Strong Growth, Sovereign Backing and Attractive Yields Drive Investment Interest in the UAE

How would you describe your role in the Abu Dhabi ecosystem?

Right, so, International Securities is a full-service brokerage and a capital markets partner.

We serve over 40,000 investors, the individual investors all the way to some of the largest institutional investors around the world.

Um, we, I like to think of us as sort of a liquidity facilitator, it being via direct trading or execution.

Um, we facilitate, uh, on an institutional level, uh, uh, block executions, and we also carry out, uh, an important role in ECM activities such as IPOs and secondaries.

Um, and that's in an essence what international security sort of does.

So you mentioned IPOs.

Obviously, we're expecting to have some exciting ones here later this year, but tell me a little bit about what the UAE case is at the moment.

Is it the growth of the sector?

Is it the depth of the market, or is it something else?

Right, so, um, In terms of uh the UAE I think it's multiple things.

Uh, I think it's both growth and stability, so investors really get access to a fast growing economy, at the same time you have a strong sovereign backing, uh, and that, uh, what you really get is a mixture of, say, a low cost of capital, one of the highest rated sovereign, uh, credits, uh, around the world, and at the same time you get.

Uh, if you want EM, uh, EM expected returns, so it's sort of a combination of, of these three things, in my opinion, that make it a, uh, a core, uh, investment, uh, uh, target.

It almost seems to be a bit of mispricing in the market there if it's still being rated as an EM, but which sectors do you see as having the most interest right now?

Um, so there are multiple sectors, but, uh, I think what's most important, uh, what we've been seeing a lot of, uh, interest in is, uh, financials, uh, energy.

Uh, real estate and, uh, now technology.

So, uh, I mean, in terms of financials, you have some of the largest, uh, so, um, if you look at the top three banks, uh, they're very well capitalized, they've been posting stellar growth of, uh, if you look at last year's earnings, on average they've, uh, they've grown their net earnings by on a, say, 20% on their bottom line.

Um, yeah, CT one ratios of, uh, of low to mid teens.

Uh, when you look at energy, obviously, the UAE is one of the, I don't, I don't need to talk about the, uh, uh, the energy case for the UAE, but it's one of the largest exporters.

So, uh, Abu Dhabi really gives you the, uh, it gives you access, uh, and, uh, by Uh, they have multiple listings such as the, uh, such as, uh, the Adnogs, and the way that they've done it is that they basically listed, uh, their multiple subsidiaries where you get access to different part of the streams, um.

So that's in terms of energy, real estate, uh, real estate, we've had, uh, the UAE has had one of the fastest growing, uh, real estate markets.

It's one of the strongest, uh, in, uh, in the world right now in terms of, in terms of transaction growth, uh, and technology, obviously, the UAE has been an, uh, early adopter of artificial intelligence, and they've been investing in their infrastructure.

And there are a few ways where you could do that, um, through, uh, through UAE equities.

Now, international securities talks to global investors and obviously we're all about the globe and financial markets on this show with with New York.

How important is it to connect Abu Dhabi to the rest of the world from a market's perspective?

I mean, it's, it's very important, right?

I mean, they, the, uh, global investors, they definitely make, uh, they, they make a market, a market, right?

Um, and, uh, uh, you know, uh, from an, um, from a, uh, from a market perspective, uh, it increases the liquidity, the visibility, uh, and it basically gives, um, the ADX and the UAE markets, um, more visibility as, as a whole.

And so with all that visibility that I'm now getting, in your opinion, why should global investors pay close attention to Abu Dhabi now?

Um, I think it's basically from what I, what I've touched on earlier, um, but what you're really getting is, uh, is a strong sovereign backing.

Uh, you're, you're getting, um, stellar growth, and at the same time you're getting very attractive, uh, yields, uh.

Some of these companies, uh, have, uh, uh, some of the UAE listed companies have, uh, decent, uh, uh, dividend yields, um, so I think it's getting a mix of, of, of those three things, make it a solid investment case.

Wonderful, thank you so much for joining us today, Talal, and we'd love to have you back on to talk about some of those exciting OPOs that you just referred to.

Absolutely, absolutely, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.