Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's conference call titled Helios Towers Third Quarter 2023 Results. My name is Ellen, and I'll be the call operator for today. All participant lines will be muted throughout the presentation, and at the end of the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask a question. If you'd like to do so at this time, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered or you change your mind and would like to revoke your question, please press star followed by two. I would now like to turn the call over to Tom Greenwood, CEO, to begin. Tom, please go ahead whenever you're ready.
Thanks very much, Ellen. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Helios Towers Q3 2023 performance and outlook call. Very good to talk to everyone, as always, and I hope you and your families are well. Thanks very much for your time today. So today, we'll be talking you through our performance year to date, our FY 2023 outlook and guidance upgrade, and providing some early guidance on our FY 2024 view. So first up, on page two, we have the usual lineup for you and me, Tom, Manjit Dhillon, and Chris Baker-Sams. We've got the business and financial update slide, and then we'll open for Q&A at the end. So now looking at page five. Very pleased to report that we've delivered very strongly year to date, and therefore we're upgrading guidance across all our key metrics for FY 2023.
Our tenancy additions are already above 2,100, which was previously the top end of our guidance, so consequently, we're up pre- increasing that. The large level of colocation delivered so far has driven our tenancy ratio up from 1.8 to 1.9 year to date. Importantly, we've seen our future contracted revenue increase 13% quarter-on-quarter and 37% year-over-year, to its highest ever level of $5.5 billion, underpinning our future cash flows and returns growth. Financial performance in Q3 was especially strong year-over-year, with revenues up 28%, EBITDA up 35%, of which 22% was organic, and our margin up 3 percentage points, driven by the tenancy ratio increase I mentioned earlier.
Also, our last twelve months portfolio free cash flow is up 30%, driven by the EBITDA growth and tight control around ground leases, maintenance, CapEx and tax. Our balance sheet continues to strengthen, firstly with deleveraging, with a 0.3x reduction this quarter and 0.6x year to date, and now at 4.5, which we previously guided as our full year figure, meaning we've accelerated deleveraging one quarter ahead of the previous guidance on this, further reduction expected this quarter, Q4. And we've effectively tendered $325 million of our December 2025 bonds in September, therefore extending a good portion of our debt for another five years. In terms of upgrades to guidance, we're increasing our FY 2023 forecasts across all key metrics, with tenancy additions guidance moving up 15% from that 220 to 2,400.
EBITDA moving up 2%, $365 million-$370 million. Portfolio free cash flow guidance increasing 9%. All of this thanks to our customers' trust in our ability to operate effectively and deliver high-quality service, our partner network, and our people and teams across the group, performing at the highest standard through our business excellence strategy. Now moving to page six, and here we see that in FY 2023, we're delivering a stellar year for growth overall and most importantly, for organic growth. Now that our FY 2021 to FY 2022 acquisitive expansion trade is done, and we're focusing fully on organic growth to drive returns, our tenancy ratio has expanded 0.1x. You can see on the middle chart, our EBITDA jumping up 30% this year.
Most importantly, looking at our ROIC, as previously guided, following our two-year expansion program, we very much see our organic operational delivery bear fruit, with the ROIC rebounding back up to 12%, following the temporary dilutive effect of new acquisitions with low tenancy ratios. As an example of this, our Oman acquisition, which was closed in December 2022, was acquired at a tenancy ratio of 1.2x, and now is already at 1.31x, less than a year into operations. So this, along with all our other markets, are helping to drive our returns up on a group-wide basis. Next on page seven, we thought it'd be useful to show the evolution over the past year of our future contracted revenue. Our tenancy contracts effect, excluding any future escalations or auto renewals.
This future pipeline has grown 37% in the past year, driven by three key factors. One, the 10-year renewal of almost 2,500 existing tenancies in the last quarter. Two, the 2,700 record new organic tenancies added in the past year. And three, the Oman acquisition's associated leaseback agreement. The $5.5 billion future contracted revenue reflects around 7.8 years average remaining life, which is a very strong base of which the business will deliver further growth and increased returns. Now on to page eight. We wanted to provide some early guidance on how we see FY 2024 shaping up, and we'll provide more details on this in March at our full year release. But in short, we expect a continuation of the strong organic momentum and returns growth that we're delivering in FY 2023.
