THIS MORNING: Nadec plans nearly SAR 5 bn expansion across dairy, juice, and food processing

Good morning, friends, and happy THURSDAY. It’s another busy morning with lots of earnings to wade through as we close in on the final week of the disclosure window in the Kingdom.

The government’s ledger looks much like the corporate world, as 9M 2026 government spending outpaced the revenue side of the equation and borrowing ballooned to keep up. Spending was fueled by grants, subsidies, and the price of servicing debt.

Fuel and handover costs had the same effect on corporate results. Record top lines turned into thinner bottom lines across property, aviation, and utilities, with one-off items flattering a couple of the numbers more than the trading deserved.

Another chapter

The National Agricultural Development Company (Nadec) is committing nearly SAR 5 bn over five years to expand its dairy, juice, and food processing business, according to a Tadawul filing. The plan will be implemented in phases, with spending adjusted to market conditions and business priorities.

The program is large compared to the company’s size, with revenue coming in at SAR 909.7 mn in 3Q 2025. The amount is being committed while earnings are under pressure: despite doubling its sales, net income fell 72.5% y-o-y to SAR 30.4 mn on a cost squeeze. Nadec said it will focus on expanding existing businesses and advancing previously announced projects while continuing to assess potential acquisitions.

PIF backs DIP

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) and a unit of Blackstone were among the international investors that booked orders in Dubai Investments Park Holding’s USD 529 mn IPO, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. Dubai Investments sold a 20% stake in DIP at about USD 0.305 per share, valuing the company at around USD 2.64 bn. The offering was priced at the midpoint of its marketed range and significantly oversubscribed, with shares expected to begin trading on the Dubai Financial Market next Wednesday, 11 November.

Nesr aims to level up Saudi lithium production

Saudi lithium output could reach 20-30k tons per year after Nesr’s pilot project moved to a trial phase, CEO Sherif Foda tells Asharq Business (watch, runtime: 6:35). The trial will test the economic viability and whether the product can be marketed, ahead of a scale-up phase. Lithium concentrations in some Saudi waters run at 300-400 parts per mn, versus around 80 ppm at some US sites, though Foda said those levels must hold up for commercial production.

REMEMBER- Aramco tapped Nesr last month to run a lithium demonstration project in the Kingdom. The five-year, USD 200 mn agreement will see Nesr’s environmental unit use its proprietary Lithara platform to extract lithium from brine, targeting 2k tons a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate from late 2027.

Defense and development

Saudi Arabia and Syria signed a defense cooperation agreement and a set of accords extending Saudi development funding into Syrian health, housing, and financial services during Syrian President Ahmed Al Sharaa’s visit to Riyadh yesterday, according to Sana and SPA. The two countries also signed an industrial cooperation MoU, along with two MoUs on agriculture and environmental protection.

REMEMBER- Saudi Arabia is investing across Syria’s telecoms, aviation, power, and transport sectors. STC owns 75% of the SAR 3 bn SilkLink project, Elaf plans a SAR 7.5 bn new Aleppo airport, while flynas is taking a 49% stake in flynas Syria. Saudi Arabia is also building the control software for Syria’s grid in a USD 60 mn contract, and Al Rawaf and Al Kawati secured a USD 300 mn agreement to rehabilitate the Damascus-Palmyra-Deir Ezzor road.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Al Sharaa also discussed bilateral cooperation and regional developments during the visit, SPA said, without providing further information.

Ankara’s next move

Turkey’s parliament is set to ratify the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, formalizing Ankara’s mutual defense commitment to Riyadh as the Kingdom faces Houthi attacks, Reuters reported. Ratification would establish a formal mutual defense obligation but would not automatically deploy Turkish forces to the Kingdom. Any deployment would require a separate parliamentary mandate.

REMEMBER- Turkey submitted the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement to parliament for ratification last month. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee subsequently approved the ratification bill, clearing the way for consideration by the full assembly. Deputy Foreign Minister Levent Gümrükçü told lawmakers that the agreement was defensive in nature and that there were currently no plans for military deployments under the pact.

Racing ahead

The Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia plans to hold four to five horse auctions annually, with the number of yearlings entered in its upcoming auction set to double, as it seeks to attract private investment across the racing industry, CEO Prince Salman bin Abdullah bin Mohamed told Asharq Business.

The club aims to develop a broader economic ecosystem around horse racing, moving beyond reliance on prize money alone. The Riyadh season offers more than SAR 236.3 mn in prize money, while the Saudi Cup carries a purse of more than USD 38 mn.

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The big story abroad

Wall Street rallied yesterday after Democrats won a sweeping midterm victory that gave them control of both the House and Senate, while expectations of an earlier end to the Iran War drove oil prices down. Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft each gained over 6%, as investors wager that the new Congress will push for cuts in AI investment. Energy stocks fell 4.7% and were heading for their steepest daily drop since 2025. Tesla, SpaceX, and data-center companies like CoreWeave declined, while housing stocks gained on lower Treasury yields and mining shares rose as metals prices climbed.

Bill Gates has accused the Trump administration of blocking efforts to manage AI risks, warning the technology could cause a pandemic far deadlier than Covid. Speaking at an FT summit, the Microsoft co-founder named AI-enabled bioweapons and cyberattacks as the biggest immediate threats. He said self-regulation will not work and urged Washington to consider safety benchmarks for AI models, lead a global effort to fix cyber vulnerabilities, and expand monitoring to catch AI-enabled infections early.

Google has widened its voluntary severance program to staff in several countries this year to contain rising costs as it pours money into AI. The company said it started extending the packages in June to some workers in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland, though the number of workers who took them is unknown. Past offers did not include employees in Google Cloud or DeepMind, and the new round seems to exclude them as well. The expansion follows Microsoft’s move to offer buyouts to 60k staff as part of its own cost-cutting push.