MENA’s publicly-listed tech players are trailing their global counterparts

Middle East tech stocks are approaching bear-market territory, with Magnitt’s new Magnitt Tech Index (MGTI) down 17.8% YTD on the back of the regional conflict, the venture intelligence platform said in a press release (pdf).

MGTI tracks 15 tech firms across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt worth a combined USD 11.1 bn — six in Saudi Arabia, six in the UAE, two in Egypt, and a single company in Morocco. Quantitative benchmarks used for inclusion require companies to have at least 50% of their revenues attributed to proprietary tech, a free market cap no less than USD 50 mn, and a daily average trading volume of USD 500k or more

Trailing the global peer set: MGTI returned 76% over three years (2023-25), against 133% for MSCI’s emerging markets tech index, the MSCI EM IT. The gap reflects MENA tech’s limited exposure to AI and semiconductors, plus the devaluation of the EGP, which erased some 38% of Fawry and 31% of e-finance’s USD value.

IN CONTEXT- AI-linked firms have driven one of the most sustained stock market rallies globally in recent memory. Bloomberg reported last month that the AI rally is currently delivering momentum investors their best returns in decades. Some individual names have seen staggering gains — SanDisk shares, buoyed by AI’s data storage demands, have climbed more than 600% this year.