Banque du Caire opens its IPO books, with room to grow to 45%

Monday, 19 Oct 2026

Banque du Caire opens its IPO books, with room to grow to 45%

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Today at a glance

The Big Story Today

Banque du Caire opens its IPO books at EGP 4.82-5.30 a share, with room to grow to 45%.

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

No vote yet as the House extends its closed session on supporting Saudi Arabia by two days.

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

Misr Life’s 20% IPO slips to December to make way for BdC.

Economy

Gov’t pushes to close out its IMF program before December, with a final review due in late November.

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

Qatari Diar’s Alam El Roum gets its own investment zone, with GAFI in talks on two more.

Automotive

August auto sales slow to 5.6% as trucks stall and imports pull ahead.

Also on our Radar

The gov’t is planning five PPP desalination plants worth USD 800 mn, with operations expected to begin in 2030.

PLANET FINANCE

Investors turn on the debt behind the AI build-out.

BLACKBOARD

15 Egyptian-Italian hotel schools open with 1.5k students, running under the name “8ones.”

WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

House of Reps extends its closed session on whether to authorize the armed forces to support Saudi Arabia

Good morning, ladies and gents. It’s a big week for the EGX as Banque du Caire opens its IPO books today and MNT-Halan starts trading tomorrow, with a strong foreign demand to BdC along with a solid debut for MNT setting up the rest of the state’s IPO program nicely, starting with Misr Life.

BdC is selling a 30% stake at EGP 4.82-5.30 a share, and Banque Misr can take that to 45% if demand is there, which would raise as much as EGP 36.4 bn (c. USD 680 mn). Institutions have until Friday and retail until 28 October. A strong book would make it easier to sell what’s coming next, starting with Misr Life, which a government official tells us has been pushed to December to make way for BdC. Our top story this morning has the numbers, the valuation, and the bank’s books.

Meanwhile, the House has extended its closed session on authorizing the armed forces to support Saudi Arabia by two more days, with no decision yet, parliamentary sources tell us. MPs first met yesterday, hours after the National Defense Council, chaired by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, pledged “all necessary and possible forms of support” to the Kingdom, and they resume at 1pm today. More on that in what we’re tracking today.

Over in the economy, the next IMF mission is coming within weeks, and we’re in pretty good shape. Divestments are working in our favor, senior government sources tell us, especially if the BdC float rises. But some gears still need to be greased. A Tax Authority official tells us one measure the IMF wants is still under debate, and might not be resolved by the time the mission lands in Cairo next month. We have the details on what’s working and what’s not below in the news well.

***

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No vote yet on Saudi Arabia

The House of Representatives has extended its closed session on whether to authorize the armed forces to support Saudi Arabia by two more days. MPs met yesterday without reaching a final decision, and the session resumes at 1pm today and continues tomorrow to hear from the rest of the MPs waiting to make their case, parliamentary sources tell EnterpriseAM. Speaker Counselor Hisham Badawi gave the floor to the heads of the parliamentary blocs before adjourning yesterday’s sitting, Akhbar El Yom reports.

The session came hours after President Abdel Fattah El Sisi chaired a meeting of the National Defense Council. Pointing to the escalating attacks on the Kingdom, the council decided to stand in full solidarity with Saudi Arabia and provide “all necessary and possible forms of support” to defend its security, stability, territorial integrity, and Islam’s holy sites, the presidency said in a statement. It also pledged to step up diplomatic efforts with regional and international partners to bring tensions down across the region and settle its crises peacefully. The House speaker, the prime minister, and the defense, foreign, finance, and interior ministers all attended.

Why a closed session: The House is following the procedure the constitution sets for any decision to send the armed forces on a mission abroad, which requires the president to consult the National Defense Council and secure the backing of two-thirds of MPs. Article 130 of the House’s internal rules says that vote must take place in an urgent closed session called at the president’s request, Akhbar El Yom notes. No decision on deploying troops has been announced, and the council’s statement spoke only of providing “all necessary and possible forms of support” to the Kingdom.

REMEMBER- The president asked the House on Saturday to hold an emergency session to authorize “any measure” to defend the Kingdom if Riyadh asks, stressing that Egypt seeks only to defend and has no intention of attacking (watch, runtime: 32:47). Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty had already pledged Egypt’s support for Riyadh “without any reservation” last week as the Kingdom faces Houthi missile and drone attacks.

After you

The sale of a 20% stake in Misr Life Ins. is now penciled in for December, after the government nudged it back to make way for Banque du Caire’s (BdC) IPO, a senior government official tells EnterpriseAM. The company’s fair value study is the holdup, but investor appetite has remained steady while it’s being finalized, the official says.

The December date is tentative and depends on coordination between the Investment Ministry, the Sovereign Fund of Egypt (SFE), and the offering’s advisors, the official says. The ministry is putting its earlier target for EGP 12-14 bn in proceeds on hold until the valuation and the price range are set. In the meantime, demand still looks healthy: the latest roadshow in London and Dubai drew strong interest from international institutions and regional banks, and some are already lined up for the private placement, the official tells us, without naming them or saying how much they could put in.

The new date pushes the sale to the very end of our IMF program, which expires on 15 December. The Fund counted on the IPO for its seventh review, which required an agreement locking in the sale, with proceeds expected by end-August, according to its latest staff report (pdf). Investment Minister Mohamed Farid was initially aiming to close the sale between June and July.

