THIS MORNING: Air defenses intercept Houthi missile over southern region

Good morning, wonderful people. The Saudi household is doing a lot of work in today’s issue — setting the floor for payrolls, funding a waterfront development, and testing a consumer lender’s provisioning all at once.

On the payroll side of things, employers will soon have to pay Saudi workers more for the same job to count toward Nitaqat, raising the cost of a Saudization credit up by 50% over 18 months, while leaving the statutory floor where it is.

But even without the higher salaries, consumer spending has been doing just fine — or at least that’s what Extra’s earnings show. Retail net income grew double digits on bigger baskets and the iPhone 18 cycle, while Tasheel’s earnings fell more than 80% on impairment charges, roughly half of which Extra booked as a management overlay rather than realized losses. The takeaway from the numbers: People are still spending.

AND- PIF’s flagship in Al Khobar will see Saudi Downtown Company putting in land and Sumou Real Estate funding the first residential plots from its own balance sheet and from off-plan sales, which means buyers are financing a good share of the construction before it exists.

Power Trip’s final issue turns to the people paying the bill. We look at the cost of a backup generator or going solar, how your electricity bill is really calculated and whether the price is right, whether an EV pays off against a petrol car today, and why green energy keeps skipping the consumer.

Subscribe to the Egypt edition for Power Trip, out tomorrow, 4 November.

War Watch

The US struck Iran’s Qeshm Island yesterday, even as President Donald Trump talked up the prospect of a diplomatic deal, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing US officials. It was the latest in a string of small-scale strikes that Washington has carried out against Iran in recent weeks, the officials said.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Monday evening that it had brought down two US MQM-170 reconnaissance drones south of Qeshm using electronic warfare systems. The IRGC said that brings the number of these drones it has downed to four, and it called the incident a fresh failure for US Central Command, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). The IRGC did not provide further details about this incident.

Qeshm sits at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz and is home to an Iranian naval base, a major desalination plant, and a large underground missile facility. The US had hit the island in earlier rounds of fighting, and US officials have discussed taking control of it, The Wall Street Journal said.

Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz unless its conditions are accepted, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the IRNA yesterday. After “dozens of phone calls and intensive shuttle diplomacy,” Iran sent a clear plan for diplomacy to the mediators, Qatar and Pakistan, he said. Iran’s top diplomat added that the “ball is in Washington’s court” to choose between “a wise path of negotiation” and repeating the “mistakes of military aggression.”

Washington has warned several Gulf states to prepare for a brief but forceful US military operation against Iran once the US midterm elections are over, The Wall Street Journal reported in late October, citing sources in the know. The US is also shipping a Patriot missile defense system from Texas to Israel, and has pulled troops away from exposed bases in the Middle East to prepare for possible escalation.

The Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, got some welcome news as the US signaled it wants to avoid war. Speaking in Washington a day before the US midterm elections, Trump said the White House was willing to negotiate and pointed to progress, though he did not elaborate further. “They want to make a deal, and that could happen,” he said. He also credited the drop in oil prices to the talks, saying “it looks like that’s coming together very nicely” and “people found out about it.” Shortly after, when a reporter asked whether he would restart military strikes on Iran after Tuesday’s vote, Trump mouthed “No,” Bloomberg reported.

The rising military tension comes as fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis drags on. Saudi air defenses intercepted and destroyed a Houthi missile over the southern region, the Saudi-led coalition said yesterday. This interception follows the coalition’s recent strikes against key Houthi assets in Yemen, including ballistic missile and drone capabilities.

Leading the push

Saudi Arabia is rallying international support to protect vital shipping lanes and counter Houthi threats to maritime trade, with 14 countries joining a Saudi-led defense coalition, Deputy Chief of General Staff Lieutenant General Fahd Al Ghafili said at the Manama Dialogue, SPA reported. Other countries have also expressed interest in joining, pending completion of their national procedures, he added.