In terms of capital allocation, we'll continue to focus on high returning organic growth and deleveraging. The tenancy ratio expected to increase 0.05x to 0.1x through next year. Any significant M&A continues not to be our focus for the foreseeable future. Our tenancy growth and cost efficiency focus will deliver double-digit EBITDA growth next year. CapEx will be tightly controlled, and we expect leverage to be below 4x by the end of FY 2024, as well as continued upwards trajectory on our ROIC. So looking forward to updating you each quarter next year as we deliver this. So that's it from me for now. I'll hand over to Manjit and then speak to you at the end for wrap-up and Q&A.
Thanks, Tom. Hello, everyone. It's great to be speaking with you today. I'll be going through the financial results and starting on slide number 10. Continuing on from what Tom mentioned earlier, we have again delivered record organic tenancy additions and strong performance across all key operational and financial metrics, and additionally, continue to proactively manage our balance sheet. We are on track to deliver one of our best ever years of organic growth, and accordingly, we've increased our full year guidance, which I will speak about later in the deck. On this slide, as usual, you'll see we've summarized the main KPIs, which I'll go through in more detail now over the next few slides. Moving on to slide number 11, our sites and tenancy growth.
From a site perspective, we saw a 29% increase year-over-year, reflecting organic growth of 633 sites and 2,519 acquired sites in Oman. Year-over-year, we've added 5,711 tenancies, which is a 27% increase from a year ago. This growth was through a combination of record organic tenancy growth and our acquisition in Oman. We've delivered 2,694 year-over-year organic tenancy adds and 3,017 tenancies through the acquisition in Oman. In terms of tenancy ratio, our tenancy ratio dropped slightly on a group basis, and this was driven by the lower tenancy ratio of the sites in Oman, which had a day one tenancy ratio of 1.2.
However, we've already increased that tenancy ratio in Oman by 0.1x, which is actually ahead of plan, and we're very pleased with the performance, and this shows how well Oman has integrated into our business. On a group level, organic tenancy ratio also expanded by 0.1x on strong lease, on strong organic lease-ups, and again, that will support margin expansion and returns. So moving on to slide 12. We've seen a 28% revenue growth and 35% EBITDA growth year-on-year, and importantly, from an organic perspective, that's 18%+ on revenues and 22%+ on EBITDA. We've seen strong revenue and EBITDA growth in all three of our reporting segments. Our Q3 EBITDA margin has increased by 3 percentage points to 52%, and that's driven by lease-up.
On a constant fuel price basis, Q3 adjusted EBITDA margin would have been even higher at 53%. So moving on to slide 13, and here, similar to prior results, I'll dig into the drivers of revenue and EBITDA growth in a bit more detail. The first four bars of each bridge, organic tenancy growth, power escalations, CPI escalations, and FX, all combined to make up organic growth, and acquisitions being the contribution from the Oman market. The organic tenancy growth of 2,694 tenants year-over-year has driven an 11% growth in revenues and 18% growth in EBITDA. But focusing on the escalation movements, and again, similar to previous presentations, the contractual escalators are all performing as expected. As a reminder, we have escalated in almost every customer contract in all markets.
For power, roughly 50% of our contracts escalate quarterly and 50% annually, and these escalate in relation to the local pricing for power, so for fuel and electricity. So if the local prices go up, then the escalators go up, and if the prices go down, then the escalators go down. For CPI, we have annual CPI escalators, and they typically kick in between December and February. Our power price escalators increased revenue by $7 million, and that falls through to about $2 million on EBITDA, driving a roughly around 3 percentage point EBITDA contribution, as you can see on the right-hand side. The positive EBITDA contribution is partly attributable to the rollout of about 1,100 power solutions year to date as part of our Project 100 commitment, alongside other historical power investments.
This again demonstrates that our business model has effectively offset any increase in OpEx due to higher power prices to protect our EBITDA on a dollar basis, while we continue to save fuel costs through our investment in power initiatives. Moving on to CPI and FX. Local CPI is currently below 10%, with the majority of our CPI escalators having already kicked in earlier in the year, and that contributed 5% to revenue year-on-year. The CPI escalators have effectively offset the FX movements on revenues, and on the EBITDA side, the escalators have covered the FX movements very well, which you can actually see in the dotted box on the right-hand side. The reason we continue to show you this analysis is because it is really a useful demonstration of the business mechanics.
