From Australia, the way international investors often describe the Middle East and North Africa feels familiar.
Australia is regularly reduced to iron ore, coal and banks. There is some truth in that description, but it leaves out globally competitive businesses in healthcare, technology, infrastructure, property and consumer markets. MENA faces a similar problem. Oil dominates the external perception of the region, even as its listed companies increasingly reflect a much wider economic story.
For investors based in the Middle East, none of this is new. The more interesting question is why international portfolios and research coverage have been so slow to catch up.
Hydrocarbons remain central to several MENA economies. They support government finances, liquidity, national investment programmes and some of the world’s largest pools of institutional capital. Any serious assessment of the region needs to recognise that foundation.
But stopping there misses what has been built around it.
Regional banks are financing housing, business formation and consumer growth. Telecommunications groups are moving into data centres, cloud services and subsea connectivity. Infrastructure companies are developing ports, power projects and logistics networks across several continents. North African manufacturers and transport operators are building businesses that extend well beyond their domestic markets.
The result is a listed equity universe that deserves to be considered on its own terms.
The market has already moved beyond the stereotype
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Egypt are classified as emerging markets by MSCI, while Morocco remains a frontier market.
Yet their place in global benchmarks varies considerably. At the end of 2025, Saudi Arabia represented approximately 3.8% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. The UAE accounted for 1.4%, while Qatar and Kuwait each represented about 0.7%. Egypt’s weight was only 0.1%.
Those figures help explain why international familiarity remains uneven. A global emerging-markets manager can hold a meaningful Saudi allocation, while devoting very little attention to Egypt or individual companies in smaller regional markets.
Liquidity also needs context. The Saudi Exchange reported an average daily traded value of approximately US$1.53 billion in May 2026, making it comfortably the largest and most liquid market in MENA. That does not mean every Saudi company, or every MENA-listed security, can absorb institutional trading at scale. Free float and daily turnover can be far more important than headline market capitalisation.
The region’s capital markets were not created by the arrival of foreign institutions. Sovereign wealth funds, family offices, pension assets, local institutions and private investors have supplied capital for decades. International participation is entering markets that already possess substantial financial depth and, in several cases, a strong domestic shareholder culture.
There is also no single MENA market.
Saudi Arabia’s listed economy is being reshaped by the scale of its domestic investment programme. The UAE combines international trade, tourism, financial services, infrastructure and property. Qatar has built considerable strength in banking, telecommunications and energy-linked investment. Egypt offers industrial, financial and consumer businesses against a more difficult currency and macroeconomic backdrop. Morocco has close trade links with Europe and West Africa and a capital-market structure of its own.
Treating these countries as one homogeneous allocation obscures more than it reveals.
Follow where the profits are going
One way to understand the changing market is to look beyond national investment announcements and ask which listed companies are already converting economic growth into earnings.
Al Rajhi Bank (Saudi Exchange: 1120) is an obvious place to begin. It served more than 20.6 million customers at the end of 2025, but its size alone is not the reason it deserves attention.
Net income rose by 26% in 2025 to SAR24.8 billion, supported by 22% growth in operating income. Return on equity reached 23.4%, while the non-performing loan ratio remained at 0.75%. These are unusually strong profitability and asset-quality figures for a bank of its scale.
At a late-July share price of SAR64.30, Al Rajhi had a market capitalisation of approximately SAR386 billion, or about US$103 billion, and traded on roughly 15 times trailing earnings.
That valuation is not obviously cheap, but it is attached to a bank with a low-cost deposit franchise, strong returns and direct participation in Saudi housing, consumer finance, payments and business formation.
Al Rajhi is a less novel example than a data-centre operator or renewable-energy developer, yet it makes an important point. Major economic transformations require financial plumbing. Banks with trusted brands, strong funding and effective digital distribution often begin earning from that transformation before many of the more visible projects reach maturity.
Ooredoo may be the overlooked example
Digital infrastructure is probably the least appreciated part of the regional listed-equity universe.
