Davos, Switzerland — Healthcare and education continue to be at the forefront of the agendas of various stakeholders in the MENA region and promotion and growth of the two sectors remain their top priority, according to Amanat Holding CEO Mohamed Hamade.
In a wide-ranging discussion with TRENDS at DAVOS 2023, Hamade shared his perspectives on the potential for growth in the education and healthcare sectors. Additionally, he sheds light on how Amanat balances profitability with social responsibility and hints at potential future investments and IPOs.
Excerpts:
You’re focused on healthcare and education. Would you like to shed light on the opportunities in the two sectors from regional perspective?
Interacting during the Davos Summit and engaging in a dialogue about global issues in light of a potential recession and what’s happening at the macroeconomic level, it was interesting to see that all stakeholders agreed that healthcare and education continue to be at the forefront of their agendas. Regional players like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar are keen to promote, enhance and grow the two sector on priority basis.
In education sector, there’s an opportunity across the spectrum — from K12 and preschool to all the way up to university as well as vocational and training institutes. The region will require huge workforce in the hospitality industry and healthcare tourism , among others. This workforce need to be trained and up skilled and reskilled. All this creates a big opportunity there.
There’s definitely also an opportunity in the technology sector, which is witnessing a lot of innovations, AI-enabled solutions and machine learning solutions in education that our region would benefit from.
On medical front, there is a huge opportunity in the specialized healthcare. Our region has somewhat bridged the gap in secondary healthcare. However, there still remains a big gap in primary healthcare on one hand and specialized healthcare on the other hand.
At Amanat, we invest in post acute care and rehab as the region — particularly Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE will require more such facilities.
Though we have not yet invested much in the primary healthcare, there’s a big opportunity there for prevention in healthcare that our region will benefit from.
Both education and healthcare are resilient sectors. But they are also considered social services in traditional models. How do you balance in terms of making profit and staying committed to your social responsibilities?
The governments in our region are pioneers in proving a concept to the world that education and healthcare needs a partnership between the private sector and the public sector.
There is a role for each to play. The public sector is responsible for regulation, providing the guidance, putting the framework and the vision on where the sector should grow while the private sector invests in these projects. This allows a long-term value creation model, which is much more sustainable.
Making profits out of any business is healthy because businesses that are profitable are sustainable ones. They are there to stay and grow and be scaled into other regions around the world. I fully believe in making these sectors profitable as long as it’s being done in line with the government’s agenda and investments continue to flow in these sectors.
Is there a plan to diversify into other sectors?
The two sectors — education and healthcare — still have plenty of potential to exploit. These are technical sectors that require specialized people. Amanat is very well positioned here. Our track record thankfully allows us to continue to exploit potential in both sectors. We would like to invest in more sub categories under these two sectors in the region.
What are your major takeaways from Davos?
I think this is a meeting that comes at a very interesting time when the world is more fragmented than ever. It requires more dialogues and cooperation.
We are just coming out of a pandemic and facing a potential global recession, with high inflation rates and high interest rates and wars around the world, including Europe and other regions such as Iraq and Syria. We have to face that. It was interesting to see all the stakeholders here.
The outlook is not quite pessimistic. There is a ray of light that offers more optimism. Some regions might be able to avoid the recession altogether. Some regions will face the recession but might not be as bad as expected if handled properly. The situation is not as bad as we think.
The MENA region was well represented this year. The Saudi delegation was very impressive. It was great to see such a representation from our region. The Emirati delegation also had high-profile representatives, who were setting agendas at the global level. Similarly, Qatar’i’s representation was also noticeable at Davos.
My key takeaways are that the meeting is happening at an interesting time and they are very much looking forward to how the next 12 months would look like to test some of the hypothesis that we’ve taken away from this meeting.
Any major investment or major announcements that are coming up?
I just completed the transaction in Saudi Arabia two months ago. We have continued to announce growth year on year. We’ll continue along the same trend.
We still have quite a significant amount of cash to for investment. We have a healthy pipeline. Some of our platforms, whether on the healthcare side or the education side, have the right size and have the right growth potential that allow them to be potential IPOs. I’m not promising an IPO this year. But I’m saying we have a good potential platform that could be spun off as an IPO.