Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 18 | Page 9

NEWS Zain Announces First Net Profit Zain Saudi Arabia reported its first ever quarterly net profit for the three months ending March 31, 2017 driven by revenue growth and optimization of its operational cost structure. combined with a unified telecom license and other favorable gestures by the Saudi authorities, will give Zain Saudi Arabia a significant stimulus towards achieving its business objectives and at the same time positively impacting its financial performance.” Bader Nasser Al Kharafi, Zain Group Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman of Zain Saudi Arabia commented, “This strong performance of Zain’s operation in Saudi Arabia comes at a time when the Saudi telecom market is witnessing exponential growth in demand for digital services which we are exploiting, reflecting the success of our turnaround and cost optimization program, and justifying our heavy investment in expanding and upgrading the state-of-the-art 4.5G network.” Al Kharafi continued, “Despite the intense competitive challenges of the Saudi telecom market, Zain Saudi Arabia is now on a forward growth trajectory and the management team remain cautiously optimistic and clearly focused on strategic priorities, Key performance indicators for the first quarter Q1, 2017: Compared to Q1, 2016, Zain Saudi Arabia reported: continually striving to improve all aspects of this key operation for Zain Group.” Furthermore, Al Kharafi said, “The decision to extend the operating license for an additional 15 years, • First ever quarterly net profit amounting to SAR 45 million • Revenues of SAR 1,919 million, up 9%. • Gross profit of SAR 1,291 million, up 19%. • EBITDA of SAR 665 million, up 49%. • Operational income of SAR 273 million Amlak has tech revamp using Temenos The implementation and delivery will be done by National Data Consultants (NDC), a Pakistan-based system integrator and Temenos partner in the Middle East and Asia. It is a subsidiary of Saudi Investment Bank, which is a long-standing user of Misys’ core, capital and treasury management (TCM) and trade finance solutions. T24 will replace Silverlake Axis’ SIBS core banking system, which has been in use at Amlak for over a decade. Amlak specialises in real estate financing and development and caters for individuals (including high net-worth), corporates and real estate developers. Mixed rhythms www.intelligentcio.com Temenos has a number of customers in Saudi Arabia. These include Alinma Bank, Bank Albilad and Aljazira Capital. There is also an ongoing T24 project at Samba Financial Group. The project started in 2011 and has been a difficult, long-suffering affair, Banking Technology understands. It is yet to go live, it is understood. However, Samba’s subsidiary in Pakistan has been more successful in its T24 roll-out, with the new system going live there at the start of 2017. The aforementioned NDC was the system integrator. Samba’s operations in the UAE are also now live with T24. ¡ INTELLIGENTCIO INTELLIGENTCIO 9