. For Gabon, it's a smaller acquisition, so again, that will be funded either through cash on balance sheet or the group facility.
Okay. That's it for me. Thanks, Manjit.
Thank you.
Thank you. We currently have no further questions, so I'll hand back over to Tom for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Nadia. Thank you everyone for dialing in today. Thanks everyone for the questions, as usual. If there's anything you wanna follow up on, you know where we are. Please feel free to contact me, Manjit, Chris, anytime. Very happy to talk to you again. Look forward to seeing you all soon. Have a great day. Take care.