UAE conglomerate Dubai Investments expects to report a fourth-quarter profit of 240 million dirhams ($65 million) before provisions and impairments, its chief executive told Reuters on January 06. Dubai Investments, which is involved in sectors from real estate to manufacturing, reported a fourth-quarter net profit of 141 million dirhams in 2009.
The UAE-based conglomerate, in which the emirate's sovereign wealth fund Investment Corporation of Dubai has a stake, expects full-year profit of 930 million dirhams, Khalid bin Kalban said.
Kalban said the group, which had earlier said it plans to sell 30 percent of private equity unit Masharie through an IPO in 2011, said it hopes to launch the share sale before June 30, but only if market conditions are favourable. "If we feel by March, April that the sentiment is not right then we may push it to the end of the year," he added.
Kalban declined to put a figure on the pricing for IPO, but said the group's expectations were reasonable and that the decision by UAE handset retailer Axiom Telecom to cancel its flotation in December would not discourage Masharie.
"We are not highly pricing the company. That is one advantage we have."
"We do not want to go through what Axiom had gone through. They were highly priced and timing was also not right."
The company, which derives most of its revenues from the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf Arab countries, said it has its shifted focus to other markets in the region like Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, Qatar and Kazakhstan.