REMEMBER- Misr Life is owned by Misr Ins. Holding Company, part of the SFE. The holding company’s shareholders signed off on the sale in June, a month after the fund tapped EFG Hermes as sole global coordinator and bookrunner. Interest was already building in August. The EBRD was negotiating to buy up to 5% before the IPO, and five institutions were vying for a 10% private placement tranche, we reported at the time. The size of the placement and whether to bring in strategic investors were still under discussion, though. Last month, the board approved a 10-for-1 stock split, cutting the nominal value to EGP 1 from EGP 10 and lifting the share count to 5 bn from 500 mn, with issued capital unchanged at EGP 5 bn.

The pipeline behind it is filling up. The government still needs close to USD 1 bn in divestments to hit its USD 1.5 bn target before the IMF program ends in December, with BdC and other state stake sales expected to help. For 2027, officials are putting together a listing calendar that could bring one or two companies to market each month, depending on market conditions and readiness, and preparations are underway for the remaining petroleum-sector offerings, the official says. So far, 24 of the 30 companies slated for temporary listing this year have completed that step.

Alam El Roum gets an investment zone

Qatari Diar’s Alam El Roum now has its own investment zone, giving the USD 29.7 bn North Coast megaproject a package of incentives and a dedicated channel for approvals. The zone was launched yesterday at a ceremony attended by EnterpriseAM. It covers about 4.9k feddans along the Alexandria-Matrouh coastal road and is being developed by the real estate arm of the Qatar Investment Authority.

The designation, approved by the Cabinet last month, puts Alam El Roum on the same footing as Egypt’s other investment zones. That means approvals through the General Authority for Investment and Freezones’ (Gafi) single window, a flat 2% customs duty on imported machinery, and a deduction of up to 50% of investment costs from taxable income for up to seven years. It’s the second Gulf sovereign-backed megaproject to get the designation after Ras El Hekma.

More zones are coming. Qatari Diar is already in talks with Gafi for more investment zones in Egypt beyond Alam El Roum, Gafi head Mohamed Awad told EnterpriseAM on the sidelines of the launch, declining to give details since “legal drafting and contracts take a long time, and the authority leaves it to each company to announce the details of its future projects when it sees fit.” The regime, created under the 2017 Investment Law, lets an investor hand Gafi the job of clearing procedures and permits so they can focus on their core business, Awad said. Alam El Roum is the 21st zone decreed since 2017 — 12 are operating and nine are still under construction, he said.

REMEMBER- Construction is already underway. Qatari Diar launched the EGP 220 bn first phase in August, covering 4 mn sqm with about 1.4 mn sqm of built-up area, four hotels with more than 1k rooms, and a 50-berth marina, with first deliveries due in 2030. The wider project rests on a November 2025 agreement under which Diar pays USD 3.5 bn for the land and contributes USD 26.2 bn in kind, while the New Urban Communities Authority takes a 15% share of revenues once costs are recovered. The land payment has already shown up in the budget, where EGP 166.8 bn in one-off Alam El Roum proceeds lifted last year’s primary surplus.

PSA-

WEATHER- Cairo keeps cooling today, with a high of 27°C, and a low of 18°C — two degrees down on yesterday as the autumn slide continues, according to our favorite weather app. Expect morning fog on the roads and a slight chance of light rain.

It’s holding steady on the coast in Alexandria, with a high of 26°C and a low of 18°C.

The big story abroad

Europe takes to the streets: Protests have erupted across the continent, from Spain, France and Portugal to Italy, Belgium and Albania, fueled by frustration over social and economic problems. School conditions and the cost of living, particularly housing, are among the main drivers of the unrest.

Accenture weighs China sale: Accenture has hired JPMorgan to conduct a strategic review of its China business, which could lead to a sale worth up to USD 1.5 bn. The IT consultancy wants to focus on its fastest-growing operations and show investors it can adapt to AI. Private equity firms and strategic buyers are expected to show interest. Accenture may keep a significant minority stake to facilitate continuity for customers.

Daiichi Life Group launched a bid to acquire the remaining 79.5% of shares in Challenger for roughly AUD 7.9 bn (USD 5.5 bn). Daiichi Life Group, a Japanese ins. firm, is offering to pay AUD 11.80 per share, roughly 20% higher than Friday’s closing price.

*** It’s Blackboard day: We have our weekly look at the business of education in Egypt, from pre-K through the highest reaches of higher ed.

In today’s issue: We look into the new “8ones” hotel training schools, run with Italian partners, which aim to bring experienced staff into the country’s growing hospitality sector

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Alam El Roum House of Representatives IPO Misr Life Ins Saudi Arabia Sovereign Fund of Egypt WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

Who said summer is over? It’s SOMATIME!

At Somabay, summer is more than a season. It’s a lifestyle shaped by endless sunshine, the beauty of the Red Sea, and experiences that bring people together. And there’s always more to enjoy.

Discover a summer that lasts a little longer.

#ItsSOMATIME #Somabay

The Big Story Today

Banque du Caire opens its IPO books at EGP 4.82-5.30 a share, with room to grow to 45%

Subscriptions for Banque du Caire’s IPO open today, a day after the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) approved the state-owned lender’s prospectus (pdf), the regulator said in a statement (pdf). Institutional investors have until Friday, 23 October, to place their orders, while the retail book will remain open until Wednesday, 28 October. The final price will be announced on Monday, 26 October, and the stock is expected to hit the EGX in November, according to the ITF.