Ooredoo (Qatar Stock Exchange: ORDS) is still commonly grouped with conventional telecommunications companies. That description is becoming incomplete.
In its 2025 annual report, Ooredoo said its Syntys platform operated 13 active data centres across Qatar, Kuwait and Tunisia, with 24.5 megawatts of installed capacity and utilisation of approximately 99%. It plans to invest around US$1 billion as capacity expands towards roughly 120 megawatts over the medium to long term. Iron Mountain has acquired a minority interest in the platform.
These are company-reported operating figures. Ooredoo does not yet disclose Syntys revenue, EBITDA or cash flow as a separate segment, so the platform cannot be valued with the precision available for a listed data-centre operator.
That disclosure gap is important because the wider group is already financially substantial. Ooredoo generated QAR24.6 billion of revenue and QAR10.5 billion of EBITDA in 2025. Net profit increased by 12% to QAR3.9 billion, while net debt was only QAR4.1 billion, equivalent to 0.4 times EBITDA. The annual dividend was lifted to QAR0.75 per share.
Using Ooredoo’s QAR13.29 closing price on 26 July 2026 and its 3.203 billion shares, the group was valued at approximately QAR42.6 billion, or US$11.7 billion. That equates to about 11 times 2025 earnings and a historical dividend yield of roughly 5.6%.
The proposed US$1 billion investment in Syntys is therefore equivalent to around 9% of Ooredoo’s present equity value. It is large enough to become financially meaningful, but not enough on its own to establish what the platform is worth.
Ooredoo has said that digital-infrastructure and platform adjacencies contributed around 4% of group revenue in 2025 and could reach approximately 15% by 2030. At today’s group revenue, 4% would be close to QAR1 billion, although that category includes more than Syntys.
A serious sum-of-the-parts valuation would require Syntys revenue per megawatt, contracted capacity, power costs, development expenditure, customer concentration and EBITDA margins. Those figures are not publicly available.
The attraction is therefore partly financial and partly prospective. Investors are buying a profitable telecom group with modest leverage and a sizeable dividend while gaining an option on a data-centre platform that could become much more important.
The downside is equally clear. Data centres absorb capital before they generate revenue, and 99% utilisation of the existing estate does not guarantee attractive returns on the next 95 megawatts. Electricity availability, construction costs, hyperscaler pricing power and regional competition will shape the economics.
Ooredoo also remains a controlled company. Its 2025 secondary offering lifted free float from 22% to 27%, improving liquidity and benchmark participation, but most of the share register remains outside the free float.
Syntys deserves attention, although the available disclosure supports an investment question rather than a completed investment conclusion.
Acwa is a stronger test of valuation discipline
Acwa (Saudi Exchange: 2082), formerly ACWA Power, is perhaps the clearest listed expression of the region’s ability to export infrastructure expertise.
At the end of 2025, the company had 108 assets across 15 countries. Its portfolio represented 93 gigawatts of power-generation capacity and 9.2 million cubic metres per day of desalinated-water capacity. Assets under management stood at approximately SAR437.5 billion, or US$117 billion.
Acwa’s reach is difficult to dismiss. Its projects extend across the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, China and other parts of Asia, while renewable generation, battery storage and new fuel technologies are becoming larger parts of the portfolio.
The financial picture is less straightforward.
Net income attributable to shareholders reached approximately SAR1.9 billion in 2025. Acwa also financially closed 15 projects with a combined investment cost of SAR70 billion during the year, illustrating the scale of capital required to maintain its growth.
In late July 2026, the company had a market capitalisation of approximately SAR147 billion and traded on more than 83 times trailing earnings.
That multiple carries a strong message. Investors already expect Acwa’s enormous development pipeline to produce substantial future earnings.
The company may fulfil those expectations. Long-term contracts, project-level financing and strong counterparties can provide visibility that ordinary industrial companies lack. Acwa also has expertise and relationships that would be difficult for a new competitor to reproduce.
