Hello, good morning, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Ahmed Hazem speaking from EFG Hermes Research, and we'd like to welcome you all today for the AD Ports Group third quarter 2024 results conference call. With us on the line is Mr. Martin Aarup, CFO of AD Ports Group, and Mr. Marc Hammoud, VP of Investor Relations. I'd like to start off by thanking the AD Ports Group team for the call and congratulating them on the results and the nice surprise we saw this morning in finally turning FCF positive. Without further delay, I'd like to hand over the call to Marc. Marc, please go ahead.
Thank you, Hazem. Thank you, EFG Hermes, for hosting our Q3 2024 earnings call. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for attending our call. First, I'd like to apologize that Ross Thompson, Chief Strategy Officer, won't be attending the call. It will be myself and Mr. Martin Aarup, CFO. Without further ado, we'll kick it off. Key messages of the quarter. Ahmed mentioned the main one, which is a free cash flow to the firm positive for the quarter on continued EBITDA growth, acceleration, higher cash conversion, and lower CapEx. The quarter was characterized by strong growth, financial performance, strengthened balance sheet, and improved cash flow generation. The top-down story continues to be and is increasingly supportive. The latest, if we had to cite the latest projection from the World Bank, 3.3% GDP growth for this year, accelerating to 4.1% in 2025.
We've seen further CEPAs agreements signed in July with Morocco, in September with Australia, in October with Malaysia, Jordan, and Vietnam. We also had a couple of weeks ago a new strategy to double cumulative FDIs to AED 1.3 trillion by 2031 amid economic diversification push in the UAE. Record financial performance in Q3, revenue increasing by 60% year on year to AED 4.65 billion, 28% on a like-for-like basis. For EBITDA, 124% increase to AED 1.21 billion, 63% on a like-for-like basis. Both of them, revenue and EBITDA, adjusted for the vessel trading activities in Q3 last year. Total net profit increasing 11% year on year to AED 445 million, and that's including or after the introduction of income tax in the UAE. The highly visible and resilient revenue streams, despite the business diversification and international expansion, continues.
We have 40% of the nine-month 2024 top line, which is classified as long-term or sticky. In terms of CapEx, the CapEx spending continues to be disciplined, and a higher allocation was to the infrastructure business. For the quarter, we spent AED 808 million, bringing the total year-to-date outlay to AED 3.3 billion. CapEx for the full year is likely to reach AED 4.5 billion, in line with the five-year CapEx plan of AED 12 billion-AED 15 billion with front-loaded CapEx. On the balance sheet front, as you may have seen, we refinanced some of our debt, and we've had so far 75 basis points rate cuts in the U.S., which have been applied also in the UAE, given the peg to the dollar, which gives us basically a stronger liquidity position on the back of this debt refinancing with lower spreads and a longer or extended maturity.
Leverage has also improved in Q3, down from 3.6 times in Q2 to 3.5 times, and worth noting that out of the AED 17.9 billion debt that we have, about AED 14 billion is floating, which would obviously benefit from the 75 basis points rate cuts that we've had so far this year. Red Sea disruptions, which again have had a positive impact on the business, are now likely to continue up until the end of the year and into 2025. We have now eight services in the Red Sea. We added one with 17 container vessels deployed in that region versus 13 last quarter, so we continue to increase our exposure, and about 30% of our container shipping volumes were conducted in the Red Sea in the nine-month 2024. Resilient growth story that continues.
First point, and building on what I just said, I can't stress enough how we aligned with the government priorities and economic diversification and the fact that they want to develop an industrial manufacturing hub in Abu Dhabi, and that obviously is benefiting our business. We are a key enabler and a key beneficiary of that strategy. Triple-play growth, you could see it in the financial performance, reported financial performance, but also like-for-like financial performance. It's a mix of a ramp-up of existing assets, the additional CapEx, organic CapEx that we spend, and an M&A layer on top of that.
Third point in the equity story, again, the resilience, the stability of our revenue and income streams, and that's on the back of the landlord business model in the ports cluster in the UAE and the Economic City and Free Zone, but also the long-term partners, contracts, and leases we have in other clusters. A strengthened balance sheet, as I mentioned, the stronger liquidity position, you can see it is demonstrated by the AED 2.5 billion in cash and AED 1 billion in unused bank facilities that we have as of Q3 2024. As I said, we extended debt maturity to 2026 and beyond, and the leverage has come down to 3.5 times. Nothing changed on the shareholding structure, 75% owned by ADQ, and not much changes as well on the foreign ownership and the institutional participation, stable at 9%.
