This month we reviewed 61 MENA startup exits that happened from 01/2018 till now. The results of our analysis show that e-commerce and fintech witnessed the biggest activity and so did the UAE. Strategic acquisitions were the dominant exit type. More below.

VIMP:

Following its success in Saudi, we are launching #AMMAN_Seed_01!

If you’re a team from Jordan, we invite you to book your slot here. April 4 till 8

🤑

Analysis of 61 MENA startup exits (01/2018-03/2021)

A startup exit is a term referring to when the founders make a return on a startup by selling everything (or a stake) or going public (IPO).

We’ve closely analyzed most of the MENA startup exits* that happened in the period from 01/2018 until 03/2021.

The available data reveals that:

• 2021: 3 exits (to date)    

• 2020: 16 exits ($361 million+) 

• 2019: 27 exits ($3.61 billion+) & 1 startup IPO

• 2018: 17 exits ($104 million+)

The above numbers confirm that 2019 was a stellar year with the exits by far outnumbering any other year—also in terms of the total value. While 2018 saw exits worth “only” $104 million, the value of exits in 2019 surpassed $3.6 billion. Well, that was mainly thanks to Uber acquiring Careem for $3.1bilion—the first MENA unicorn 🦄 exit.

Let’s dissect now through 61 MENA startup exits that occurred during the above period. (You can check out the A-Z list at the end of the newsletter.) We present you the results in terms of sectors, countries and exit types.

The deals we analyzed spread over 20 sectors. E-commerce (e.g. Namshi and Wadi ) tops the sectorial analysis along with fintech (including the IPO of Fawry ). Adtech and real estate also witnessed a considerable number of exit deals.

Nearly half of the analyzed MENA startup exits happened in the UAE. So had the exit of unicorn Careem.

The deals can be further categorized as acquisitions and IPOs. The acquisitions were either full (82%) or partial (18%).

Almost 84% of the analyzed exits were strategic acquisitions (e.g. GIG acquiring a stake in Yallacompare or Emaar Malls acquiring Namshi), out of which 25% were acquisitions by a direct competitor (e.g. Ureed acquiring Nabbesh or Trella acquiring Trukto. Many of those strategic acquisitions were acquihires or struggling companies with usable products.

Only 14.8% of the acquisitions were by a holding group / PE—for example, B3Bar Holdings’ acquisition of NAR.AI or Helios Investment Partners’ acquisition of TPAY Mobile.

There has been just 1 startup IPO over the past 3 years. So, to finish off on a very good note, we’re excited about Anghami soon becoming the first MENA startup to be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Back in January, we pretty much whined about not having any MENA startup IPOs… it seems like 2021 is catching up quite well.

* Note: In our analysis, the label “MENA startup exits” covers data on 17 MENA countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

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Jordan, get ready for #AMMAN_Seed_01!

Hasan

The Magnificent Nine,The Cavaliers… ever heard of them? Well, they didn’t star in a Western film. Rather a Gulf reality show of early 1980s.

I’ll give you a hint: one bounced cheque would lead to a collapse of the third largest capital market in the world at that time.

The Souk Al-Manakh crash. Nearly 4 decades ago, but its notorious story continues to provide very important lessons. Especially when it comes to today’s overvaluations.

P.S.

📣 📣 📣

We got a super exciting announcement: we are launching Seed_2021 with $2.5 million up for grabs in 2021! 🤑

If you’re from Saudi, register your team and book your slot. We begin on March 7 🔥

The fate of the most popular casino in the Arabian Gulf

Hollywood or not, the Magnificent Nine of Kuwait were big stars. They allegedly accounted for $55 billion (some say 60) in cheques that proved worthless.

Let’s rewind back to the beginning.

In the late 1970s, Kuwait was the Switzerland of the Arabian Gulf. The new-found wealth of that era (due to oil crises and rising oil prices—and incomes) led to a new-found appetite for investment.

Boursa, the official stock exchange of Kuwait, was founded in 1977 and it laid down strict listing rules for companies. A year later, as a result of the existing stocks scarcity, an air-conditioned parking garage was turned into an informal market for new, innovative stocks. It became known as Souk Al-Manakh. Or the place of unparalleled stock speculation.

Unlike at Boursa, the participants at Souk Al-Manakh could trade in shares of unregulated foreign companies. At least 46 local and 38 foreign companies traded their shares there. The government permitted it as long as it ensured that this informal exchange was isolated from the formal financial system. Yet, a perfect isolation was impossible: many individuals took up loans from banks to finance their trades at Souk Al-Manakh. More so, rising oil prices subsequently increased the prices of Souk stocks, and the money from the region rushed into Kuwait.

The financing needs of the Souk were met by spot purchases of stocks by forward postdated cheques. The premiums were reaching up to 400% of the initial stock value. Moreover, these cheques would often mature in a year time. So, in the meantime, they’d be used to buy more stock and thus acted as money. The collateral was the future delivery of a stock (whose price was continuously on the rise). No bank balance was required; the whole transaction was based on mutual trust between the traders as well as their firm belief that the stock prices wouldn’t stop climbing. In fact, shares were doubling by hour. No wonder that one of the Magnificent Nine allegedly bought $14 billion in stock.

The traders simply assumed these cheques could never be defaulted. And if anything bad really happened, everyone counted on the Kuwaiti government to save them like they did in 1977.