Even so, a business can be strategically important and financially successful without its shares being attractively priced. At more than 80 times historical earnings, project delays, cost overruns, higher refinancing costs or weaker returns on new capital would have an outsized effect on the valuation.
Acwa supports the broader MENA thesis, but it also acts as a useful counterexample to uncritical enthusiasm. A powerful structural story can already be fully reflected in the share price.
Infrastructure growth comes with a balance sheet
MENA’s geography has always been strategically valuable. AD Ports Group (Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange: ADPORTS) is attempting to convert that position into an international network of ports, shipping assets, logistics operations and economic zones.
The company reported 20% revenue growth in 2025 to AED20.8 billion. EBITDA rose by 12% to AED5.1 billion, while net profit increased to approximately AED2.1 billion. It also produced positive free cash flow for the first time since its 2022 listing.
Those figures strengthen the commercial argument. They also show why balance-sheet analysis cannot be separated from the regional growth story.
AD Ports’ net debt-to-EBITDA ratio stood at 4.4 times at the end of the third quarter of 2025, following years of acquisitions and infrastructure investment. The group’s earnings are growing, but so has the amount of capital committed to that growth.
The downside scenario is not difficult to identify. A slowdown in trade, weaker acquisition returns or persistently high funding costs could leave investors with a larger company that produces disappointing returns on capital.
That does not undermine the strategy. It simply changes the question from whether AD Ports owns attractive assets to whether those assets will earn more than their cost of funding over a full cycle.
Dubai’s development appears in a more familiar form through Emaar Properties (Dubai Financial Market: EMAAR).
Emaar reported record 2025 property sales of AED80.4 billion, revenue of AED49.6 billion and net profit before tax of AED25.7 billion. Its property-sales backlog reached approximately AED155 billion, offering considerable visibility over future revenue recognition.
The numbers are exceptional, although property is still property. Presales and backlog provide visibility, not immunity from changes in affordability, supply, investor demand or population growth.
Emaar’s malls, hospitality, leisure and commercial-leasing assets broaden the earnings base, but Dubai’s present strength should not be treated as a permanent law of finance. The company is a strong example of the non-oil economy and, at the same time, a reminder that cyclical businesses often look safest near the strongest part of their cycle.
North Africa deserves its own lens
Regional equity discussions often become overwhelmingly focused on the Gulf. The size and liquidity of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar make that understandable, but North Africa should not be treated as an appendix.
Elsewedy Electric (Egyptian Exchange: SWDY) began as an electrical-products manufacturer and has developed into a wider engineering and infrastructure business. Its operations span wires and cables, electrical products, construction, digital solutions and infrastructure investment.
The company reported 52.4% revenue growth in 2024 to EGP232 billion, while net profit after minority interests rose by 72.6%. Those figures support the corporate case for Elsewedy as a regional industrial business with capabilities extending beyond Egypt.
They do not settle the investment case for an international shareholder.
Rapid earnings growth in Egyptian pounds can coexist with disappointing hard-currency returns if exchange-rate weakness erodes the value of those profits. Access to foreign currency, working-capital requirements and the ability to move dividends across borders can be as important as reported earnings growth.
This is not a criticism unique to Elsewedy. It is one of the central analytical differences between Gulf markets with dollar-linked currencies and North African markets with greater currency volatility.
In Morocco, Marsa Maroc (Casablanca Stock Exchange: MSA) offers a different proposition. Its 2025 revenue reached MAD5.8 billion, supported by volume growth and improving profitability. The company has also begun taking its port-operating expertise into other African markets.
Morocco’s role between Europe, West Africa and Atlantic shipping routes gives Marsa Maroc a strong strategic position. The practical constraint for an institutional investor may be the market itself. Morocco remains classified as a frontier market, and a sound company can still be difficult to own at scale when free float, turnover and access are limited.
Elsewedy and Marsa Maroc are not smaller versions of Gulf companies. They emerge from different economic structures and face different constraints. That distinction is why North Africa requires its own research rather than token representation in a regional portfolio.