The IPO could raise as much as EGP 36.4 bn (c. USD 680 mn) if the government opts for a bigger sale. BdC is guiding on a price range of EGP 4.82-5.30 per share. That puts the base 30% stake sale at EGP 22.1-24.2 bn (c. USD 413-452 mn) and values the bank at EGP 73.5-80-8 bn (c. USD 1.37-1.51 bn) by our math. The prospectus also allows Banque Misr, BdC’s selling shareholder, to offer another 2.29 bn shares depending on demand, taking the total stake on offer to 45% and lifting proceeds by roughly 50%.

Qualified investors get 95% of the offering. The private tranche puts 4.35 bn shares (28.5% of the bank) on offer to qualified investors in Egypt and abroad, including financial institutions and high-net-worth individuals. The remaining 228.75 mn shares (1.5% of the bank) are open to the public in Egypt and would be worth up to EGP 1.2 bn (c. USD 23 mn) at the top of the range.

The bigger float has been on the table for a while. BdC’s shareholders approved the option to upsize back in April, according to the FRA’s statement. Earlier this week, a government official told us the banks running the offering had recommended going to 45% after the roadshows drew demand from investors around the world, with the call resting with Banque Misr and the Central Bank of Egypt. The prospectus doesn’t settle the question, but it sets a deadline: any increase has to be announced at least three days before the retail book closes.

FOR REFERENCE- BdC’s offering is around three to four-and-a-half times the size of MNT-Halan’s EGP 7.84 bn IPO, by our math, which makes it a much bigger test of foreign institutional appetite. We think this is the offering EFG Holding CEO Karim Awad was referring to when he told the EnterpriseAM Forum earlier this month that an upcoming IPO could be among Egypt’s largest in USD terms in 15-20 years. Awad declined to name the issuer but described a sizable freefloat and called the listing “a true test of large foreign investors coming back into the stock market.” EFG Hermes is a joint global coordinator on BdC’s offering. The stakes go beyond the IPO itself: Awad expects foreign investors who make money on a transaction of this scale to start putting capital into other EGX stocks too.

Priced at fair value

The top of the range is the fair value. The FRA based its approval on a fair value study by financial advisor Baker Tilly, which set the share at EGP 5.30, with the final price to be set by the private placement results and the bookbuild. That’s in line with the EGP 80-80.5 bn valuation reported in September, and the bottom of the range is a c. 9% discount to it. The range also came in higher than expected. On 2025 net income of EGP 16.07 bn, the range works out to 4.6-5x earnings and 1.1-1.2x end-June equity, by our math.

The bank comes to market with more capital behind it too: BdC’s capital adequacy ratio rose to 22.06% at end-2025 from 17.14% a year earlier, according to the audited financial statements in the prospectus. The FRA approved a capital increase in December that raised BdC’s issued capital to EGP 30.5 bn from EGP 20.5 bn through 5 bn new shares at EGP 2 par, taking the share count to the 15.25 bn the offering is built on. The shares have been temporarily listed on the EGX since February 2017.

What investors are buying

Income grew faster than lending: BdC’s 2025 net income rose 31% to EGP 16.07 bn, according to its audited consolidated financial statements (pdf). Net interest income grew 22% and fees 10%, while loans rose 16% to EGP 222 bn and deposits 14% to EGP 404.5 bn. Two costs grew faster than revenue: administrative expenses rose 25% and credit-loss provisions 38%. The momentum carried into this year, with a net income of EGP 8.9 bn in 1H 2026, an annualized return on equity of 27.6% and a net interest margin of 7.4%, according to the ITF.

Capital is stronger, and asset quality is mixed: The capital adequacy ratio rose to 22.06% at end-2025 from 17.14% a year earlier, with risk-weighted assets broadly flat, the statements show. Credit-impaired (Stage 3) loans fell to 3.99% of the book from 4.97%. Loans flagged for rising credit risk (Stage 2) rose to 18.08% from 16.85%.

One more gate before trading

The Cabinet still has to sign off: Before its shares can trade, BdC must show proof of Cabinet approval under Law 170 of 2025, the FRA said. It must also meet the EGX’s final listing requirements, including the share of stock offered, the freefloat, and the minimum number of shareholders.

ICYMI- MNT-Halan set a high bar. Its private placement closed 11.2x oversubscribed, with foreign institutions taking most of the book and more than 300 investors bidding from across the GCC, the UK, France, Switzerland, South Africa, and Egypt. Its retail tranche closed 43.6x covered on the final day, and the shares debut tomorrow, the day after BdC’s book opens. Investors are already paying for the run of offerings.

It’s already the EGX’s busiest IPO year in a while, and the queue is getting longer: BdC is the bourse’s fourth IPO of 2026, following premium grocer Gourmet in February, energy solutions firm Korra Energi in May, and MNT-Halan this month. That’s double 2024’s total, and the two 4Q floats are the biggest the EGX has seen in years. Behind them, state-backed insurer Misr Life is now expected in December, and EFG-backed Egypt Education Platform within three months. A handful of petroleum companies are lined up too, with Enppi likely the first oil and gas name to go, probably in 1Q 2027, a senior government official told us in August. The EGX is still short of the at least eight offerings it expected this year, and a strong BdC book would make it easier to sell what’s coming next.

ZOOMING OUT- Egypt is selling while the Gulf is on hold. Gulf IPOs have raised slightly more than USD 1 bn so far this year, down from nearly USD 6 bn at the same point in 2025, Bloomberg reported last week, citing its own data. BdC CEO Hussein Abaza told the business news service that the regional turmoil has shown Egypt to be “the most stable economy,” and that investors from Africa, North America, Europe, and the Gulf have expressed interest in the offering.

