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Reuters
Saudi Arabian retailer Fawaz Abdulaziz Alhokair Co missed analysts’ estimates as it reported a 98 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit on Thursday after its operations made losses and total group sales fell.
The company made a net profit of 3.17 million riyals ($845,626.48) in the three months to March 31, down from 201.74 million riyals in the year-earlier period, according to a bourse filing. Alhokair’s financial year starts on April 1.
Three analysts polled by Reuters had on average forecast Alhokair would make a quarterly profit of 160.16 million riyals.
Alhokair, which owns franchise rights for brands including Mango, Zara and Banana Republic in the Middle East, said its quarterly net profit from its domestic business was 92 million riyals, but its foreign operations made a loss of 89 million riyals.
Quarterly sales fell 3.2 percent year-on-year to 1.56 billion riyals.
Saudi retailers have struggled this year as a protracted slump in oil prices put government and consumer spending under pressure, while a two-month salary bump to government employees which boosted retail sales in early 2015 wasn’t repeated.
Jarir Marketing, another large retailer in the kingdom, posted a 29.5 percent drop in first-quarter net profit on April 10, the same day as major food and dairy firm Almarai warned of
challenging market conditions as it posted flat year-on-year net profit growth.
Alhokair’s annual profit for the 12 months to March 31 was 615.8 million riyals, down 23 percent from a year
earlier.
Fawaz Alhokair Group is one of the leading groups of companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia focusing on retail and real estate business sectors. The Group started in 1989 as a partnership between three brothers, Dr. Fawaz Abdulaziz Alhokair, Eng. Salman Abdulaziz Alhokair and Dr. Abdul Majeed Abdulaziz Alhokair as a retail apparel store operator with two menswear stores.
Currently, the group has diversified from fashion retail business into other sectors. The diversification has further extended to cover non-retail business sectors such as real-estate, construction, financial services, health care and hospitality.
The Group has expanded its business operations beyond the borders of the Kingdom and invested in retail and real estate sectors across the GCC countries, reaching to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), USA and Central Asia and Caucasus.