Gulf Investment Corporation (GIC) announced the results of its operations for the fiscal year ending 31 December 2018. Operating profits, before provisions, reported USD125 million, while provisions of USD18 million for the Principle Investment portfolio and other assets. As a result, the Corporation net profit reached USD107 million.
The announcement follows the approval of the Corporation’s financial statements by the Annual General Meeting, held on Monday, 8th April 2019 at the GIC’s headquarters in the State of Kuwait.
Commenting on the financial results for 2018, H.E. Bader Al-Ajeel, the Chairman of the Board, said: “it is a great success for the Corporation to achieve these good results amidst the challenging environment that financial markets witnessed in 2018. Moreover, the reaffirmation of GIC’s credit rating at A2 by Moody’s reflects the confidence in the integrity of the Corporation’s business model as well as its financial strength; liquidity profile and its outstanding performance”.
H.E. Bader Al-Ajeel added, “The Corporation principle investment activities in the GCC, through the addition of new projects or divestment of existing ones, is a renewed and continued process. The Corporation has exited from three projects, while it continued to progress other projects under construction such as Bahrain’s LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) project, Oman’s Moon Iron and Steel Company, and Saudi Arabia’s Sudair Pharmaceutical Company”.
Mr. Ibrahim Ali Al-Qadhi, the Chief Executive Officer, commented saying: “Based on the commitment of the executive management to achieve the objectives, and to improve performance, we successfully passed the first year of the transitional phase to implement the Corporation’s new investment policy that includes leverage reduction, reallocation of assets, and measuring performance against market benchmarks”.
Commenting on the investment portfolios performance, Mr. Al-Qadhi added, “The daily management and monitoring of the global investment portfolio has resulted in achieving good results that outperformed most of market benchmarks. Concerning the principle investment portfolio, the Corporation successfully refinanced three of its power and water projects, of which, Al-Ezzel Power for an amount of $243, and Al-Dur Power and Water Plant amounting to $1.3 billion.
Performance has also improved for number of core investments in the portfolio, most notably the improvement in the performance of our projects in metal and petrochemical sectors”.
It is worth noting that in March 2018 the corporation settled the $400 million of maturing bond on due date, thereby, reducing the debt-to-equity ratio to 26% by the end of 2018, which reflects the Corporation’s new strategy of reducing its financial obligations.