ADVISORS- CI Capital is lead global coordinator and joint bookrunner, while EFG Hermes is joint global coordinator and joint bookrunner. Baker McKenzie is advising the BdC and its parent on US and English law, while Helmy, Hamza, & Partners, a Baker McKenzie member firm, is counsel on matters of Egyptian law. Enterprise Advisory is investor relations advisor.

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Economy

Gov’t pushes to close out its IMF program before December, with a final review due in late November

The government is heading into the eighth and final review of our USD 8 bn IMF program with divestments and tax collection working in its favor, while energy subsidies and a stalled tax on freezones are still holding it back, three government officials tell EnterpriseAM. The Fund’s mission is expected in the second half of November, and both sides want to wrap things up before the program expires in mid-December, with Egyptian officials and IMF staff moving closer on the outstanding issues on the sidelines of the Fund’s annual meetings in Bangkok, the officials say.

Clearing the review would unlock the last of the program’s money: about USD 1.5 bn under the Extended Fund Facility and around USD 800 mn under the climate-focused Resilience and Sustainability Facility, IMF mission chief Amine Mati told us in August. It would also send us off with the Fund’s stamp of confidence, which will likely shape how investors read the years after the program.

What’s helping

The state’s exit program is likely to carry the most weight in the review, the officials say, with the government moving on offerings in Banque du Caire (BdC) and Misr Life Ins. before the program ends. The IMF wants about USD 1.5 bn in divestment proceeds by the end of the program, with all of it allocated to debt reduction, according to the Fund. The government had secured around USD 526.3 mn by July, according to the Fund’s latest staff report (pdf), with some USD 420 mn of that from the sale of the Gabal El Zeit wind farm and the rest (c. USD 106 mn) from Finance Ministry sales of stakes in some listed companies.

That leaves close to USD 1 bn to go, and one of the officials says the government is committed to meeting the target before the review is settled. BdC’s IPO could cover most of it: Banque Misr could sell up to 45% of the bank, a government official told us this week, up from the 30% in its intention to float notice. The 30% figure remains the working one, though, and the call on going bigger rests with Banque Misr and the Central Bank of Egypt. At 45%, the stake would be worth roughly EGP 36 bn (c. USD 690 mn) at the September fair value (against about EGP 24 bn for 30%), by our math. Misr Life was meant to be next; the government was targeting proceeds from the sale of a 20% stake by end-August. That sale is still to come, with expected proceeds of around EGP 14 bn (c. USD 261 mn). Together, the two could bring in close to the USD 1 bn still needed, by our math.

Those offerings are part of a broader plan, one official says. The plan leans on IPOs to deepen the stock market and sends part of the proceeds toward cutting public debt. It also ties into the updated State Ownership Policy for 2026-2030, which the IMF calls “a significant upgrade” because it goes beyond listing the sectors the state will leave and sets up a full framework for managing its portfolio, with tighter rules on governance and competing on equal terms with the private sector.

Tax collection should also help the government’s case, the officials say. The Finance Ministry is targeting a record EGP 3.5 tn in tax revenues this fiscal year, up about 30% y-o-y from EGP 2.7 tn last FY. The program’s other tax priorities include trimming VAT exemptions and improving compliance through digitization and better risk management.

What still needs work

One tax measure is still stuck, however: The IMF wants a 4% withholding tax on freezone companies’ sales into the local market. It’s a structural benchmark (one of the reform milestones the program is graded on) that parliament didn’t pass last year, and its publication in the official gazette is now due by end-November, according to the staff report. The government told the Fund it would bring the legislative change in November, but an official at the Tax Authority tells us the debate is still going over fears the tax would hurt investment and push up prices, and that no amendment is expected for now. Freezone factories supply the local market more cheaply than imports, even after paying customs, with no sea freight or delivery delays, and they lift exports at the same time, the official says. That leaves a benchmark at risk of slipping weeks before the review, though the tax itself would only bring in about 0.1% of GDP.

Then there’s energy, which one of the officials counts among the biggest challenges for public finances going into the review. Oil prices are running well above what the budget assumed, and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC), which the IMF calls “the main source of fiscal risk,” still needs heavy financing. Even so, the government held fuel prices steady through end-December at the first quarterly review since the automatic pricing committee’s return, choosing to focus on raising output and curbing consumption instead, the official says.

Raising prices carries its own risks, the official explains. Any increase in energy prices would feed into transport and production costs and push inflation up, while putting reform off could make it harder to hit the fiscal targets agreed with the Fund. And if inflation picks up too fast, another official warns, the central bank may have to raise rates again, which would add to the cost of borrowing and servicing our debt. Weighing the economic and social impact will decide how subsidies get restructured to ease the pressure on the budget down the line, one of the officials says.

The same goes for electricity: Household power tariffs, which rose by an average of 12% at the start of August, will likely stay put until the end of the fiscal year in June, the officials say, as the state banks on savings from renewables. The Electricity Ministry saved EGP 40 bn last fiscal year by adding 2 GW of renewable capacity, according to the officials.

After the program

The review will look past this year’s numbers too. It will cover keeping stable inflows coming into the economy and the IMF’s read on the government’s plan for after the program, the officials say. “Sustaining growth, cutting public debt steadily with divestment proceeds and creating stable fiscal space to support health, education and social protection are among the most important indicators as the program wraps up,” one official tells us. The switch to cash subsidies, set to start in January, will be one of the main files on the table, according to another.