And again, standing back and to reiterate the message, looking at this from an EBITDA level, there is little to no impact to FX and power price movements. We're well protected from macro volatility, and here you can see the key drivers of our growth really being driven by tenancy growth, both organically and inorganically, and operational improvements, all of which are within our control and how we want to operate the business. Moving on then to slide 14. Again, you'll see the usual breakdowns, which is very consistent from from previous updates, that 98% of our revenues come from blue-chip mobile network operators, comprising Airtel Africa, Vodacom, Orange, alongside other large MNOs such as Omantel and Axian.
It's worth highlighting that our largest customers are spread across a few differing markets, again, showing how diversified our business is. As Tom mentioned earlier, we have strong long-term contracts with our customers, and at the end of Q3, we had long-term contracted revenues of $5.5 billion, the highest ever on record for us, with an average remaining life of just shy of 8 years, up 37% from $4 billion a year ago. This means, again, excluding any new wins or rollouts, we already have that revenue contracted and in the bag, and that provides a strong underlying future earning stream for the business.
We also have 64% of our revenues in hard currency, being either US dollars or euro pegged, and that falls through to 71% when looking at it from an adjusted EBITDA perspective. This provides a fantastic natural effect, a natural FX hedge for the business, and that's all complemented by the escalators I spoke about in the previous slide. Finally, just to mention on this slide, with the new market expansion successfully completed over the last few years, we're seeing a more diversified split of revenues, with the Middle East and North Africa segment now representing about 8% of our revenues year to date.
As a market leader in seven of our nine markets, we are very uniquely positioned to capture all the robust structural growth across all of our markets. Moving on to slide 15 and a look on CapEx. On the left-hand side of the table, you'll see that Q3 year to date, we incurred total CapEx of $149 million, which is mainly made up of growth CapEx, reflecting our strong organic tenancy builds, and rollout during the course of the year.
Our discretionary CapEx continues to be tightly controlled and focused on high returning investments, for example, colocations and OpEx efficiency projects. So far, the $149 million we've spent on CapEx roughly trends in line with what we'd expect for the full year CapEx guidance. And then actually, in terms of guidance, the CapEx range we're now guiding to for 2023 is being upsized to $150 million-$180 million on discretionary CapEx, up from $140 million-$170 million, and that really accounts for the fact that we're increasing our organic tenancy guide by about 300. Non-discretionary CapEx, by the way, remains unchanged at $40 million.
Moving on now to slide 16, and just to walk through our debt liability management exercise we carried out in September. As a summary, we raised up to $720 million of facilities, including a $600 million term loan and up to a $120 million RCF facility. We've drawn $400 million of the term loan to tender $325 million of our high yield bonds, and fully repay $65 million that we'd drawn on our old group term loan and a small portion to cover fees. This has had a neutral impact on our gross and net leverage, and as you can see on the chart on the right-hand side, with the new term loan due in 2028, we've effectively pushed out our weighted average maturity of debts by one year to circa four years.
The cost of debt only marginally increased from 6.7% to 7.1%, which is a fantastic result, I think, in a rising rate environment. I think this really reflects the increased scale and diversification of our company over the last few years, doubling our platform from five to nine markets, expanding our footprint from Africa to the Middle East, whilst also growing our hard currency earnings and continually demonstrating our resilient and robust business model. Following the transaction, we'll continue to have around $400 million of undrawn debt facilities, and we'll continue to monitor our options around opportunistically managing our debt profile. To sum up, we are really delighted with this transaction, as this further strengthens our balance sheet. On to slide number 17.
Our net leverage at Q3 2023 has decreased by 0.6x to 4.5x pro forma, and that's now within our target range, one quarter ahead of what we previously guided. We've always had a clear path to deliver the business at about 0.5x per annum on an organic EBITDA growth basis, and we're committed to continue to deliver that. And as Tom mentioned, looking forward to next year, we'll target to reduce our net leverage again by another half a turn to below 4x. As previously mentioned, we've got a good amount of undrawn debt facilities at $400 million, and that, together with the $151 million of cash on balance sheet, means we have roughly around $550 million of available funds to the group.
