FIVE BY CAPITALSA
THURSDAY, 5 NOVEMBER 2026
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Today’s Five
AVIATION
Flynas pays the war’s fuel bill.
THE CLOSE · IN ONE MINUTE
Back Above 10,000
The Saudi market climbed back over 10,000 on Wednesday. The TASI rose 1.65% to 10,038.89, with 4.5 billion Riyal ($1.2 billion) changing hands.
Gold did the lifting: the metal jumped almost 3% to above $4,000 an ounce after the US election, and miners Maaden and Amak rallied with it.
Almost everyone joined in: 253 stocks rose and 28 fell. Malath Insurance, GASCO and Alamar all hit the 10% daily limit.
Except cement: Yanbu Cement was the day’s biggest loser, down 3.9% to a one-year low. Most listed cement makers are trading near their lowest levels in a year.
Still red for 2026: even after Wednesday, the index is down about 4.3% this year.
MARKET CLOSE · NOV 4
10,038.89 ▲ 1.65%
Tadawul All Share Index (TASI)
TOP GAINERS
Malath Insurance
SR9.02 ▲ 10.00%
National Gas & Industrialization
SR60.60 ▲ 9.98%
Alamar Foods
SR42.16 ▲ 9.96%
TOP LOSERS
Yanbu Cement
SR12.90 ▼ 3.87%
BinDawood Holding
SR4.62 ▼ 2.33%
Bonyan REIT
SR7.72 ▼ 2.15%
01 / REAL ESTATE
Good morning, friends.
Here’s a puzzle from this week’s earnings. Almost every listed Saudi property developer sold more this quarter than a year ago. Yet one swung to a loss, another’s profit fell by nearly three-quarters, and a third saw profit jump by almost a third.
The difference isn’t how many homes they sold. It’s land: who had some to sell this year, and who sold theirs last year.
The common thread: sales are up. Dar Al Arkan’s revenue rose 10.7% to about 1.13 billion Riyal ($300 million). Retal hit a record $204 million, up 13%. Sumou grew 11%. Jabal Omar rose 14% as its Makkah hotels and malls got busier.
Where the profit came from: land. Umm Al Qura, the developer behind Makkah’s Masar Destination, sold three plots near the Grand Mosque for twice their book value. Its profit jumped 29% to nearly $179 million.
Dar Al Arkan’s rose 13.5% to $77 million, helped by property sales and lower financing costs.
Where it went missing: last year’s land sales. Jabal Omar swung to a $70 million loss from a $53 million profit a year earlier, when it booked big one-off gains from selling land. Riyadh Development’s profit fell 74% to $10 million for the same reason.
The builders’ squeeze: for companies that build and hand over homes, costs are the problem. Retal’s profit fell 6.8% to $13.8 million despite record revenue. Sumou’s fell 12.7% to $11.4 million even as sales rose.
Construction costs are up 1.9% this year as regional tensions push material prices higher, Retal’s Chief Financial Officer Ammar Al-Ghoul told Al Arabiya Business. The good news for Retal: delivery costs are already easing, and it has $1.6 billion of homes sold but not yet booked, enough to cover about six quarters.
What buyers are doing: still buying, but spending less. The number of mortgage contracts rose 21% in September from a year earlier while their total value stayed flat, Al-Ghoul said, citing central bank data. That points to smaller, cheaper homes.
More land is on the way: Riyadh’s fees on idle land are pushing plots into development. About 27 million square meters has entered development since January, enough for about 70,000 homes over the next two to three years. Owners can now hand their plots to development funds and pass the fee on.
Why it matters: the war has hit flights, events and travel, but housing demand is holding. The question now is margins. Land owners near the holy sites are cashing in, while homebuilders are giving up profit to keep volumes up.
What to watch: developers still to report, including Saudi Real Estate Co., and whether builders’ costs keep easing in the fourth quarter.
Same boom. Very different books.
Read more:
02 / TECH
Saudi Arabia’s AI ambitions run on American chips. After Tuesday’s US election, more people in Washington will be watching who gets them.
Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. That gives them more room to scrutinize advanced chip sales to the Gulf, including deals already approved for Humain, the Public Investment Fund’s AI company.
What’s at stake: Humain is aiming for more than six gigawatts of data center capacity. It has partnerships with Nvidia, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, and Washington has already approved advanced chip shipments to it and to Abu Dhabi’s G42.
What changes, and what doesn’t: export licenses stay mainly with President Donald Trump’s administration, so nothing gets cancelled overnight. But Congress can now look harder at chip deals, especially the safeguards meant to keep advanced technology away from China. Both parties care about that.
Markets felt it first: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix fell more than 5% in South Korea on Wednesday before paring losses.
The bigger fight is in the US: new Democratic governors in Texas, Ohio and Georgia campaigned on pausing or tightening approvals for data centers over power bills and water use. Texas alone holds about 30% of the US capacity due online in 2028, according to research firm SemiAnalysis.
Why it matters: Humain’s plans only become real computing power if the chips keep arriving. Right now, the licenses matter more than any new partnership.