As for what comes after December, the government doesn’t look keen on another IMF program at this stage, one of the officials tells us. Egypt keeps up its loan repayments, so it could ask for one down the line, the official says, but that isn’t on the table. Instead, the government plans to lean on the Fund’s technical assistance to carry out its own post-program plan.

WHAT’S NEXT- The IMF mission is expected in the second half of November, and the freezone tax is due in the official gazette by end-November under the program, which expires on 15 December.

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Banque du Caire economy EFF electricity fiscal policy free zones Fuel prices IMF Misr Life privatization watch subsidies tax

Automotive

August auto sales slow to 5.6% as trucks stall and imports pull ahead

The country’s automotive market grew 5.6% y-o-y in August to 18.6k units, a deceleration from July’s 15.6% y-o-y expansion, as a 22.7% monthly slide in truck sales outweighed an 11.5% gain in passenger cars, according to Amica’s August 2026 report (pdf). Sales were up 3% m-o-m from July’s 18k units.

The segments split three ways. Passenger cars took 77% of volume, up from 71% a month earlier, rising 7.8% y-o-y to 14.4k units. Meanwhile, the decline ran across categories rather than sitting in one model line. Buses slipped 10% m-o-m to 1.7k units, but are still up 35% y-o-y, a move Maged El Tawil, the automotive analyst behind the Cars by Maged channel and Auto Forsa, reads as seasonality rather than weakness. Summer buyers prioritize personal cars over expanding business fleets, he explains.

Trucks are the one segment he calls significant, with sales falling 22.7% m-o-m and 15.9% y-o-y to 2.6k units. Pickups, roughly two-thirds of the segment, dropped to 1.7k from July’s 2.2k, and heavy trucks fell to 40 units from 111. That’s a 64% slide off a base so small it tells you more about ordering lumpiness than about demand, especially after the same line had already pulled back 47.6% in July from June’s 212. El Tawil attributes the softness to businesses holding back on purchases while FX and USD-linked costs stay high, and cautions against reading a single month as a verdict on the wider economy.

Registrations put a floor under that caution. The Al Ahram-Compulsory Motor Ins. Pool report counted 3.2k new transport vehicles licensed in August, a 4.9% decline. AMIC counts only its members, which is why its truck line can swing on a single brand’s orders.

EVs split the data: AMIC put August EV sales at 610 units, up about 336% from July’s 140 on a very small base. Registrations point the other way: 2.2k electric vehicles were licensed in July. Both series agree on where the demand sits, though: Chinese electric and range-extended models top both.

The demand case: Higher fuel prices are pushing buyers toward cheaper operating costs, longer real-world ranges are making EVs workable as a household’s primary car, and range-extenders (electric drivetrains carrying a small petrol engine purely as a generator) are gaining traction, El Tawil tells us. He points to steady demand for Chinese brands including Geely, BYD, Avatr, and Lynk & Co. The registrations back the model-level pattern: Deepal’s range-extenders led the niche with 250 units in August and 1.1k so far this year, led by the G318, a shift we flagged in December when distributors were pivoting to new-energy line-ups.

Complicating the fuel-cost argument: The last price increase came in March and has held since then, so the pull is cumulative rather than fresh, and urban inflation actually eased to 14.5% in August. El Tawil flags the related limit himself: infrastructure stays thin outside the main cities, which is the same constraint industry figures pointed to in December as a decade-long build, alongside range anxiety on longer routes.

Imports stretched their lead. Fully built imports took 71% of passenger-car volume in August, up from 58% in July: about 10.1k units against 4.2k locally assembled, by our math from AMIC’s YTD origin tables. The timing points to an administrative cause rather than a change of taste. Importers spent July fighting stretched customs registration and lower priority for FX on finished cars while parts cleared normally. Buyer preference still runs the same way: brand prestige, higher-end specs, and perceived build quality keep pulling PC buyers to imports even where locally assembled alternatives cost less, as dealers told us in June.

IN CONTEXT- The eight-month picture is bigger than any single month. Sales reached 135.4k units, up 25.7%, with imports rising 42.6% to 64.9k against 13.4% growth for locally assembled vehicles at 70.5k, so imports went from 42% to 48% of the market and took roughly 70% of the additional vehicles sold, by our math from AMIC’s August report. The government’s answer is the Automotive Industry Development Program, which targets 100k vehicles a year and 60% local content. Projects are stacking up: Al Mansour’s USD 150 mn MG plant, and Ezz El Arab Elsewedy’s ROX ESI venture for range-extender EVs from mid-2027. Meanwhile, the government has kept the import taps wide: it raised the 2026 passenger-car import ceiling to USD 2.5 bn.

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automotive localization Manufacturing

A MESSAGE FROM VISA

El Gouna Red Sea runs on a five-year clock

Most business plans wait for demand. El Gouna Red Sea built a hospital before it had patients and a school before it had students.

That tells you something about the clock Mohamed Amer and his team work on. In the latest episode of Access Tomorrow, Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for North Africa, Levant and Pakistan, sits down with El Gouna’s CEO, Mohamed Amer, to talk about what happens when you build a complete town over decades, put patient capital behind the vision, and invest years before the demand shows up.

