Is there a way to add character spacing in UILabel?
I found some examples like: How to change an UILabel/UIFont's letter spacing?
But it's hard to believe that there isn't a easier way.
There is no other to achieve what you want than doing custom Quartz drawing, UILabel is not flexible enough. However, other people have taken on the challenge, there is for example OHAttributedLabel which allows you to set an NSAttributedString as the label's text. Try the NSKernAttributeName, it modifies kerning but I've never tried this on iOS, only OS X.
In IB you can click on Adjust to fit and (In font size), and set lines to '0' in in layout, to achieve near to your requirement.(or you can do it by code too).