Importantly, our debt remains largely fixed, with 80% of it being on a fixed rate basis, and this is all long tenured, and again, with the average remaining life quite long, at four years. Moving on then to slide 18, and as Tom mentioned earlier in the call, again, we made great progress on our 2023 goals, and as a consequence, we've, we've increased our full year guidance again. Given our robust tenancy growth, and our strong commercial pipeline to the end of the year, and also what's growing next year as well, we've increased our organic tenancy guidance range.
We're now targeting growth between 2,200-2,400 tenancies, compared to 1,900-2,100 previously, implying a year-on-year growth rate of around 9%-10%. For adjusted EBITDA, the increased range is now $365 million-$370 million, with the midpoint at an increase of about 30% year-on-year, reflecting again all the strong tenancy growth and operational improvements that we've been putting through during the course of the year. Accordingly, portfolio free cash has also increased and now expected to be in a range of $260 million-$265 million, and that represents rough cash conversion, about 70% this year.
Due to the higher expectations on growth and tenancy growth, we've updated our CapEx range, which I spoke about earlier. But as you can see, we're on track to deliver one of our best ever years of organic growth in 2023. And again, this just simply demonstrates the proven robustness of our business model through macro volatility, our focus on business excellence, as well as the really compelling structural growth of all of our markets. And with that, I'll pass back to Tom to wrap up.
Thanks very much, Manjit. So on page 19 now, and look, clearly, we're in a time of significant momentum in the business. And we're really pleased with the performance at the moment and the outlook. So look, FY 2023 is set to be one of our best years ever for organic growth and total growth, for that matter as well. And of course, we've upped and increased full year guidance across all the major metrics. Our new markets, very pleasingly, continue to demonstrate lease-up. We've given the example here of Oman and supporting EBITDA and ROIC growth. Net leverage has accelerated its reduction and is now fully within its target range, one quarter earlier than previous guidance.
And we've increased average debt maturity with marginal increase in cost of debt with the tender of the bonds we mentioned earlier. As I mentioned before, continued momentum expected into next year, and we're really focused on organic growth with lease up of 0.05x to 0.1x next year, double digit EBITDA growth, and net leverage below 4x. So with that, we'll, I'll hand back to Ellen, and we'll open for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now enter our Q&A session. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. That's star followed by one on your telephone keypad to register a question. We'll just pause for a moment to compile any questions. Our first question today comes from Emmet Kelly from Morgan Stanley. Emmet, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking my questions. I've just got two questions, please. My first question is on the increase in contracted revenues. So, Tom, you highlighted that they're up by $0.6 billion, quarter-on-quarter, due to a client extending their contract by 10 years. Please talk a little bit more about that contract extension, Tom. Is it really due to that contract was reaching an end, or approaching an end? And can you talk a little bit about the terms maybe, on which the contract was extended as well? Is there any change to the headline tariffs?
And then my second question is on power costs. Obviously, power prices across the globe have been very, very volatile over the last two years. Spot power prices are clearly down quite a lot over the last six months. On slide 13, you show that power is a like a 5% boost, I think, or a $7 million boost to revenues year-on-year in Q3. How should we be thinking about power over the coming quarters and as we go into 2024, please? Thank you.
Thanks very much, Emmet. So maybe I'll take the first one, and Manjit can take the, the power costs one. Yeah, so look, I mean, in regards to tenancy contract extension, I guess it's, you know, sort of business as usual, for a tower company, with its customers to do this. I mean, all of the contracts have automatic renewals in, but it's quite normal in the industry for, you know, a couple of years or so before the end of the term. Remember, these contracts are 10-15 years long usually, for the, you know, two parties to engage and, you know, discuss, whether, you know, an auto renewal is relevant, in which case it just rolls forward on, you know, identical terms.