Getting people to El Gouna Red Sea is only half the job. The business model depends on turning traffic into belonging. Amer describes the team’s job simply: drive “relevant traffic” — get people to visit, experience the town, and eventually want to become part of the community. But keeping that funnel moving gets tougher as affluent consumers become harder to impress and easier to lose. Taste is shifting away from extravagance and toward experience and “quiet luxury.” Amer’s shorthand for what El Gouna is ultimately selling is simpler: happiness.

Technology now has to protect that feeling rather than interrupt it. For Amer, the line on AI is between “curated” and “surveilled”: use data to make the guest experience more relevant without making people feel like they are living inside an algorithm. The same principle applies to payments. At a restaurant, the customer should be thinking about the food and the conversation — not the transaction. The payment should effectively disappear.

Click here to watch the full episode of *Access Tomorrow*, presented by Visa.

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A MESSAGE FROM VISA Visa

Also on our Radar

Gov’t plans five PPP desalination plants worth USD 800 mn, with operations expected to begin in 2030

The Madbouly government is planning five desalination plants via public-private partnerships worth USD 800 mn, according to a government document seen by Asharq Business. Two plants are planned for the Red Sea governorate in Hurghada and Ras Banas, and the other three are in Ras El Hekma, Alexandria, and East Port Said. The five plants would add 525k cbm / d of desalination capacity, with operations expected by 2030 as part of Egypt’s long-term seawater desalination strategy through 2050.

REMEMBER- Egypt’s renewables-powered desalination PPP rollout has repeatedly slipped its timetable. The first tender, initially planned for December 2025, was pushed to January 2026 and is now expected in December. The wider plan aims to lift desalination capacity to 8.85 mn cbm / d by 2050, requiring an estimated USD 8.5 bn in capital investment.

Trash talk

Heidelberg Materials Egypt acquired a 36.4% minority stake in local waste-to-energy firm ZeroCarbon, according to the Competition Authority’s notice, marking a tie-up that secures the refuse-derived fuel (RDF) and biomass now displacing part of the coal, gas, and mazut burned in its kilns. The investment backs a new RDF production facility in 10th of Ramadan City and upgrades to ZeroCarbon’s existing sites and advances the cement maker’s target of lifting RDF past 30% of its total alternative-fuel consumption, the two companies said in a joint statement.

IN CONTEXT- Alternative fuels are taking a growing share of Egypt’s cement industry. A few producers are already pushing RDF past 30-40% of their energy mix (well past the government’s clean-fuel mandate, which was raised from 10% to 15%) as rising energy prices make waste-derived alternatives increasingly cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

Charging up the Ring Road

The Ring Road’s electric buses now have a charging partner: Sha7en EV Solutions, the EV arm of EGX-listed MB Engineering, signed an EGP 119 mn contract to supply, install, and operate 92 fast-charging systems for the Ring Road BRT, the company said in a statement (pdf). The units would use the European charging protocol and sit at the project’s depots along the Ring Road, running to a total capacity of 15,000 kWh. Sha7en puts the phased rollout at three months.

IN CONTEXT- The contract lands three weeks after the BRT corridor pushed west. Passenger service on the second phase opened on 26 September, taking the BRT from the Alexandria Agricultural Road intersection to a new terminus at Sun Capital on the Fayoum Road junction — 16 stations, 11 now in service and Zahraa El Maadi, Autostrad and Mansouriya to follow, on a route now 75 km long, according to a Transport Ministry statement. Sun Capital is itself a charging hub: 80k sqm with 21 chargers of its own, plus SuperJet and intercity terminals.

Why it matters: The state is contracting out the charging backbone rather than owning it, and the operator it picked is already inside the program: Sha7en runs charging and maintenance for the electric bus depots in the New Capital and at Talaat Moustafa Group’s Noor City. It holds a licence to operate EV charging stations since 2022 and says it runs a network of charging points across 10 governorates. The hardware side stays in the group: sister company MB for Industry builds under the Beta Electric brand.

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR Desalination Heidelberg Materials MB Engineering

PLANET FINANCE

Investors turn on the debt behind the AI build-out

The debt financing the world’s AI build-out is being repriced for a reckoning. Bonds backing some of the largest data centers have fallen well below par, a run of marquee listings has been pulled, and the debt of the “neocloud” providers at the center of the boom is trading where markets park distress. The common thread is investors have stopped assuming AI revenue will arrive fast enough to service the tns being borrowed to build the capacity.

“Data center bonds are having their Darwin moment, where the weakest credits struggle to survive,” Allianz CIO Ludovic Subran told the Financial Times. Spreads blew out after a wave of power and construction delays, he argued, proof the debt had been “priced too tight for execution risk.” The market, in other words, has started to separate the survivors from the casualties, and is doing it fast.

The sell-off has reached almost everything with AI exposure. Debt behind the Meta-anchored “Hyperion” project, issued through a Blue Owl and Meta-backed vehicle called Beignet Investor, has slid from above par in early July to just under USD 0.92. Bonds for two Hut 8 sites — one in Louisiana, a Texas campus leased by Nvidia — sit near USD 0.94 and USD 0.92; Blackstone’s QTS Project Excalibur in Georgia, leased to Microsoft, is below USD 0.88. Roughly USD 18 bn of loans tied to Oracle’s Project Jupiter in New Mexico have slipped into stressed territory after power-permitting delays, and debt for Oracle’s Michigan campus has fallen to USD 0.87 from par in July.

