Masaud Hayat

KUWAIT: KIPCO - the Kuwait Projects Company (Holding) - has announced a net profit of KD 22.3 million ($74 million), or 11.22 fils per share ($3.7 cents), for the first nine months of 2017. This is compared to KD 40 million ($132.4 million), or 24.62 fils per share ($8.15 cents), reported for the same period last year.

KIPCO's net profit for the three months ended September 30, 2017, came to KD 8.2 million ($27.1 million), from the KD 12 million ($39.7 million) reported for the same period last year.

KIPCO's consolidated assets stood at KD 9.7 billion ($32 billion), compared to KD 10 billion ($33 billion) reported at year-end 2016. Masaud Hayat, KIPCO's Chief Executive Officer - Banking, said the first nine months of the year were difficult, as expected, due to external challenges the whole region and the company are facing: "Our core businesses have been resilient in the face of a difficult environment that continues to affect our performance this year. The internal discipline we adopted throughout the years have allowed us to achieve the results we expected. We continue to work in harsh global economic circumstances and continued geopolitical tension in our region. Despite these challenges, we remain positive that the performance of our companies will be in line with our expectations. While we remain cautiously optimistic, we believe that our businesses will move to stronger ground in the next year."