Or whether, you know, in the past 10 years or so, there's, you know, certain things that have changed for both sides that, you know, lead to it being a benefit to have a renewal. So, you know, it's sort of business as usual, you know, for one point. And, you know, with this one, the terms were largely unchanged, to be honest. A few sort of tweaks around the edges really, as well as future rollout commitments that we secured in it as well. And that's really it. So no change to, you know, sort of quality of revenue or anything like that. And then Manjit, do you wanna take the power cost one?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, so look, on power, and similar to what we've presented over previous quarters, I think from a cost perspective, what we typically see is that the escalators work in a way in which means that from an EBITDA side, the costs are effectively mitigated, so we don't make a margin on the costs and the escalator makeup of the group. And that's what we want. We want to make sure that we're just effectively hedged, but not making any margins on that. And so what we're seeing this quarter is actually that the investments that we're making as part of Project 100, actually minimize the volume of power that we utilize. And so that's where you start to make some of the upside.
So, while we see prices kind of either go up or stabilize in the markets, that will still be something which will effectively be hedged through all of our contractual makeup. But now as we're kind of putting more money into this Project 100, we should start to see, year on year, a few more savings come through on that, on that basis. So in future releases, we would hope to show, kind of similar or kind of maybe more tempered, EBITDA improvements from our cost initiatives. And as they start to come through and start to operate better, you'll see more and more savings come up year on year.
Super. Thank you very much, both.
Thanks.
Thanks, Emmet.
Thank you, Emmet. Our next question today comes from John Karidis from Numis. John, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. First of all, give us some color about what's happening in the DRC. It seems to be sort of on fire in the last three quarters relative to the past. And just sort of color about, is there competition increasing? Is there a bigger focus in population usage? What are your customers telling you there? Related to this, Ghana went sort of backwards in the third quarter. Is that just a blip, or is there a sort of trend that we should be aware of? Secondly, with regard to Emmet's question about fuel costs, I hear what you said, Manjit.
Specifically, what I'm trying to figure out is sort of, if you like, how this driver will affect year-on-year change in your lease rates for the fourth quarter this year, and how you think this might affect it for 2024. And then thirdly, I think that your adjusted guidance, sorry, your guidance, your upgraded guidance for adjusted EBITDA and portfolio free cash flow sort of suggests that tax will be significantly less, sort of 4%-5% of revenue this year. I'd love to understand if, well, if that's right, why, and what does it mean about the sort of tax rates, in inverted commas, for 2024 and 2025, please?
Yeah. Hi, John. Tom here. Why don't I take the DRC one, and then I'll hand over to Manjit. So yeah, look, DRC is, you know, it's one of our larger markets. And, you know, it's a market with a lot of favorable dynamics for operating in the telecom sector. There's, you know, first of all, it's a country of 100 million or more people. It's a huge country, with, you know, some very large cities, such as Kinshasa, which has a population of 15 million people. And it's also a country with vast areas of gaps in coverage.
You know, so I think it's something like 40 out of 100 million people in the country actually don't live in an area with mobile phone coverage today. And so you've got, you've got dynamics in DRC, whereby in Kinshasa and other large cities, you know, 4G is very much being rolled out, and densification's happening. There's actually 5G trials going on right now in Kinshasa, amongst the, the big mobile operators. You know, so that will be starting soon. And then at the same time, you, you've got, you know, big, big new coverage requirements in new areas where, you know, thousands or hundreds of thousands of people live, which, you know, obviously, leads to more of the, the built-to-suit products being required.
And, you know, as the largest and the most experienced tower company operating in the country, we've been operating there since 2011. You know, we, I believe, offer a very high quality of service in a challenging market, where the infrastructure is weak in DRC, which makes the day-to-day operations more difficult regarding infrastructure of towers. And so I think we have a compelling offering to all the mobile operators there. And certainly we're, you know, we're doing business with all and helping all to grow their networks. And you're seeing that in the numbers come through. So it's really the focus on operational excellence and being able to navigate the challenges and lack of infrastructure there. And our team there are doing a fantastic job. Manjit, do you wanna take the other ones?
Yeah, sure.
Sorry, sorry, just to-
I'm sorry.
Sorry, Tom, I wonder if you can say anything just to hit that on the head a little bit. Nothing untoward there with the negative ads in the third quarter.
Sorry, John, the line just broke up. Sorry.
