Leading investment house sees profits falling 15%

MIXED PICTURE: ARTOC's chairman sees profits down but revenues up in 2009. (Getty Images)

One of Egypt’s leading investment houses is likely to record a 15 percent drop in profits in 2009, compared to the year earlier, its chairman has said.

However Cairo-based ARTOC Group for Investment and Development, which has assets under management of $1.1bn, anticipates a healthy increase in revenues for the period.

“We’re estimating somewhere between $75m and $85m [in profits] this year,” Shafik Gabr told Arabian Business in an interview. “In 2008 we did very well, but this year I think we’re going to make 85 percent of what we did in 2008, in terms of profit.”

“The reason for that is slowdown, not because of any structural deficiencies, but a slowdown in markets generally. And when we look around us and find ourselves about to do 85 percent of what we did in 2008, we count ourselves very lucky.”

“We think we’re going to grow the revenues by about 20 percent,” he continued. “One of the strategic decisions we made in Q4 last year was that we wanted to be able to maintain market share and grow the company. We had to sacrifice something, so we sacrificed a section of our profits.”

The multi–disciplined investment holding company’s subsidiaries invest in real estate, consumer products, publications, engineering and technology projects.

The full interview will be published in Arabian Business magazine on Sunday.

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