AI Wants You To Own This Telecom Stock in 2025 — Here’s Why

Much has been made of artificial intelligence’s impact on the financial markets. Beyond providing a new avenue for automation and increased productivity, AI has also had a profound effect on the way in which equity research is approached.

In that regard, we’re no exception. Our quant rating system, Zen Ratings, uses 115 factors divided across 7 categories called Component Grade ratings to evaluate stocks. One of those categories is Artificial Intelligence.

Before we added the AI factor into the mix, stocks with a Zen Rating of A — the ones belonging to the top 5% produced an average annual return of roughly 28%.

That’s far from shabby by any stretch of the imagination — but once we added the AI Component Grade rating, the stocks with an A rating demonstrated an average annual return of 32.52%.

Now, that’s not to say that using the AI factor as a shorthand for an investment’s overall quality is the way to go. You’ll still have to consider your specific circumstances and how an equity would fit into your portfolio. However, as a method of narrowing down your search — this is a great place to start.

Our Zen Strategies AI Factor portfolio consists of 7 stocks that have the highest AI Component Grade ratings. It has produced an all-time annual return of 48.01% — far outperforming the S&P 500’s 10.17%.

Today, we’ll be taking a look at the newest addition to this portfolio — IHS Holding (NYSE: IHS).

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IHS is one of the largest independent telecom tower operators in the world. The company develops, deploys, and maintains critical infrastructure across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe.

It might not be the most attention-grabbing line of business — but IHS Holding has managed to reach a $2.44 billion market cap. On top of that, it stacks up quite nicely compared to peers and rivals. The Telecom industry consists of 57 stocks and has an Industry Rating of B — and IHS is the 2nd highest-rated stock within it.

Despite a narrow earnings miss in the company’s last quarterly report, released on August 12, IHS raised full-year 2025 outlook across all key metrics. Since the start of the year, IHS shares have surged by 127.20% — but there’s reason to believe that the rally isn’t over yet.

First things first — Wall Street certainly seems to think that there’s more alpha in store. The stock is a consensus Strong Buy among equity analysts — it currently has 4 Strong Buy ratings, 1 Buy rating, and 1 Hold rating. The average 12-month price forecast for the stock, currently pegged at $9.38, implies a 29.13% upside.

The real kicker (or rather, kickers) can be found by taking a closer look at the metrics. At the moment, our quant rating system ranks IHS shares in the top 1% of equities. In fact, it’s currently the 13th highest-rated stock on the whole — out of roughly 4,600.

We already mentioned our Artificial Intelligence rating. To cut a long story short, it uses a neural network trained on two decades of data to identify likely outperformers. This is the stock’s biggest strength — in this category, it ranks in the 95th percentile of the equities that we track.

What sets IHS apart, however, is that it is incredibly well-rounded.

On account of positive analyst coverage, the stock ranks in the top 23% when it comes to Sentiment. The company’s balance sheet is quite healthy — looking at its Financials Component Grade rating, IHS ranks in the 87th percentile. 

Our Growth rating looks at sales acceleration, profit margin improvement, and projected earnings growth (on top of a few other metrics) — in this regard, IHS is in the top 9%.

When I saw the year-to-date (YTD) returns, my first concern was the valuation — but at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 21.35x, it’s clear that this isn’t an issue. In terms of Value, IHS is in the top 8% of the equities that we track.

Last but not least, we have the stock’s Momentum Component Grade rating — and since we already touched on the 127.20% YTD rally, it will come as no surprise that IHS ranks in the top 6%.

So, with everything said and done, what are we left with? IHS is quite promising — it’s still cheap, in spite of a huge surge, backed by a strong balance sheet, and it has secured Wall Street’s confidence.

—> Click here to research IHS. If you’d like to find more AI-approved stocks, take a gander at our AI Factor Zen Strategies Portfolio

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