The neoclouds have been hit hardest, because they borrowed hardest. CoreWeave — a crypto miner four years ago, now the best-known of the breed — watched one of its unsecured bonds sink below USD 0.80, dragging yields toward 15%, while the shares dropped nearly 25% over the week. Nebius lost 18%. Even Nvidia, which has poured tens of bns into the sector’s start-ups, gave up about USD 270 bn of market value in a week.

Why it matters: The math stops working at these prices. Tech consultancy Gartner reckons AI data center owners need USD 8.5 tn of revenue by the end of 2030 to cover capital and financing costs and still clear a healthy return, against the USD 3.6 tn it expects consumers and companies to actually spend on AI services. Stay on the current path, it warns, and more than USD 4 tn of asset value is exposed to writedown risk through 2032, with 80% of neoclouds set to “cease independent operations” by 2030.

Confidence cracked on a run of soft demand signals. OpenAI pushed its IPO into next year, and its annualized revenue came in around USD 20 bn below what it had guided. Anthropic’s 3Q sales growth also fell short of expectations, slowing down from the year’s start. A Bank for International Settlements study added to the unease, finding “a significant portion” of AI financing and commercial ties are self-referencing. That means chipmakers bankrolling the clouds that buy their chips and labs backing the developers that house their models.

The equity window has all but shut. Firmus, the Nvidia- and Blackstone-backed operator, pulled what would have been Australia’s second-largest listing earlier this month, a float valuing it at AUD 44 bn (USD 30.5 bn), roughly double the valuation set three months earlier, the FT reports. AirTrunk scrapped a Singapore REIT days later, SoftBank’s SB Energy mothballed a USD 50 bn listing, and Nvidia-backed Nscale is still chasing a USD 35 bn New York debut that bankers say is a hard sell right now. CoreWeave chief Mike Intrator said the troubles at Firmus, AirTrunk, Lambda Labs, and Nscale were “bleeding into the narrative” around his company, in a memo seen by the FT.

The physical world is pushing back, too. At least 47 large projects have been delayed, withdrawn or blocked in 2026 — a “conservative” count, says regulatory-intelligence firm RegLayer — and more than 1k US communities have moved to curb AI infrastructure this year. Bernstein estimates only about 35% of the planned US pipeline is credible. Utility regulators are now withholding grid connections unless a project brings its own power, and every slipped deadline hands Big Tech tenants a contractual door to walk through.

The builders’ own numbers show how stretched the model is. SB Energy, majority-owned by SoftBank and backed by OpenAI and Nvidia, has yet to finish a single data centre but carries USD 174 bn in capital needs against USD 430 bn of future contracts, most of them with OpenAI. Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh told a Citi conference in September that his 5 GW plan needs some USD 250 bn in financing: “So far, we financed maybe 20% of that.” Nscale had 25k advanced chips running in August against the roughly 500k it plans to operate. Anthropic can walk away from a USD 45 bn deal with Nscale if the start-up misses its financing and delivery dates.

Not everyone is heading for the exit. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said he doesn’t expect CoreWeave to need a backstop, telling Bloomberg “their cost of capital is actually decreasing,” and talked up Nscale in London as a possible “most valuable UK company” created in the decade.

Anthropic is the cleaner bull case: Kroll Bond Rating Agency handed it a BB+ in June, the top speculative-grade score and one notch below investment grade, ahead of a USD 35 bn chip financing led by Apollo, in a rating the Financial Times saw. Its revenue rose nearly 50% to USD 16.8 bn in 3Q and it has been profitable on an adjusted basis for two straight quarters, though growth has slowed from its earlier pace and landed below the summer’s most bullish forecasts.

MARKETS THIS MORNING-

Asian markets were in the red earlier today. Japan’s Nikkei fell around 1% and South Korea’s Kospi slipped around 0.4%. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan was down 0.3% amid growing unease over AI's massive funding needs, which undermined confidence ahead of a week packed with earnings.

EGX30	50,896	-2.6% (YTD: +21.7%)
USD (CBE)	Buy 53.47	Sell 53.61
USD (CIB)	Buy 53.48	Sell 53.58
Interest rates (CBE)	19.00% deposit	20.00% lending
Tadawul	10,190	+0.8% (YTD: -2.9%)
ADX	9,808	0.0% (YTD: -1.9%)
DFM	5,867	+0.6% (YTD: -2.1%)
S&P 500	7,659	-1.1% (YTD: +11.9%)
FTSE 100	10,882	+0.4% (YTD: +9.6%)
Euro Stoxx 50	6,204	+0.6% (YTD: +7.0%)
Brent crude	USD 109.01	+3.72%
Natural gas (Nymex)	USD 3.05	-2.3%
Gold	USD 4,181	+0.3%
BTC	USD 81,127	0.0% (YTD: -7.4%)
S&P Egypt Sovereign Bond Index	1,131	+0.1% (YTD: +13.9%)
S&P MENA Bond & Sukuk	148.50	+0.2% (YTD: -2.2%)
VIX (Volatility Index)	19.99	+21.5% (YTD: 33.7%)

THE CLOSING BELL-

The EGX30 fell 2.6% at yesterday’s close on turnover of EGP 7.8 bn (31.2% below the 90-day average). International investors were the sole net sellers. The index is up 21.7% YTD.

In the red: Egypt Aluminum (-7.6%), Heliopolis Housing (-6.8%), and EFG Holding (-6.8%).

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AI Data Centers Financial Markets Planet Finance

Our weekly deep dive into education in Egypt, from K-12 to post-secondary.