So the stock performance is clearly not reflecting the strong fundamentals that we've delivered so far in 2024. We underperformed the ADX performance. The stock is down 18% year-to-date versus - 2%. Having said that, we're still up 60% since listing, and our liquidity has been stable at $2.3 million ADTV. The five vertically integrated clusters, again, not a big change from the six-month. We have the maritime and shipping constituting 43% of the EBITDA, about 45% coming from the infra business, and a smaller logistic and digital with about 13% together contribution to EBITDA. In terms of capital intensity, you can see ports, economic cities, and free zone, and maritime and shipping is where we've been spending the CapEx and where the assets are concentrated. Logistics and digital are asset light or asset lighter, let's say. A snapshot on where we stand in terms of scale of operations.
On the port side, about 10 million TEUs in terms of port container capacity. Volumes over the past 12 months have reached close to six million TEUs and going up. General Cargo has passed the 50 million tons mark, and Ro-Ro volumes have been also increasing to 1.4 million. Maritime side, we have 80 vessels, shipping vessels, 25 container feeder services, and we reached 1.9 million TEUs transported on our container vessels. That's one TEU every 11 seconds based on the Q3 numbers. On the Economic City and Free Zone, not much changes. We signed 0.7 sq km in Q3, taking the total to 70 sq km as of now, as of Q3, and KEZAD Communities bed capacity at 139,000. Logistics, volumes of polymers handled over the past 12 months, 4.7 million, air freight volumes of 33, north of 33,000 tons, and ocean freight volumes of 387,000 TEUs.
This is the map showing our presence by cluster, by region. Again, it's clear that the focus, apart from the green dots, which represent our global logistics platform and presence, but the rest of our operations remain concentrated on the Middle East, Indian Subcontinent, Africa, the Med region, and Southeast Asia. Market update. You can see on the container side that global trade is doing well. I think in our regions, and what I mean by our region is Sub-Saharan Africa, Indian Subcontinent, and Middle East, there's been an adverse impact, generally speaking, from the Red Sea disruptions.
But you can see in our numbers and operational numbers that AD Ports Group has been shrugging off those challenges and has been performing better than the overall market in the container, given our exposure to the Red Sea, which again represents almost a third of the volumes in the container shipping business. On the rate side, there's been a softening in August and September. If you show this graph extending to October, you will see the same trend of softening. But over the past two weeks, we've been seeing again the rates strengthening again as we approach the lunar calendar in China. So pre-stocking potentially strikes in the U.S. and the end of year season. On the bulk side, not much volatility as it's largely contracted. So you can see a big change in trends. It remains the same.
On the car trade, well, two things are worth mentioning. One is there's subdued demand in Europe when it comes to the car industry. And there are EV-related trade tensions weighing on the volume growth, and you can see it in the graph. And on the grain trade, you can see that weather, let's say, challenges between drought and flooding pretty much globally has been affecting also the trade pattern. An update on projects and transactions. I think 2024 has been a focus on securing more port assets or concessions and integrating Noatum and GFS. You can see that in Q3, we continue to expand our ecosystem in Egypt. That's the only transaction notable for the quarter by adding maritime services and the acquisition of a 70% stake in Safina Shipping Services.
This is a new slide to show you the international footprint we have in terms of port terminals. As you can see, it's primarily in Pakistan, in Africa. The presence in Spain is through Noatum, obviously, and nothing has changed on that front. We remain concentrated in the regions that we've been communicating on, which are primarily the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean region. We wanted to show that there's some overlaps with what the government is doing outside the UAE when it comes to CEPAs that have been signed so far. Six of them have been signed and implemented, and you can see them in green on this map, with another 14 CEPAs agreed on or signed over the past few months. You can also see that the pace of signing and implementation has accelerated.
As a reminder, the UAE has for objective to sign a total of 26. As AD Ports Group, we've been trying to leverage on those CEPAs because they translate into increased trade flows and stronger economic ties between the countries. You can see our presence in the line countries, the Congo-Brazzaville, where there's a signed CEPA now. You can see it in Pakistan where there's a CEPA under negotiation going on. You can see it in Jordan where another CEPA has been signed. We obviously look at the countries present in the regions that we focus on, Indian Subcontinent. You can see a certain number of countries that are in Southeast Asia where we still don't have a presence, a gap in our operations.
