E&, formerly Etisalat, is a major telecom group based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that is reportedly looking to expand into new markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa. According to E & CEO Hatem Dowidar, the company is also looking to expand beyond telecoms into new products such as financial technologies in order to drive new growth.
According to Business Day, the company is looking into new opportunities outside of the UAE, such as potential new joint ventures, acquisitions, and subsidiary listings – but it still wants to maintain control over all of its units, says Dowidar, adding that “while telco is a good business, and we’re still focusing on telcom—as for us, it’s the money-generating cash cow—the long-term growth needs to be through expansion.”
In the telcom space, “we are looking at geographic expansion,” he said, adding that the company is looking into opportunities in African, European, and Asian countries with room for growth, political stability, and strict regulations – no specific markets were named, however.
The group recently split its business into consumer services-focused E & Life and government and business-focused E & Enterprise, while keeping telecom arm Etisalat, which is thought to be the world’s seventh-largest telco by market capitalization.
Dowidar anticipates that growth will accelerate; the company reported 17 percent revenue growth in its E & E enterprise last year, while E & grew by 3 percent. The CEO also said that the company plans to make “a few more announcements soon in Egypt” in the field of fintech.
“We are prepared for whatever the market throws at us… At the end of the day, all of these applications rely on data. “It may reduce our voice usage, but it will increase our data usage,” Dowidar explained.