Company posts KD 3.9 mln revenues, KD 1.6 mln net profit

Global HQs in Kuwait

KUWAIT CITY, May 2: Global Investment House (‘Global’ or the ‘Company’), a regional asset management and investment banking firm headquartered in Kuwait, with offices in major capital markets in the MENA region, today announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2018 reporting a net profit of KD 1.6 million ($5.3 million), revenues of KD 3.9 million ($13 million) and fee and commission income of KD 2.5 million ($8.3 million) representing 64 percent of total revenues.During Q1 2018, Asset Management generated KD 2.7 million ($9.0 million) revenues and the Asset Under Management (AUM) grew by KD 16.0 million ($53.4 million) to KD 926 million ($3.1 billion) stemming from both new money raising and performance driven AUM growth and affected by cash distributions to clients. During the quarter, the real estate asset management team successfully completed the sale of the first property acquired as part of the UK National Commercial Real Estate Program in September 2015 and let to National Air Traffic Services (NATS), achieving total return of 23.6 percent, internal rate of return of 10.55 percent of which the income element represented 9.3 percent per annum.Special situation asset management entered into a specialized asset management agreement with a regional group to manage a portfolio worth $90mn. Private equity asset management exited two portfolio companies and plans distribution of the proceeds to clients during the second quarter. MENA Asset Management continued to report competitive returns and its managed funds outperformed their respective benchmarks.The team received two recognitions by industry experts, “Best Kuwait Asset Manager” and “Best Saudi Equity Fund”. During Q1 2018, the Investment Banking team generated KD 0.2 million ($0.6 million) revenues from two M&A mandates in the fi- nancial and industrial sectors. The team is currently working on several mandates and has an interesting pipeline of M&A and advisory mandates. On the brokerage front, Global made focused efforts to grow the institutional brokerage business and generated KD 0.3 million ($0.9 million) revenues.The Company’s continuous efforts to control and rationalize its cost base resulted in a decline of KD 0.6 million or 19 percent in the operating cost base to KD 2.5 million. Hareb Al-Darmaki, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: “The Company had an excellent start to the year; successfully closing several transactions, winning a number of new mandates and reporting positive results. The team’s efforts are highly recognized through the successful implementation of the fee-based business strategy thus maintaining high quality of revenues, which remains our priority.”Sulaiman Mohammed Al-Rubaie, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We are delighted by these financial results, which refl ect the Company’s robust business model and trust of our clients and stakeholders in the Company. Despite the challenges, our team showed highest levels of commitment to continue creating value to all our stakeholders, through our resilient and robust fee-based business model, innovative strategies and execution capabilities.”