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Saudi Twitter backer KHC enjoys 996% soar in profits

By Shane McGinley
Reuters
Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, founder of Kingdom Holding Company
  • Group has stakes in CitiGroup, Accor and Uber as well as Twitter
  • Recorded net profit of $1.78bn for first nine months of this year

Shares in Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) rose 3.2 percent in early trading today as the Saudi firm on Wednesday reported a 996 percent year-on-year increase in earnings for the first nine months of 2022.

The investment holding firm, which is 16.87 percent owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), recorded a net profit after Zakat and tax of SAR6.707 billion ($1,788 billion) for the first nine months of this year, compared with SAR612 million for the same period in 2021.

The profit surge was on the back of revenue rising 100 percent to SAR1,868 billion over the period.

KHC owns stakes in a number of global brands, including CitiGroup, JD.com, hospitality company Accor, and ride-sharing companies Uber, Careem and Lyft.

Probably its most high-profile recent investment is in the social media giant Twitter, which was bought by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, for $44 billion on October 27.

A few days later, KHC announced it was rolling over its stake in Twitter, which it said was valued at SAR986 million, to the new entity owned by Musk.

Announcing its third quarter results on the Saudi Exchange, which saw revenue rise 91 percent year-on-year to SAR649 million, it said net income was up 226 percent to SAR354 million.

“The reason for the increase in the net profit during the current quarter compared to the same quarter of the last year is due to the increase in dividend income, hotel and other operating revenues, increase in share of results from equity-accounted investees, and increase in other gains,” the firm said in a bourse statement.

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