Albilad Capital has stated in a report that the cumulative net income for Saudi banks, including the non-listed National Commercial bank, is expected at SAR 31,650 million at the end of September 2014, up 12.44% from last year’s comparable figure of SAR 28,150 million.
On a quarter basis, net income is expected to surge from SAR 9,110 million in Q3-13 to SAR 10,630 million, as the banking loan growth is estimated at 12.65%. On the other side, banking assets and deposits are foreseen to grow by 13.83% and 14.3%, respectively, the research firm said.
The Petrochemical sector is impacted by two major factors - prices and volumes. Regarding the first factor, prices of petrochemicals products have followed different trends with fertilizers prices generally seeing outstanding growth, however polymers tended to drop, while on a longer term they showed a better performance. For instance, ammonia price increased 24%, urea price ended up 16.1% while diammonium phosphate(DAP) rose 7.7%. in the meantime, ethylene price advanced 7.5%, while prices of propylene, poly propylene and polyethylene shrank 5.8%, 1% and 1.6% respectively. As for other chemicals, methanol price slipped 2.3%, Albilad said.
Regarding demand, the report issuer expects the third quarter to see sustained growth relative to the same quarter last year with the bulk for demand coming from external markets.
As for the Cement sector, the research firm said the construction activities in the third quarter of 2014 witnessed slowdown due to Summer and Ramadan. In August, that began after the end of Ramadan, local dispatches of cement increased by 30% coupled with a high level of clinker inventory that amounted to 20 million tons prompting the leading Saudi Cement company to delay launching the operations of two furnaces in Al Hafouf factory.
Albilad expects 10% revenue growth for the Retail and Agriculture sector’s topline on the back of increasing local demand.