By 1982, Souk Al Manakh became the third largest stock market in the world, topped only by the US and Japan.

Yet the price of oil was on a sharp decline in early 1982, which negatively impacted the value of the Souk. People were expecting a market correction…

… until one bounced cheque triggered its unavoidable crash in August 1982. People hurried to cash out their cheques – in vain. The created wealth was fictional. 29,000 worthless outstanding cheques with a total value of $93 billion.

There were over 350 bankruptcies (in the region’s perspective, this was a large number). All Kuwaiti banks except for one became insolvent and the government stepped in and bailed them out (amongst other rescue measures). The financial disruption that followed lasted more than a decade (then it was superseded by another disruption—the Iraqi invasion).

Souk Al-Manakh serves as an excellent example of a speculative craze. It was a place of too much money chasing too few actual investment opportunities.

The Souk was an unprecedently overvalued market with barely any tangible value. Billions of Kuwaiti Dinars were invested into companies with little assets and profits—so-called paper companies. Only about half of the listed companies produced annual reports. Some firms were purely fictional.

Souk Al-Manakh was innovative and it incited a rapid change, but the massive injection of liquidity only skyrocketed the value of many small, unpromising companies as if they were healthy, profiting business giants.

Overvaluations are dangerous and the resulting fall can be instantaneous, sharp and painful. Let’s watch out. (Though, it seems, the mankind can never completely learn from the past lessons of market collapses.)

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Ready for Seed_2021?

Hasan

Hope you stepped into 2021 with the right foot.
 
January is nearly over, so we will go directly to the heart of the matter: why are there no IPOs in our region? And what should be done so we have more of them?
 
We got a lot of startups with a small market cap and consolidation of the market through acquisitions is nowadays trendier than IPOs. Creating one unified startup market across the region could be a solution.

Middle East vs. startup IPOs

Globally speaking, startup IPOs definitely didn’t take any sick leave last year. On the contrary—it was a wild ride: Airbnb, Snowflake, DoorDash… Well, the 3 biggest tech IPOs ever happened in 2020. Compared to 2019, last year brought a strong IPO flurry. To be followed by more flurry in 2021. Why?

There are countless tech companies spread across many sectors and industries, each offering a solution to a problem. Globalization and digitization are their driving forces. As a result, their growth can’t go unnoticed by investors.

What’s happening on the international scene is that many tech startups are receiving higher valuations than they would have in the past and if they remained private. Investor confidence is there and the perceived risk is small. For now.

When it comes to the regional IPOs, Saudi food delivery startup Jahez is planning to go public this year. Still, I think it’s fair to say that our region is rather failing at incubating and nurturing business giants. So, here’s the puzzle to kick off this year: how come we don’t have (startup) IPOs in the Middle East?

Let’s look at the puzzle piece by piece:

• Age matters. Most of our regional tech startups are simply too young to go public.

• Type of ownership.Family-owned businesses constitute a big part of the private sector in the region… and they prefer to remain private.

• Internal governance. Startups must be well-structured and provide immaculate and transparent reporting. They must be able to handle the demands of going public.

• Adequate management. International investors have a certain standard for who should be in the company management and what kind of education/experience these individuals should possess.

• Market outreach. If we consider our region as one whole market, it is still very fragmented which negatively impacts the startups’ abilities to scale up. Including regional stock markets in international indices will help provide the required exposure.

• Regional politics & economy. Political instability and unclear economic planning push international investors away.

• Profitability. Though IPOs by unprofitable companies (such as Uber or Airbnb) are nowadays very common, many regional markets around the Middle East doesn’t allow listing unless the business achieved profitability.

• It’s expensive. Right now, there is so much capital available at cheaper rates that opting for an IPO may simply not be worth it for the business.

• Illiquidity in secondary markets. The very low liquidity in existing secondary markets in the MENA may deter investors to invest in companies that plan to list in those markets.

• Regulators & responsibilities. There is a lack of benefits when listing companies due to the ongoing and growing burdens/responsibilities that listed companies have to go through. Plus, headache from regulators. Panadol won’t fix that. (P.S. That’s not to say that our local regulators are stricter than their international counterparts.)

• Protecting secrets. When listing and going through the required reporting process, startups’ details such as their “secret sauce” are exposed and competitors can take advantage of this…

Healthy IPOs will start happening in the Middle East more often if we (and our governments) allow ourselves to nurture and support companies that address local/regional problems and needs. And we got plenty of such companies.

A possible solution are small cap IPOs—IPOs of companies with a relatively small market cap ($50m – $1bn). The profitability requirement should not be adhered to, since many of the tech startups are focused on growth until scale is achieved (only then profitability arrives). Many investors want to invest when those startups are at the hyper growth. More risk, more return. For all that, we need to educate investors and show the opportunities in the listed companies.

A MENA small cap market would bring startups from around the region in one place, thus creating one unified startup market for all MENA countries where it would be easy for investors to invest. There would be a good volume of startups (options to invest in) and investors would be not only local but regional. What do you say?

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• Group Finance Manager at TruKKer (Dubai)

• Product Manager at Crowd Analyzer (Cairo)

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• Technical Support Engineer at Swvl (Cairo)

• QA Specialist at Tamatem (Amman)

Happy and healthy from ours to yours!

Hasan