Published every Monday in EnterpriseAM.

Read Blackboard

BLACKBOARD

15 Egyptian-Italian hotel schools open with 1.5k students, running under the name “8ones”

Fifteen Egyptian-Italian hotel schools opened this academic year, welcoming 1.5k enrolled students, an Education Ministry official tells EnterpriseAM. The applied-technology schools run under the name “8ones” and aim to prepare qualified technical staff for the hospitality market, according to the Education Ministry’s 3 August statement. The new schools come as the state works toward its target of 500k hotel rooms by 2030 (220k more than today), as we reported in September.

Those rooms need employees to maintain them, and technical staff are in short supply: The market needs cooks, waiters, and housekeepers more urgently than it needs bachelor’s degree holders, Egyptian Travel Agents Association Board Member Magdy Sadek tells us, and non-specialists are filling the gap. A large share of major properties in Hurghada, Safaga, Marsa Alam, South Sinai, and the North Coast “relies on workers who aren’t graduates of tourism and hotel faculties or institutes,” Mansoura University tourism and hotels faculty dean Mohamed Abdel Latif tells EnterpriseAM. Those hires don’t have technical qualifications and take longer to settle into the work, Sadek adds.

Right now, training schools are concentrated in Greater Cairo: According to an Education Ministry brief (pdf), there were 166 hotel secondary schools operating in the 2025/26 academic year: Cairo had 34, Giza 16, and Qalyubia 12. If you count by students rather than by schools, the gap widens. The three Greater Cairo governorates hold 58% of hotel-school students across 62 schools. Compare that to the Red Sea, South Sinai, Luxor, and Matrouh, which have under 4% of hotel-school students across a total of 12 schools. None of the 15 new 8ones schools are in those four governorates, and six are in Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria, according to the ministry’s list.

And the track is small: Hotel secondary schools enrolled some 64.3k students in 2025/26, about 3% of Egypt’s 1.98 mn technical secondary students, the data shows. For reference, industrial schools enrolled 970k that year, commercial 750k, and agricultural 199k. “Enrollment is low because prospects are limited and wages are low,” the ministry official tells us. Hotel jobs also require skills that existing hotel secondary education doesn’t provide, he adds.

The 8ones model pairs classroom and workplace training: The schools are part of the Egypt-Italy technical education partnership we covered in December, with Italy’s Engim-Farma-Giulio Natta Academy working with three of them and San Paolo Hospitality Academy working with 12, the ministry said in its 3 August statement. After preparatory school, students enroll in the five-year program, studying Italian and English alongside technical subjects, with practical training at school and in workplaces, according to the program’s official Facebook page. Graduates “come out with some understanding of the hospitality field, instead of leaving high school with no idea at all,” Alexandria University tourism and hotels faculty professor Mohamed Gamal tells EnterpriseAM.

Demand outstripped places: More than 5k students applied for the schools, the ministry official says. Each school caps enrollment at 100 students to focus on hands-on learning and educational quality, he tells us. The curricula meet international labor-market requirements, which means graduates can work abroad and earn higher wages, he adds.

But training more workers only addresses one side of the shortage. Gamal also brings up a problem with turnover, pointing to a training program between Alexandria University and Four Seasons Hotel Alexandria, which covers rooms and food and beverage. Both departments have very high turnover because “pay is low and many staff work part-time or on a temporary basis,” he says. Hotels need to attract workers with strong skills, including in digital work and innovation, while developing and keeping the people they already have, he adds.

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Blackboard Education hospitality secondary schools

CALENDAR

OCTOBER

19-22 October (Monday-Thursday): UfM Economic Forum, Cairo.

19-24 October (Monday-Saturday): Egypt 2026 Forum, The St. Regis New Capital.

26-28 October (Monday-Wednesday): IEX Egypt, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo.

29 October (Thursday): Monetary Policy Committee’s seventh meeting of 2026.

NOVEMBER

5-7 November (Thursday-Saturday): ICA Annual Conference 2026, Cairo.

6-8 November (Friday-Sunday): Global Entrepreneurship Festival, JW Marriott Hotel, New Cairo.

7-10 November (Sunday-Wednesday): Cairo ICT Forum, Egypt International Exhibition Center, New Cairo.

10 November (Tuesday): Cityscape Egypt Forum, Cairo.

DECEMBER

7-10 December (Monday-Thursday): Food Africa, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo.

11-12 December (Friday-Saturday): ISER International Conference, Cairo.

17 December (Thursday): Monetary Policy Committee’s eighth meeting of 2026.

17-20 December (Thursday-Sunday): MacTech Egypt, Egypt International Exhibition Center, Cairo.

EVENTS WITH NO SET DATE

2H 2026: Operations at Deli Glass Co’s new USD 70 mn glassware factory kick off.

2026: The Egyptian-American Economic Forum.

4Q 2026: Banque du Caire IPO.

2027

20 January-7 February: Egypt to host the African Games.

1-3 February (Monday-Wednesday): Agri Expo, Cairo International Convention Center.

April 2027: Tenth of Ramadan dry port and logistics hub to begin operations.

29 September - 2 October (Wednesday-Saturday): Cityscape Egypt Exhibition, Cairo.

EVENTS WITH NO SET DATE

2027: Egypt to host EBRD’s annual meetings.

2027: Egypt-EU Summit 2027.

End of 2027: Trial operations at the Dabaa nuclear power plant expected to take place.

September 2028: First unit of the Dabaa nuclear power plant begins operations.

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