Forgive me. I think the trends in quarter adds for towers and tenancies in Ghana specifically seem to have gone sort of backwards. Is there anything untoward going on there?
Right, sorry, in Ghana. Yeah, sorry. So we've had some legacy managed sites in Ghana from an acquisition we did many, many years ago, which we passed back to the mobile operator. So they were, I think, either low or almost zero margin sites. So it's basically a one-off, yeah, this quarter with sort of minimal impact. I think overall, though, in Ghana, we've seen strong rollout from the big mobile operators, with something like 10% year-over-year growth in tenancies in the country. So, yeah, so what you're seeing there is a kind of one-off small blip this quarter, but the underlying is actually growing well with the big operators there.
And just to add to that as well, not only is it 10% growth in terms of tenancies, from a tenancy ratio perspective, year-on-year, it's been one of our fastest growing at about 0.2x across the group. So you're adding a lot of colos in that market. I think also just as another case in point for Ghana, it is one of our kind of OpEx innovation hubs at the moment, and we're utilizing that as an OpCo to look at how we do clean power technologies and really look at power as a general service in that market. So I think we'll see some other kind of improvements going on in that market in due course as well. But from a year-on-year basis, probably a fantastic year for Ghana.
Then just picking up a couple of your other points. So just on fuel, just to kind of get, as we look forward to the following year, we'll give more detailed guidance in terms of where we expect to be for 2024 in March, following our full year results. But, you know, in short, what we expect, we're seeing at the moment, at least in terms of power costs, is that they are stabilizing in most of the markets. So we do expect potentially that some of the lease rate movements that happen on a quarterly basis will start to kind of potentially taper, but we continue to monitor how power costs move. They can move in period-on-period. So on that basis, we may see that kind of more stabilizing.
And then from an OpEx savings perspective, we'll give guidance at the full year, but we hope to see some more coming through from Project 100. Generally, we spend around $10 million per annum on Project 100, and we look to get a return that is at least our cost of capital, if not a bit more. So you'll start to see some of that coming through during the course of next year as well. With regards to the question on guidance, particularly around portfolio free cash flow, so just on the EBITDA growth, that is very much a function of the increased tenancies. So that's one of the, the, the key pieces there. For portfolio free cash flow, that's driven by the EBITDA growth and a little bit less tax.
That's partially driven by the fact that in some of the markets, there's been a slight amendment in some of the tax laws, so that you get a little bit more of a shield from your shareholder loans. So that certainly had a bit of a benefit during the course of this year. Again, though, I wouldn't change the modeling in terms of what we've guided as a general kind of stretch forward number, in terms of increasing to around 4%-5% of revenues over the medium term. So I'd hold that steady until we give updated guidance next year.
Thank you both very much, and congratulations to the whole team.
Thanks, John.
Thanks, John.
Thank you, John. Our next question today comes from Rohit Modi, from Citi. Rohit, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, thank you for taking my question. Am I audible? Sorry.
Yeah, we can hear you, Rohit.
Oh, great. Thank you. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on greater results. Most of them has been answered, just a couple. Firstly, just to follow up on Ghana. You mentioned returning some of the towers to one of the operator. Just trying to understand, was there a sale of tower and you generated some cash flow, or how that worked? Do you have similar kind of contract with other towercos where telcos where you might have might return the towers at some point of time, or do you have that kind of deal done?
Secondly, in terms of your midterm guidance, you have annual tenancy additions of 1,600-2,100. Now, there's increase in tenancy guidance this year. Just trying to understand, should we take this as a floor? Is there a change in your midterm guidance, or it remains the same, what you guided last year? Yeah, that's it from my side.
Great. I'll take these ones. So yeah, on the Ghana point, look, it's only a small handful of towers, and these are effectively managed towers rather than owned towers. We do have basically, across the business, a small number of managed sites. So we didn't own them, though, from the original deal that we did back in 2010, and we effectively just given those back. So, we no longer manage those. So that we didn't generate any capital. It wasn't for sale. It was just, you know, about 15, 15 tower sites. So, that is all it was. So I'd say relatively de minimis in the grand scheme of things. And sorry, just on your second question, sorry, can you just remind me that one again?