KEZAD, we wanted to highlight some of the key contracts that we signed, again, focusing on the industries that we've been highlighting, building materials for Azizi Developments, and the energy sector for both Al Maden and Apex Engineering Industries, which are both catering to the energy sector. One is green energy. The other one is the oil and gas sector. And last slide, as far as I'm concerned, before I pass it on to Martin, this is the contribution of M&A into our Q3 results. You can see it represented 20% of the top line, 27% of the EBITDA, and it's mostly coming from GFS, which had a very good performance in Q3 and since the beginning of the year to a large extent. And that's it for me. I'll pass it on to Martin for the operational and financial performance. Over to you, Martin.
Thank you, Marc.
Next slide. So yes, as Marc said, Q3 was financially another strong quarter for us and basically with stable growth now for the third consecutive quarter in a row. The revenue increased 10% year-on-year to AED 4.66 billion and was up 28% on a like-for-like basis when you adjust for the M&A effect and also the vessel trading activities that Marc mentioned that we did in Q3 of 2023. The EBITDA for the quarter increased 60% year-on-year to AED 1.21 billion, and that was up 63% year-on-year when again adjusting for the M&A effect and vessel trading activity. So very strong growth year-on-year also in the underlying business. The total net profit reached AED 445 million in Q3, and that was up 11% year-on-year and impacted by a negative one-off AED 40 million accounting charge related to the debt financing that Marc mentioned, which we did in Q3.
Again, when we look at the year-to-date numbers, it should be mentioned here that we have the year-to-date and total net profit of AED 1.29 billion, and look at that comparison year-on-year. The 2024 figures includes AED 130 million new charge related to the UAE tax. Next slide. In terms of operational KPI in our ports cluster, the general cargo volumes were up 26% year-on-year, supported by the addition of Karachi Bulk Terminal that we started earlier this year. The UAE volumes were resilient, particularly due to strong labor and high-yield steel cargo. Our container volumes increased 24% year-on-year with 22% year-on-year growth in Khalifa Port, accounting for 87% of our total container throughput. What is also worthwhile mentioning here in Q3 is that Khalifa Port utilization reached an all-time high of 76% in Q3 for the container side of the business.
The overall mix in Q3 was unchanged compared to Q2 with 54% transshipment and 46% O&D cargo. For the Ro-Ro volumes at Khalifa Port, it grew by 53% year-on-year. And again, that was supported by the Red Sea situation, whereas the European auto industry and trade tension led to a declining volumes in Spain. Next slide. In our economic cities, we inked 0.7 sq km of net new land leases in Q3, bringing the year-to-date to 2.7 sq km. And close to 70% of all land leases are now industrial or manufacturing related. The guidance that we have given before in terms of remains unchanged, and that's basically net new land leases in the range of 3.5-4 sq km per year.
For our warehouses, overall utilization remained high at 92% in Q3, and that's in spite of actually us adding some new capacity in Q3 related to one of the built-to-suit warehouses. What is also important to notice when it comes with regards to the warehouses and the high utilization is that we have 250,000 sq m of additional warehouse capacity that is currently under construction and is on track to be commissioned by end of 2025. Next slide. For our KEZAD Communities, utilization continued to increase with ramp-up of the new facilities and stood at 64% by end of Q3 based on.
Hello, Marc. Can you hear us? I can't hear Martin anymore.
I can hear you, but I can't hear Martin either. Let me text him. Sorry for this.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, you're back.
I think somebody didn't like what I said and accidentally muted me.
But they have regretted that action, so I'm back in business. I don't know where you lost me, but anyway, I think we had the right slide here.
Yes, at the beginning of this slide, we lost you.
Okay. So what I just wanted to mention here is that the KEZAD Communities' utilization that continued to increase as we ramp up our new facilities. And by the end of Q3, we had an occupancy of 64% and based on a bed capacity of 139,000 beds that we manage. The gas volumes were slightly up year-on-year, but down versus Q2 due to seasonality. Next slide, please. In our maritime and shipping cluster, we operated 25 container feeder services in Q3 with a fleet of 48 vessels and connecting 75 ports across 27 countries.
