This is a PDF report.

This is a PDF report.

Includes 3 FREE Quarterly Updates.There is significant room for growth in Egypt’s soft drinks industry, and we expect bottled water, carbonates and juice consumption to increase over our our forecast period to 2016, with carbonates seeing the strongest consumption growth.Saudi Dairy and Food Stuffs Company (SADAFCO) announced strong FY2012 results on March 31, posting a 17.7% year-on-year (y-o-y) rise in revenues to SAR1.3bn and a 17.2% increase in net income to SAR.151.8mn.BMI launched categorised volume and value of soft drinks sales data for the UAE in 2011, and we higlight that the size of the soft drinks industry has grown considerably over the past few years.

BMI View Increased investment in private healthcare infrastructure across the GCC region will increase standards of care, making it a more appealing destination for medical tourists. However, BMI is concerned that the sudden influx of capital into private healthcare, which investors currently view as a ‘cannot lose’ safe haven because of the region’s epidemiological profile and incentives for investment, could lead to an overcapacity bubble. This in turn will increase competition and drive down prices, which will be good for patients but bad for investors. It will take time for the region to gain a suitably strong reputation for elective procedures to attract high-income, predominantly Muslim, patients from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Despite these risks, BMI maintains an optimistic stance on the UAE’s private healthcare market, especially towards hospitals that have an early-mover advantage, because of strong domestic demand from UAE nationals.BMI View In line with BMI’s view that public healthcare spending in Saudi Arabia would be greatly boosted by government initiatives in 2012, there was a flurry of activity in the public healthcare sector in Saudi Arabia at the start of the year. Concurrent with this trend, there has also been an increase in the number of private equitysponsored medical projects. With a large number of new hospitals being built or refurbished, BMI expects growth in healthcare and medical device expenditure to outpace pharmaceutical sales between 2011 and 2016.

Operators in the Middle East undoubtedly face challenges from OTT services. However, the challenge should be segmented into OTT substitution and OTT content, which have different characteristics with OTT content also delivering significant benefit to operators. BMI argues that in both areas Middle Eastern operators are in a stronger position to offer culture-specific apps and content, which leaves more scope for operator-developed apps and platforms than in Europe. While this leaves potential for operators to grow revenues, it is nonetheless vital operators take an ambitious approach to operational innovation in order to contain costs in a new era of data-centric financial performance.