Yeah. Sorry. In terms of your tenancy
Oh, guidance, sorry.
Yeah.
Apologies, yes. Again, we will give updated guidance in March. I'd again just keep the guidance as it currently stands, in terms of what you've currently got modeled. I wouldn't increase it and utilize what we're doing this year as the run rate. But we keep it as it stands. We'll give some updated guidance in March, and again, who knows? But we hope to upsize during the course of next year, should things go well.
Thank you. Sorry, just one more, I forgot to ask about, is your view around M&A, and I know you spoke about this earlier, previous quarters. Now that you're back to your leverage range and you expecting it to go further down, does your focus change from pivoting towards organic growth to M&A again? Or, are you still, in 2024, you're still focusing on organic growth, and you don't see anything on that M&A plan?
Hi, Rohit, Tom here. Yeah, yeah, look, very much focused on organic growth and deleveraging. So, we're not focused on M&A right now, for the foreseeable future.
Thanks, Tom. Thanks very much.
Bye.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from David Wright from Bank of America. David, your line is now open. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you very much. A question, to be honest, Tom, it's almost just a direct response to your previous answer, which is you're focused on organic growth and deleveraging. I say this with the greatest of respect, but why so closed right now to further M&A? You guys have clearly got a very good grasp of acquisitions. You are clearly very efficient at bringing, you know, onboarding grids and building. And, you know, you've proven that these your acquisitions can, you know, generate returns and can add to organic growth.
Now, you've obviously just brought in a leverage number that is ahead of expectations, and there is no reason, especially with the contracted revenues, not to expect that momentum to remain very, very strong through the next year. So I'm just wondering why, why so closed to future M&A, further M&A, I should say, given that it has gone so well and your deleverage is clearly ahead of ahead of plan? And maybe if you could just throw into your answer, you know, at which point, you know, do you even start to think about your own shares as an attractive target? Thank you.
Yeah. No, thanks. Thanks, David. No, very, very, very good question or challenge. Yeah, look, I think, you know, where we sit today, you know, with the global markets as they are and rates where they are and telco valuations where they are, you know, the telco M&A generally comes in fits and bursts, or certainly it has, you know, for the last 13 years across Africa and the Middle East, which is really since the first M&A deal happened. And, you know, at the moment, there's really not too much M&A out there. You know, obviously we keep our ears to the street, and any deals that are happening or might be happening, obviously come across our desk.
But I think that, you know, sellers at the moment, unless they absolutely have to, would probably wait a bit, I think. And, you know, that's reflecting the relatively low volume of deals happening at the moment. You know, and I think for us as a business, we've gone through two years of huge M&A, doubled the business, closed our last deal last December in Oman, moved into this year in the kind of new look Helios Towers, with the nine markets and, you know, Middle East as well as Africa. And this year is always a year for us to bed down, get the business actual processes up and running in the new markets, start to lease up the new assets which we'd acquired at low, very low tenancy ratios, start to drive the returns up, again.
You know, all of that is obviously happening, and as you said, leverage is coming down faster than previously guided. So all that's great. But, you know, my sense of it is that, you know, we see that type of story continuing, both from an external market perspective in terms of, you know, potential supply of high quality M&A. We, you know, I think we'd probably see that continuing into next year, and from our own perspective, we're very focused on increasing cash flow generation, you know, coming to the inflection point on being cash consumptive and moving to cash bottom line cash generation, and, you know, the consequential deleveraging that comes with that.
You know, I think that our stated guided range for leverage is 3.5-4.5. You know, we've just got to the top end of that. You know, that will come down further, obviously, over the next few quarters. You know, I think that from a, you know, buyback point of view, you know, I think that would need to be assessed at the time. I think we wanna see ourselves get to below 4x on the leverage, which is, you know, where we have guided to be, by the end of next year.
You know, and then to the extent we have surplus cash on the balance sheet, you know, at that point, then, you know, we'll have decisions to make, whether we utilize that for accelerating even more organic growth, which, you know, if this momentum continues, certainly could be a potential use for it. I think, you know, if rates are still in the same place, arguably we might choose to accelerate deleveraging even more through repaying some debt. But we'll have to weigh that up at the time, you know, versus some kind of shareholder disbursement, you know, obviously, as well.