The container volumes for the feeder increased 11% quarter-on-quarter versus Q2, so also a healthy growth there. Around 30% of our feeder volumes across eight services came from the Red Sea in Q3. Next slide. As in previous quarters, we continue to focus on creating a balanced synergistic portfolio of maritime businesses and with different market cycles to limit the business performance volatility. As of end of Q3, our total vessel fleet is now 257, including 29 bulk and Ro-Ro vessels, and we have 108 vessels fully deployed in our offshore and subsea segment. Next slide. In logistics, the polymers volumes were up 1% year-on-year and slightly down versus Q2, again due to seasonality. Air freight volumes were up 14% year-on-year, and that was driven by strong demand, particularly for e-commerce and high-tech components, and also benefiting from the ongoing disruption on the ocean freight side.
The ocean freight was up 1% modestly year-on-year, but with healthy rate increases. Next slide. The maritime top line decreased 11% year-on-year. Again, when adjusting for the vessel trading activities that we did in Q3 of 2023, it was up by 96%. All the subsegments within maritimes or shipping, offshore, and subsea and marine services performed well and all contributed to the growth. No vessel trading revenue was booked in Q3 of 2024. The economic cities recorded revenue growth of 16% year-on-year, and that was mainly driven by warehouse leases, increased utilization in key communities that we discussed, and steady growth trajectory for land leases. The ports cluster revenue grew by 24% year-on-year and 18% on a like-for-like basis.
The strong performance in ports during the quarter came from the general cargo container concession fees in the UAE, including commencement of the fixed concession fees from the new CMA Terminal and international container operations in Spain and Pakistan. The logistics cluster also delivered strong revenue performance with 48% growth year-on-year, driven by growth across the majority of the segments, particularly ocean and air freight, together with the acquisition of Sesé Auto Logistics , which has been consolidated from 1st of February of this year. When adjusting for M&A, logistics cluster revenue were up by 42% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis, so also very strong underlying growth. The digital cluster revenue grew by 62% year-on-year to AED 162 million in Q3, and that was driven by internal digital transformation and also the acquisition effect of Dubai Technologies. Next slide.
In terms of geographical revenue distribution, 65% of our revenue came from the UAE in Q3, which is similar to Q2, and followed by 20% from Europe. Again, here it should be noted that we are currently counting all maritime assets as UAE-based, although the majority is operating in international borders. Almost AED 4.6 billion or 36% of year-to-date revenue came from M&A activities spread across all clusters, with logistics and maritime accounting for the vast majority. Next slide. The Q3 EBITDA was, as mentioned, up by 60% year-on-year and 13% up versus Q2. When normalizing for the vessel trading activities in Q3 of 2023 and the M&A effect, like-for-like increase was 63%. Very strong growth in maritime cluster with 93% year-on-year and 200% on a like-for-like basis, with all segments showing healthy growth.
Economic cities were up by 10% year-on-year, in line with the revenue growth that we talked about in the previous slide. Ports cluster up by 6%, but 24% year-on-year when adjusting for the AED 39 million gain on sale that we had of BCDS in Spain recorded in Q3 of 2023. The logistics cluster EBITDA grew 38% year-on-year and 32% when excluding the effect from the Sesé Auto Logistics acquisition that we did earlier in the year. And lastly, the digital cluster was up by 3% on higher application fees, largely offsetting the revenue increase. Next slide. Margin evolution has been again led by the change in mix with higher contribution from logistics and maritime clusters, essential connectivity components for our ecosystem strategies to continue growing the trade flows into our infrastructure assets.
You have seen that margins have again been stable throughout this quarter, slightly increasing with the stability in the business mix. Overall, EBITDA margins stood at 26% in Q3 versus 25.6% in Q2, and that's in line with the guidance that we have previously given in terms of 25%-30% in the midterm. Next slide. On the balance sheet side, total assets grew 22% year-on-year to AED 63.7 billion in Q3, while the total equity increased 21% year-on-year to AED 28 billion. We had limited increase in our total net debt versus Q2. And again, as Marc mentioned, the strong EBITDA performance resulted in an improving net debt to EBITDA ratio to 3.5 as of Q3 versus 3.6 in Q2.
In September 2024, we strengthened our liquidity position by refinancing the bridge facility that we had of AED 8.2 billion, with two new facilities totaling AED 10.2 billion, lowering the spreads and extending the maturities to 2026 and beyond. Currently, the earliest debt maturity we have is now in 2026. Our guidance remains unchanged to maintain an investment-grade credit rating on a standalone basis. Next slide. For the CapEx in Q3, it just reached north of AED 800 million, 31% lower than Q2. Majority of the Q3 spend was for the new CMA Terminal in Khalifa Port, which is scheduled to commence operation next month, and also infrastructure works for Khalifa Port and KEZAD plus some minor barge acquisitions. Again, this is in line with the front-loaded CapEx program that we have of AED 12 billion- AED 15 billion for the period 2024 to 2028.
