Kuwait-based warehousing and logistics company Agility has revealed that it plans to spend up to $100 million over the next three years to rollout Shipa.com, the online freight forwarding platform that it launched in April this year.

In a filing posted on the Boursa Kuwait and the Dubai Financial Market websites on Monday morning, the company said that as part of its digital transformation plans, it would invest $100 million in the platform "to help small businesses, entrepreneurs and consumers manage their logistics business online and by mobile device".

"The investment is intended to help Agility meet the needs of underserved customer segments and develop digital-first ecommerce, freight and deliver business", the firm said, adding that the impact of this would be reflected in the company's financial statements over the next three years.

Agility said when launching the service in April that Shipa would allow SMEs to book and pay for shipping full or part container loads online, as well as offering a tracking service for parcels that had not previously been widely available to most SMEs.

The company, which increased revenue for the first nine months of 2018 by 12.7 percent to 1.15 billion Kuwaiti dinars ($3.78 billion) and net profit by 20 percent to 58.9 million dinars, has more than 500 offices in 100 countries.

An analysts' note published on the company last week by Bahrain-based SICO Bank, described its third quarter financial results as "robust", but it retained its 'neutral' rating on the company, stating that some of the positives relating to its performance were already priced in to its current share price.

SICO revised its target price for the stock upwards to 0.9 dinars per share. At 0920 GST on Monday morning, it was trading at 0.821 dinars per share, having increased in value by 18.5 per cent since the start of the year.

(Writing by Michael Fahy; Editing by Shane McGinley)

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