So I think all those options on the table, the order I've just mentioned is, you know, sort of our capital allocation priority order at the moment. You know, quite a lot of that is rate driven. And so we'll need to see how the capital markets rates move over the coming quarters. And, you know, that could be a dynamic list as things change externally for us. So I hope that answers your question.
It does, yeah. I appreciate your thinking around that. Thanks. Thanks again, guys.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Stella Cridge from Barclays. Stella, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi there, and many thanks all for the call and all the comments so far, including the last ones on where debt ranks in the priorities. There was maybe just one follow-up I wanted to ask. So, you obviously took out a portion of the bond that's due. You know, would it be your kind of ideal base case that the remainder would be refinanced in the dollar bond market, and you are kind of waiting for a market opportunity? Just wonder where your thinking sit on that.
Yeah, I can take that one. We do like the bond instrument. So we will be kind of keeping ourselves ready to potentially go back to the market, should the opportunity arise. But I think at the moment we're we do feel very comfortable about where, about the balance sheet and our debt profile. The debt maturity of our high yield bond isn't yet due for another two years, so December 2025. We've now got the bond in a place where it's certainly a lot lower than what it was previously, you know, having chunked it down by almost a third.
And we also have group term loans of about $200 million, undrawn, which we could potentially utilize to refinance should we ever need it. So I think we sit here today in a position where the balance sheet is strong, and we'll just wait and see, and try and tap the market opportunistically whenever that moment occurs. But I think for now, we're in a good position.
That's great. Many thanks for that.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have another question today from John Karidis from Numis. John, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you for allowing this. I just wanted to talk about just one issue, please, and that's sort of competition [audio distortion] . So, it would be useful to just get a picture of what proportion of your estate actually faces competition from other tower cos. And also touch on your lease rates. It used to be that you'd say that the lease rates were significantly below the total cost of ownership for a mobile operator. Is there any update on that? Any numbers, anything like that, please?
Hey, John. Yeah, thanks for the questions. Yeah, so I mean, in terms of competition, there's other tower companies operating in most of our markets. There's perhaps a couple where there aren't any yet. So, you know, we fully expect there to be other tower operators where we operate. You know, but in seven of our nine markets, we're by far the largest and number one in the market. And, you know, we think that scale within a market matters. It means you've got more tower stock to sell co-locations on. So, you know, that's our strategy, to be large in the markets we operate in.
From a competition perspective, to be better in an operational sense than competition and deliver customer service excellence. You know, there's a number of different types of services which reflect that. The two most important services that we and other tower companies offer, which we spend all our time focusing on and hopefully excelling in, are power uptime, where I do believe we are best-in-class for that, and rollout speed, both of new build-to-suit sites and also obviously of co-locations, for which we also deliver very, very strongly on. That's how we think about it, and we do expect competition, but we focus our business excellence to deliver best for our customers.
And just on the lease rate level, there isn't really much change there to be honest. I know we haven't had that in the slides for perhaps a few quarters. You know, I think we're still around 30% lower than total cost of ownership. And you know, that's the way we like it. We like to operate in a way which is efficient, which aims to maximize the number of tenants sharing a tower, and therefore making our profitability through multiple tenants, so volume basically, rather than having whacking great lease rates to create our profitability, because you know, they can come under more pressure. So that's our strategy, and yeah, that very much is similar to what you've seen in the past at the moment.
Fab. Thanks, Tom.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. As a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile any remaining questions. Hey, our last question today comes from Ksenia Edwards from Loomis Sayles. Your line is now open. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, sorry, my question has been answered. Thank you.
Okay, no problem. In that case, we'll hand back to Tom for any closing remarks.
Great. Thanks, Ellen. Well, look, thank you everyone for dialing in today. Very good to speak with you, as always. And thank you to everyone asking the questions. We really appreciate it. So we look forward to engaging with you over the coming weeks and months, and look forward to providing our full year update, which will be in March, in a few months' time. So see you then, and take care. Thank you.
This concludes the conference call, everybody. Thank you all very much for joining. You may now disconnect your lines. Have a great rest of your day.