Dubai-based education and healthcare investment firm Amanat Holdings plans to raise debt to fund future projects and is eyeing expansions into Egypt and Kuwait, the company’s chief investment officer (CIO) Mohamad Hamade has said.

Amanat currently has investments in four education facilities in the United Arab Emirates, two healthcare outlets in Saudi Arabia and a maternity hospital in Bahrain.

In an interview with Zawya on Thursday, Hamade said his firm has used almost 79 percent of its 2.5 billion dirham ($680.7 million) paid-up capital, which is the amount of money the company received from shareholders when it sold its shares on the stock market for the first time. Amanat was listed on the Dubai Financial market in 2015.

“However, we have authorised capital of 5 billion dirhams and we are still debt-free,” Hamade said.  Authorised capital is the total amount of money the company is allowed to issue via share sales.

Asked if the company is planning to raise debt, Hamade said: “Yes, it is a natural progression”, but he did not give any details as to how much it is planning to raise, or a timeframe.

Amanat declared a net profit of 28 million dirhams in the first half of 2018, a 12 percent increase on the first half of last year. Its total revenue for the period increased by 7.4 percent year-on-year to 60 million dirhams, according to the company’s website.

Amanat has been actively investing over the past few months. Last month, it closed a deal to acquire the Middlesex University campus in Dubai from troubled private equity firm Abraaj Group for 369 million dirhams ($100 million) and it bought a 69.3 percent stake in Bahrain’s Royal Maternity Hospital for Women for 141.7 million dirhams.

In June, it purchased the real estate assets of North London Collegiate School in Dubai for 360 million dirhams. It also made a pledge to invest a further 45 million dirhams in the school’s expansion.

Hamade said while the company’s core focus to date has been Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the Arab region’s two biggest economies, there are deals in the pipeline for other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Egypt - the most populous Arab nation and the region’s third-biggest economy.

Strong pipeline

“We have a very strong deal flow pipeline across the region in Saudi, in the UAE, in Bahrain, in Kuwait and in Egypt,” Hamade said.

“We are starting to look at the wider MENA region, primarily Egypt. We are starting to look at Egypt as an opportunity,” he added, without providing details or a timeframe.

He said some of the company’s investors in Saudi Arabia and the UAE are considering entering Egypt either directly through establishing or investing in a new company, or indirectly through one of Amanat’s current investment platforms.

When asked whether healthcare or education is likely to offer the strongest returns on investments in the coming two-to-three years in the GCC, Hamade said he is optimistic about both, especially in certain niche areas.

“We strongly believe that industry specialisations (whether in education or healthcare) gives you an edge, especially in these tough times,” Hamade said.

The economies of the six GCC nations were badly hit by the economic slowdown that followed a sharp fall in oil prices that started in 2014. The UAE’s central bank has lowered its forecast for the economic growth this year after oil prices slowed slightly in the second quarter, Reuters reported last week, quoting a report by the UAE central bank.

“The honeymoon is over when people can just rise high without offering quality. At these times, it is all about offering high quality at an affordable price, which is what we are offering,” Hamade said.  

He said the company had not “yet” invested in startups or companies at an early stage, although it could explore such options in the future.

Amanat’s investment range is $75million- $150 million per project, Hamade said.

(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh; Editing by Michael Fahy)

(yasmine.saleh@thomsonreuters.com)


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