H E Saad bin Sherida Al Kaabi, Minister of State for Energy Affairs and Chairman and Managing Director of Industries Qatar (IQ) has stated that the IQ’s position as a leading conglomerate is primarily driven by its competitive advantages. The group possesses several competitive advantages, including assured supply of feedstock, competitively priced energy contracts, younger, efficient and well maintained production facilities.
Adding to these advantages are a dedicated marketing entity, and strategic alliance and partnerships with world renowned energy firms, strategically located facilities and most importantly a highly experienced senior management team that transformed IQ to where it is today. These competitive advantages aided the group in growing its production facilities, product ranges, geographical presence, operating asset base, cash position and the portfolio companies, the Minister said while addressing the annual general assembly meeting of the industrial giant, yesterday.
The group places greater emphasis on the need for being efficient and cost competitive to maintain its status quo as one of the leading low cost and efficient operators within the industry. Having prioritized the need for being competitive, the group commenced its optimization efforts as early as 2015. Since then, the companies were able to reduce the controllable operating costs considerably to maintain an excellent cost positioning. Further efforts are underway to improve the cost competitiveness to achieve our full potential.
“We will continue to invest in people, processes, and technologies to facilitate our target of becoming a lean organization, while maintaining the highest quality and HSE standards”, Al Kaabi said.
Elaborating on the group’s five-year business strategy, the Minister said IQ will continue to focus on market development by expanding its geographical footprint, efficiency gains via the on-going cost optimization programs, and selective expansions. “We will keep our shareholders informed of any such capital investments as and when a decision is made,” he said.
The group is currently evaluating a wide spectrum of potential CAPEX opportunities in the areas of capacity expansions, reliability, efficiency, and HSE improvements. We believe such investments are essential to maintain our competitive position and add value to our shareholders.
The group has settled almost all of its outstanding debt during 2018, making it almost a debt frees entity; Sales volumes have reached 9.8 million metric tons, a new record for the group. Changes to distribution strategy, migration of steel marketing, sales and distribution to Muntajat, and a general increase in demand aided the group’s sales volumes to reach this new height.
Qatar Fuel Additive Company (Qafac) operated throughout the year, without having either planned or unplanned outages. A reputed industry benchmark report highlighted that Qafac’s performance is within the first quartile in the industry. Qafac was also ranked as the number one operator in the methanol industry last year. Qatar Fertiliser Company (Qafco) exported the highest volumes of urea in the month of March 2018, which is considered a world record of export quantity in a month from a single location and from a single entity.
From the group’s incorporation in 2003 to-date, it has distributed a total dividend of QR47.3bn or QR 84.5 per share, with an average payout ratio of approximately 66 percent. Moreover, 10 percent bonus shares were issued on two previous occasions. The historical payout ratio of above 60 percent is a clear evidence of the Board’s intention of paying an adequate dividend to the shareholders while maintaining adequate liquidity for actual and potential investment requirements, debt obligations and unexpected adverse trading conditions.
Source from: The Peninsula