National ambition and shareholder returns are not the same thing
MENA’s economic transformation is real. The evidence can be found in bank earnings, data-centre utilisation, project pipelines, port volumes, property backlogs and industrial revenue.
The harder question is how much of that progress will reach minority shareholders.
Government-linked businesses may hold scarce assets, enjoy access to capital and operate within supportive national strategies. Those relationships can also influence acquisitions, funding decisions and the pace at which capital is deployed.
High-level market statistics can obscure the same problem. Saudi Arabia is a large and liquid exchange, but an individual company may still have a small free float. Morocco can produce profitable businesses that remain difficult for an international fund to trade. Egypt can deliver rapid local earnings growth while currency weakness reduces the outcome in US dollars.
Valuation introduces a further divide. Al Rajhi combines strong returns and asset quality at about 15 times earnings. Ooredoo trades closer to 11 times earnings while funding an underappreciated digital-infrastructure strategy. Acwa is a highly credible infrastructure leader priced at more than 80 times historical profit.
These are not variations of the same opportunity.
The useful distinction is not between oil and non-oil companies, or between traditional businesses and fashionable themes. It is between companies that can convert regional investment into durable per-share value and those where growth is absorbed by capital expenditure, financing costs, dilution or an already demanding valuation.
That requires familiar equity work: understanding cash flows, returns on capital, balance-sheet strength, governance, competitive position and the price being paid.
MENA may be under-researched internationally. It should not be approached uncritically.
A wider view of MENA equities
Oil will continue to shape the region’s economies and financial markets. It funds investment, strengthens national balance sheets and gives MENA a level of strategic importance that few other regions possess.
But the listed opportunity is no longer adequately explained by the oil price.
Al Rajhi reflects the profitable financial deepening of the Saudi economy. Ooredoo is combining a mature telecom business with data centres and regional computing infrastructure. Acwa is exporting power and water expertise, although its valuation already assumes considerable success. AD Ports is building an international trade network while managing the leverage that came with expansion. Emaar captures Dubai’s remarkable growth, along with the cyclicality that accompanies property markets. Elsewedy and Marsa Maroc show that the industrial and logistics opportunity extends into North Africa, where currency and liquidity can alter the result for investors.
The more interesting question is therefore not whether MENA is more than oil. Regional investors have known that for years.
It is which listed companies can turn the region’s capital, ambition and strategic position into sustainable returns for shareholders.
Data and source notes
Market classification and benchmark data: MSCI market classifications are from the June 2026 Global Market Accessibility Review. MSCI Emerging Markets country weights are as at 30 December 2025. Saudi Exchange liquidity data are for May 2026.
Al Rajhi Bank: Customer, earnings, return-on-equity and asset-quality figures are from the bank’s FY2025 annual report and fact sheet. Market capitalisation and price-to-earnings data are from the Saudi Exchange in late July 2026.
Ooredoo: Operating and financial figures are from Ooredoo’s FY2025 annual report and earnings release. The market-capitalisation estimate uses the Qatar Stock Exchange closing price on 26 July 2026 and the reported number of shares. The US-dollar conversion uses the Qatar Central Bank’s QAR3.64 exchange-rate peg. Syntys does not currently publish standalone revenue or EBITDA.
Acwa: Portfolio and earnings data are from the company’s FY2025 results. Market capitalisation and trailing price-to-earnings data are from the Saudi Exchange in late July 2026.
AD Ports and Emaar: Financial figures are from company FY2025 results and annual-report materials. AD Ports’ leverage figure is from its third-quarter 2025 results.
Elsewedy Electric and Marsa Maroc: Operating figures are company-reported. Elsewedy figures refer to FY2024, while Marsa Maroc figures refer to FY2025.
Important information
This research note is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, an offer, solicitation or invitation to acquire any financial product. The information is general in nature and does not take into account any person’s objectives, financial situation or needs. Company examples are included for research discussion only and should not be treated as recommendations. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.