• Home
• /
• Local business

Saudi Telecoms Foreign Expansion Tops Targets

“STC has exceeded the initially-announced target of making 10 per cent of its revenues from foreign expansions as we have up to now generated 21 per cent,” Chief Executive Saud Al Duweish was quoted as saying by Al Riyadh newspaper.

“The company will work to foster the gains of the acquisitions it has already made... and will continue to search and examine acquisition opportunities in the region,” he added, but gave no more details.

STC, the Arab world’s largest telecom company by market value, spent around $3.5 billion in 2008 on a 35-per cent stake in Oger Telecom and a 26-per cent stake in a consortium that won Kuwait’s third mobile phone licence. In 2007, STC paid $3 billion for a stake in Malaysia’s Maxis.

More recently, STC won Bahrain’s third mobile licence after bidding $230 million.

STC is under intense pressure to improve profitability as a regional telecom war heats up, with rivals like Kuwait’s Zain and Emirates Telecommunications competing within Saudi Arabia.

STC will also lose in 2009 its monopoly on Saudi Arabia’s fixed-line services with the entry of three new operators at once.

The company posted a worse-than-expected 62 per cent fall in fourth-quarter profit after losing 2 billion riyals ($533.3 million) to foreign currency fluctuations on acquisitions it made in 2008.