Egyptian Propylene and Polypropylene Company (EPPC), a plastic manufacturing company, is planning an initial public offering (IPO) to be expected by mid-2017, head of Amwal Al-Khaleej’s Cairo office Karim Saada told Daily News Egypt.
Amwal Al-Khaleej owns 16.4% of the plastic manufacturing company. The IPO aims to expand the company’s factory and double its production capacity.
Amwal Al-Khaleej is a private equity firm established in 2004. In 2005, the company started investing in Egypt and has become, as their CEO described, “very active in the board of companies” they have invested in.
The private equity company is currently looking for investments in the healthcare and the pharmaceutical sectors.
“The company will invest in new companies in Egypt by the end of this year or early next year,” said Saada. “Amwal Al-Khaleej would be taking 15% to 30% of any company it invests in.”
Saada said the company has a diversified investment portfolio in Egypt that varies from textile companies to trading companies.
In 2004, the company launched the AK1 fund with total investments worth SAR 1bn. The company exited from all the AK1 fund’s investments, and launched AK2 with total investments worth $400m and “returned 50% of those investments to their shareholders”.
Amwal Al-Khaleej recently announced its exit in February from Sarwa Capital, which is one of Egypt’s largest private sector companies.
“The Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund purchased our share in Sarwa Capital,” explained Saada. The company’s executive refused to disclose the selling price, but said that the exit had “very good returns”.
“Sarwa Capital’s exit comes at a time of renewed M&A interest in the Egyptian financial sector,” Saada said following the exit.
“The exit comes at an opportune time during the development of Egypt’s financial sector,” Amwal Al-Khaleej partner Noha Khattab added.
Regarding challenges currently facing the company in the Egyptian market, Saada said that the respite in political turmoil has exposed the realisation of past profits but now the biggest challenge lies in the lack of foreign currency reserves.
