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Business Digest
Business Digest
August 2010
BUSINESS DIGEST
BATELCO: Profit falls 20%
Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco) has posted a 20 per cent fall in quarterly profit, hurt by stronger competition at home and costs for new operations abroad. Batelco is one of the smaller telecoms operators in the Gulf with a home market of just over one million, in which it faces rising competition from bigger rivals such as Kuwait’s Zain and Saudi Telecom. Other Gulf operators such as STC or Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat) have also posted lower quarterly profits as they spend funds on growing abroad to offset lower profits in their newly-liberalised home markets. Batelco said in a statement that net profit attributable to shareholders in the quarter ended on 30 June fell to $59.3 million from nearly $74.2 million in the year-earlier quarter. Analysts at SICO Investment Bank had expected Batelco to post net profit of $63.6 million. “Reduced market share for mobile and broadband services in Bahrain and strong price erosion adversely affected our revenues and profits,” chairman Shaikh Hamad bin Abdulla al Khalifa said.
Bahrain Islamic: Rights issue
Loss-making Bahrain Islamic Bank plans to raise up to $143 million in a rights issue at a 37 per cent discount, the first time a major Bahraini retail bank has sought fresh capital since the financial crisis. “We plan to raise up to 75 per cent of our paid-up capital which is about $191 million,” chief executive Mohammed Ebrahim Mohammed said. Analysts say Bahrain’s regulations oblige companies to offer new shares at the nominal price of the stock. The bank, the fifth-largest retail bank in Bahrain, did not say what the money was for.
OIL: Defying sanctions
International sanctions against Iran are not new and it will adapt to the latest round of more severe US and European measures that specifically target the oil and gas industry, says Iran’s Opec governor. He also said Iran is willing to be flexible about which currencies it uses for oil trade following statements it is contemplating the United Arab Emirates’ currency for its European transactions. “The point is the sanctions are not new. The shape is different. We can carry on,” says Mohammad Ali Khatibi. Analysts have said the tougher measures will make it even more difficult for Iran to develop its dilapidated oil industry and to import refined products to make up for the country’s lack of refining capacity. Khatibi says Iran can cope. “Still we are developing projects and we can expand our gas industry, refining, petrochemicals industry.”
ECONOMY: Foreign debt $22 bn
Iran’s foreign debt stood at around $22 billion in December 2009, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has said. In a report on the country’s economic performance to 21 December, the end of the third quarter of the Iranian year, the central bank said: “The total of the country’s external debt stood at $22.148 billion.” It gave no details of which banks or countries had made the loans. The central bank report gave the value of exports and imports in the three quarters as $63.48 billion and $47.43 billion respectively, and the foreign trade balance for the period as $16.37 billion. The report did not make clear whether the exports included gas or oil. The Iranian governmentdivides exports into oil and non-oil categories.
KURDS: Smuggling clamp
Iraqi Kurdistan’s cabinet has approved stricter measures including stepped-up border surveillance to stop any illegal trade in crude oil across the borders of the semi-autonomous northern region, says regional prime minister Barham Salih. Salih also said that he hopes legal exports of crude from Kurdistan, which were halted last year amid a dispute with Baghdad, could be restarted quickly. But he said that his government is still awaiting a decision from the central government on how exactly foreign oil firms will be paid for investment costs. In an interview at his office in Arbil, Salih said his government is not aware of any illegal crude traffic across Iraqi Kurdistan’s borders despite reports of long lines of tankers crossing into neighbouring Iran every day. The reports said the trucks carried both crude and refined oil products, and challenged US efforts to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear research programme. Under Iraqi law any export of crude has to be done through the State Oil Marketing Organisation, the federal government marketing company.
OIL: Conference blow
Little concrete progress has emerged from a conference held by Iraq’s oil ministry to tackle oil firms’ complaints that bureaucracy and political deadlock are hindering vital projects, say company executives. The two-day conference in Baghdad aimed to deal with logistical and infrastructure bottlenecks that international oil companies (IOCs) face as they start work on some of the biggest deals the oil industry has seen. Instead, it ended with a sense of frustration. “We raised our issues. There is a lot of goodwill but no concrete steps. The expectation was that this conference would solve the issues faced by the IOCs on the spot,” said one oil executive who attended the meeting.
KFH: Profit surges 22%
Kuwait Finance House (KFH), the country’s biggest Islamic lender, reported a 22 per cent rise in second-quarter net profit, beating expectations. The lender made a net profit of KD 39.9 million ($138.4 million) in the second quarter, up from KD 32.7 million in the year earlier period, KFH said in a statement on the bourse website. Net income in the first half of the year was KD 70.8 million, it said. Analysts at EFG-Hermes had expected KFH to post a net profit of KD 32 million in the second quarter, according to a Reuters survey. Independent analyst Hajjaj BuKhadour said the improvement “does not reflect the operational results which show that loans and credit operations were down”. The lender’s chairman, Bader al Mukhaizeem, said in a statement that financing transactions reached KD 450 million during the first half of this year. 
KGL: Contract row hope
Kuwaiti logistics firm KGL said the US government has agreed to look into an objection filed by the company regarding the award of a military supply contract to its competitor. The firm, also known as Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company, said in a statement to the bourse that it was awaiting a decision on the matter. KGL filed the objection in April after the US military awarded the contract to the Dubai-based ANHAM FZCO in the wake of fraud charges against its main long-time supplier Kuwait’s Agility
OIL: $3.5 bn to spur output
Oman plans to spend $3.5 billion in the next five years to boost oil output by 18 per cent, extending previous increases, and to generate cash for infrastructure projects, a finance ministry official said. “We are targeting an average of a million barrels per day by 2015 and we will be spending some $3.5 billion in the next five years to achieve it,” the official said. Oman is producing around 850,000 barrels a day and expects to raise output to an average of 870,000 b/d this year. It has managed to turn around declining output, boosting production in both 2008 and 2009. Following a price crash after the July 2008 record of nearly $150 a barrel, government oil revenues fell in 2009 to $11.67 billion, about 12 per cent less than 2008, a central bank report said earlier this year. The new investment will be used to drill more wells, including in the Al Ghubar South field, which contains reserves of a billion barrels, the official said, adding Oman hoped it would be able to announce an increase in the size of its reserves.
BANK DHOFAR: Profit rises
Bank Dhofar, Oman’s second-largest bank by market value, saw quarterly net profit rise by 16 per cent but the results fell short of analysts’ forecasts. Second-quarter net profit rose to OR 8.9 million ($23.12 million) from OR 7.7 million in the second quarter of 2009, according to Reuters calculations. The lender posted a profit of OR 8.8 million for the first-quarter of the year. Analysts had forecast net profit of OR 9.1 million for the second quarter, according to a Reuters survey. For the six months ended on 30 June, the bank’s profits rose by 25 per cent to OR 17.7 million, it said in a statement. Customer deposits for the first half of the year rose by 15.1 per cent, while loans and advances grew by 6.8 per cent.
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