Shaker Group confident of healthy growth in 2021, eyes more Tarshid retrofit projects: CEO

Mohammed Abunayyan, CEO of Shaker Group

Saudi Arabia’s Al Hassan Ghazi Ibrahim Shaker Co. (Shaker Group) is confident of sustaining a healthy trajectory this year, and the last quarter of 2020, despite ongoing economic volatility, company CEO Mohammed Ibrahim Abunayyan told Argaam in an exclusive interview.

“We have made meaningful strides to achieve sustained profitability for two consecutive quarters. Having achieved solid results that are indicative of the hard work of the management team and our employees, we are now in an exciting position to achieve further growth,” he stated.

“Stable revenues, the success of our Breakthrough Program turnaround strategy, and ongoing initiatives in response to the Covid-19 pandemic drove profitability in the last two quarters.”

The Saudi Stock Exchange-listed firm reported net profits after Zakat and tax of SAR 5.2 million and SAR 4.4 million for the second and third quarters of 2020, respectively.

Notwithstanding the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the group remained agile in tackling issues while sustaining strong inventory and capacity levels to maximize commercial opportunities across the Kingdom.

Given the fluidity of the pandemic situation both locally and internationally, the CEO pointed out that it was not possible to make accurate forecasts for the company’s future impact on performance.

Increasing efficiency

Speaking on the new developments planned as part of the turnaround strategy, Abunayyan said that the Breakthrough Transformation Program continues to be a cornerstone of Shaker Group’s strategy towards realizing sustained profitability and value for shareholders.

“Structural changes to our business-to-consumer (B2C) sales infrastructure that began in 2019 have since been completed, while we continue to prioritize business-to-business (B2B) enhancements. Overall, there is still significant headroom to achieve higher levels of efficiency in 2020 and beyond, which is where we will be focusing our energy,” he added.

Business focus

According to the CEO, the company will continue to build on its extensive portfolio of international home appliance brands, taking advantage of emerging retail channels that will better serve customers while achieving efficiencies across the sales and distribution process.

Long-term growth avenues continue to include the Saudi Energy Efficiency Center’s (SEEC) high-efficiency AC initiative, the development of the Saudi housing strategy, as well as private sector support initiatives.

“We will continue to exploit our market share of the ‘Multi V’ product range to bid for projects throughout 2021,” Abunayyan asserted.

E-commerce gains

In 2019, Shaker Group launched an e-commerce platform and continued to invest in online sales, strengthening its position when movement restrictions were in place during the pandemic.

“In 2020, we continued to work with partners to increase online sales, with e-commerce sales through partners representing the majority of sales through digital channels.

“During the year, we capitalized on the e-commerce capabilities of our retail partners, giving them special support and exclusive deals to boost online sales which achieved great success. For the first nine months of 2020, e-commerce sales through our website also saw an increase compared to the previous year,” the CEO stated.

In addition, the company took steps to grow energy-saving and after-sales business to further diversify revenue streams.

Tarshid bids

Shaker Group’s goal is to continue to bid for a healthy portion of the National Energy Services Co. (Tarshid) retrofit projects, Abunayyan said.

“There is an attractive opportunity presented by Tarshid, which includes retrofitting assets owned by public or government entities. Our retrofit business activity has seen modest growth in recent years, and this is an area we are keen to grow,” he concluded

Writer to Parag Deulgaonkar at parag.d@argaam.com