What to watch: whether Congress calls hearings on Gulf chip deals, and whether delays in US data centers push some demand this way.
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03 / AVIATION
Flynas is back in profit, just about. The budget airline made 27 million Riyal ($7.2 million) in the third quarter, down 77.5% from a year earlier, it said in a filing on Wednesday. In the second quarter, it lost $64.2 million.
A window into the industry: flynas is the only Saudi airline on the stock market, so its numbers are the clearest outside look at how the war is hitting air travel.
Fuel ate the gains: its fuel bill rose 51% to $177.6 million. Fares helped, with revenue up 6% to $592 million, but not enough.
Hajj timing hurt too: this year’s season ended in the second quarter, so Hajj revenue fell 67%.
The worst may be ahead: these numbers stop at September. In October, Riyadh’s main airport closed for several days and nearly half of all departures across the Kingdom were cancelled in a single week. That lands in the fourth quarter.
Why it matters: higher fares no longer cover the fuel bill. Airline caterer Catrion’s profit halved last quarter for the same reason: fewer flights.
What to watch: fuel prices, and how fast schedules return to normal over the winter travel season.
DATA POINT
21%
That’s how much the number of Saudi mortgage contracts rose in September from a year earlier. Their total value didn’t move. More people are buying homes, but each is spending less.
04 / MARKETS & DEALS
Banks that take Saudi companies public now carry the risk if investors don’t show up. From Monday, underwriters must sign a binding promise to buy every share on offer before taking a single order, the Capital Market Authority said.
Why the regulator stepped in: many recent listings looked heavily oversubscribed on paper, but those headline numbers didn’t always match what investors could actually pay for.
Banks: they sign before the book opens and buy whatever’s left, even if the listing fails.
Investors: bids must be backed by cash or near-cash, not credit lines, and are binding once placed.
Companies: forecasts for this year and at least next year go into the prospectus, for retail investors to see too.
The backdrop: listings slowed sharply this year as the war unsettled markets. Share sales across the Middle East and Africa fell 71% in the first half.
What it means: smaller oversubscription headlines, narrower price ranges and higher bank fees. Cornerstone investors will matter more.
What to watch: the first IPO filed under the new rules.
While Riyadh tightens the rules for going public, a Gulf firm is helping take an American icon private. BlueFive Capital, an Abu Dhabi buyout firm, is one of four investors offering $1.4 billion for Wendy’s, the burger chain confirmed last week.
The bid: $7.35 a share in cash, about 20% above where Wendy’s traded before the offer went public. BlueFive’s partners are Nelson Peltz’s Trian, Wendy’s biggest franchisee Flynn Group and investment firm Sixth Street.
Why Wendy’s is in play: sales at its established restaurants have fallen for six straight quarters. Trian already owns more than 16%.
The Saudi link: BlueFive, founded and run by Hazem Ben-Gacem, has been one of the Kingdom’s busiest foreign buyers this year. It’s rescuing Riyadh-listed insurer Gulf General with a 42% stake, and it bought into Jeddah’s Sidra Capital. It’s also the biggest investor in the group that bought Porsche’s stake in Bugatti.
Why it matters: Gulf money isn’t just writing cheques for other people’s buyouts anymore. It’s sitting at the table.
What to watch: Wendy’s reports results today, its first update since the bid.
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05 / CRYPTO
The biggest crypto heist on record started with a job offer. North Korean hackers posed as recruiters and interviewed an engineer at Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. They talked him into downloading a coding “assignment” that opened its systems, the company said on Tuesday.
How it unfolded: the engineer sat two interviews, one with the “chief executive” of a company that didn’t exist. In late October, the attackers used his work computer to reach the system that approves transfers. They emptied five wallets in four minutes.
Who pays: not customers, Binance says. It has now replaced 98% of the $6.3 billion taken, and nearly $2.9 billion has been frozen or intercepted.
Why it matters: the weak point wasn’t the code, it was the people. Any company with staff on LinkedIn faces the same risk.
The Saudi angle: Saudi traders who use Binance still have no local regulator to call.
THE WEEK AHEAD
Four Dates to Watch
Saturday, 7 November / Events. WWE Crown Jewel goes ahead in Riyadh at ANB Arena.
Sunday, 8 November / Pilgrims. Jeddah hosts the Hajj Conference and Exhibition through 11 November, as planning for the 2027 season gets going.
Wednesday, 25 November / Dividend. Aramco pays its $21.9 billion base dividend.
Sunday, 29 November / Oil supply. OPEC+ countries meet again on output.
AND ONE MORE THING
Up, Up and Away
As markets weighed what tighter rules could mean for US data centers, Elon Musk joked that data centers in space are starting to look like a pretty attractive option.
He may have a Saudi shareholder who agrees. Kingdom Holding’s stake in his rocket company, SpaceX, is worth more than half of Kingdom Holding itself.
When things get complicated on the ground, some bets head for orbit.
Five stories. Five minutes.
One step ahead.
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