Al Ghafili called for coordinated international action to counter Houthi attacks on commercial vessels and oil tankers since 2023, warning that disruptions across the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Red Sea, Bab Al Mandab Strait, and Gulf of Aden threaten global trade, energy markets, food security, and supply chains.

New IPO rulebook gets CMA stamp of approval

CMA adopts rules requiring funded bids and forecasts after a year of weak IPOs: Banks underwriting Saudi IPOs must now commit to buying every share on offer, investors must have the money behind their orders, and issuers must publish financial forecasts in their prospectuses, after the Capital Market Authority approved the rules it put out for consultation in September, according to a Tadawul announcement.

Underwriters have to sign their agreements before bookbuilding opens and commit to buying all offered shares once it begins. If the stake they end up holding puts the issuer in breach of listing requirements, the shares won’t list at all and the underwriter buys the entire offering. Investor orders must reflect actual available liquidity, verified through funds or liquid equivalents, and become binding by the subscription payment deadline.

On disclosure, issuers must now forecast the remainder of the current financial period and at least the following year in the prospectus, with forecasts required to be clear, non-misleading, and based on reasonable assumptions, with financial advisors required to exercise due diligence.

The new rules build on a run of CMA moves to reshape the IPO process, as this year saw only three companies going public — Dar Al Balad, Saleh Abdulaziz Al Rashed, and MSGA — raising SAR 522.6 mn, around 4% of the SAR 13.27 bn that 25 companies raised over the same eight months of 2025. The Kingdom’s full-year IPO proceeds came in at about USD 144 mn, the weakest in years.

Another eye on TASI

Aljouf Mineral Water Bottling has its sights set on the main market, appointing Hamah Financial Company as its financial advisor to manage the planned transfer from Nomu, according to a Tadawul announcement.

Aljouf would follow several other jumps to the big league this year, starting with Alwasail Industrial and Nofoth Food Products transferring in January, followed by Armah Sports and Ladun Investment in August. Others are preparing to follow, with Tam Development and Axelerated Solutions securing board approval to begin the process, while National Building and Marketing plans to resubmit its application.

Data point

13% — that’s the share of Saudi box-office revenue taken by local films in 2025, nearly double the under-7% they held a year earlier, Asharq Business reported, citing the Film Commission’s 2025 Saudi Film Industry Report. Saudi films’ takings jumped 117% to SAR 123 mn and drove most of the market’s net growth, even as the total box office rose a gentler 9% to SAR 921 mn.

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The big story abroad

US voters are heading to the polls today in midterm elections that will determine whether President Donald Trump’s Republicans hold on to their majorities in Congress. Voters are focused on rising prices, which many attribute to Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. The White House has reportedly been preparing for months for a Democratic victory, identifying ways Trump could keep pushing his agenda on immigration, tariffs, housing, and federal spending without Congress, while getting ready for potential investigations into his administration. Trump said that if Republicans lose, he could issue vetoes for “a month or two” before reaching common ground with Democrats.

Anthropic plans to spend more than USD 895 bn in the next few years, mostly on computing power and infrastructure. The Claude chatbot maker expects about USD 448 bn of that to come due by the end of 2030, including roughly USD 70 bn it must pay in the 12 months to September 2027. The company reported nearly USD 17 bn in revenue for the third quarter, up from USD 1.4 bn a year earlier, as it pitches investors ahead of an IPO that could break records.

Germany has warned that spyware may have compromised the iPhones of government officials and lawmakers. The Federal Office for Information Security issued an urgent notice over the weekend telling anyone who had recently received a security alert from Apple to treat their phone as no longer safe. The attack used a “zero-click” flaw, so the hackers needed only a target’s phone number and the owner didn’t have to click a link or open a file. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s spokesman, Stefan Kornelius, said the government was taking the incident very seriously and that authorities were working “flat out” to investigate it and help those affected. He declined to say whether Merz himself was among the targets.