Sunday, Jun 07, 2015

Dubai: After a gap of two years, Dubai Investment’s private equity arm, Masharie, is in the market again.

Masharie is eyeing a total of three deals in 2015 worth Dh150-200 million, one in Saudi Arabia and two in the UAE in the infrastructure sector, as it diversifies away from its main forte which is construction.

“We are almost done with acquiring a stake in a Saudi Arabia-based electrical contracting company. Our stake would be 15 per cent in the company and worth around Dh60 million,” said Khalid Rashed Al Jarwan, General Manager of Masharie — the private equity arm of Dubai Investments PJSC.

The Saudi Arabian company specialises in the electrical sector in the building of substations, and mainly services the government projects. “We have studied the company and it has at least 3-4 years of committed projects with different governmental bodies in Saudi Arabia. The new acquisition will add a lot of value to Masharie in terms of profitability and revenues,” said Al Jarwan.

Masharie is also eyeing acquisition in two more UAE-based companies which are still in the due diligence phase. “One of them is specialised in generating electricity, the first private sector space in the UAE in the field. So far, the numbers look promising and the whole deal looks very interesting,” said Al Jarwan.

The other acquisition, an oilfield technical services company, is still in the very early stages of due diligence. “With these acquisitions, we would be entering electricity and oil and gas industries — [this will be] the first time that Masharie would enter the sectors. Masharie services the construction sector currently, making up for 90 per cent of its revenues,” said Al Jarwan.

Healthy portfolio

The new acquisitions comes amid growth trends for Masharie, which posted a 26 per cent rise in revenues in the first quarter of 2015 at Dh175 million, compared to the first quarter of last year. In 2014, the company achieved consolidated revenues of Dh731 million as against Dh550 million in 2013.

“These figures show a growth trend in the healthy portfolio of Masharie. As a company, Masharie’s diversified business is its forte. We would prefer to look at companies that operate in different sectors rather than focus on just one sector. That is our future strategy at Masharie,” said Al Jarwan.

Moreover, Masharie is not bound to the UAE market, and always open to eyeing investments in other countries, he added.

“For the last two years, we have been consolidating our portfolio and trying to lift our performance. We have been working on enhancing the performance across our portfolio. We needed to maintain healthy margins and secure more projects for our companies and the favourable market conditions helped us in our growth path,” Al Jarwan said.

By Siddesh Suresh ?Mayenkar Staff Reporter

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