Majority of future CapEx relates to ports expansions in Egypt, Pakistan, Congo, and Angola as part of the recent concessions that we have signed, and as well as the continued build-out of KEZAD. Fleet optimization and expansion will also be done on a selective basis. The capital intensity continued to soften as per plan and stood at 26% year-to-date. Next slide. Yeah, on the cash flow side, one of the highlights here for Q3, the operating cash flow was extremely strong, coming in at AED 1.2 billion in Q3, which equates to a cash conversion of almost 100%. Combined with the lower CapEx in Q3 versus Q2, we ended up with a positive free cash flow of AED 307 million for the quarter for the first time, so a significant milestone for us. Next slide. With regards to our medium-term guidance, no changes versus what we provided in mid-February.
Due to the base effect of the recent acquisition, some of the average growth will be front-loaded, which is also what you can see in the year-to-date financials. Additionally, we are factoring in normalization of Red Sea in our forecast, and that is mainly impacting our container feedering business going forward. Again, this is based on currently announced transactions. For Q4, I would like to highlight that subsequent to closing of Q3, NMDC declared a dividend of AED 2.37 per share to its shareholders, and Abu Dhabi Ports is entitled to an amount of AED 195 million, which will have a one-off positive P&L effect in Q4 at a bidder level and a positive cash impact and investment cash flow level as well. That's the update on the financial performance for Q3. Back to you, Marc.
Marc here is still on mute if you're trying to speak.
Yes, thank you, Martin.
It's time for Q&A, so let's open the floor for questions.
Sure. So as a reminder for everyone, you can use the raise hand function and you can unmute your mic, or you can send your questions in the Q&A box. We have one hand raised from Graham Hunt. Graham, please unmute locally and ask your question as well. Hi, Graham, can you hear us? Graham, we're not able to hear you if you're trying to ask a question. So in the meantime, just a reminder for everyone, you can use the raise hand function or send your questions in the Q&A box. Maybe I can get the questions rolling before we move to the Q&A box. Martin and Marc, I have a question on the special dividend that NMDC Group basically paid. Have you already received the payment, and what's your plan after you've received that payment?
Do you expect to de-lever the balance sheet or pay some debt, or do you want to basically pay some dividends back to shareholders, to AD Ports Group shareholders?
Yeah, thank you for the question. This is the second dividend that we received from NMDC this year, so we also received AED 60 million in Q1 of this year. Obviously, the big dividend that is coming in now is related to the proceeds from the listing of one of their subsidiaries, NMDC Energy. We are expecting to receive the dividend, so we have not received it yet. We expect to receive it within November, and again, it's a decent amount, but it's again not something that rocks the boat, so it will go into the general pool and initially be used to de-lever the balance sheet.
Okay, thank you very much.
I think Graham has raised his hand again, so we'll give a chance for Graham to ask his questions. Graham, please ask your questions. Okay, Graham, we still can't hear you, so we'll move to Nikhil Mishra. Nikhil, please unmute locally and ask your questions.
And taking the questions, a couple of them from my side. First of all, on CEPA agreements, you mentioned that AD Ports Group try to utilize these CEPA agreements for further growth. So can you just give us some color in terms of how do you intend to utilize these agreements? What's the right strategy for you? Is it more towards port concession agreements as we have seen sometime in the past, or are acquisitions also part of this strategy to utilize the CEPA agreements by the government? And secondly, very much more specific question.
So in the P&L statement, the non-controlling interest has increased significantly, and it's both sequentially and compared to the last year. So can you just give us some color on where this high profitability, which subsidiaries are getting this high profitability, which is resulting in this high non-controlling interest in P&L? And how should we look at that line item going forward? Thank you.
Sorry, can you repeat the question? Because I was accidentally muted, so I was—what was the question? Sorry about that.
Yes, so two questions, please. First of all, on the CEPA agreements, how do you plan to utilize those? How do you plan to really use those CEPA agreements for growth going forward? Is that through port concessions as we have seen sometimes in the past, or are acquisitions also part of that strategy? And second question is much more specific to the P&L.
So non-controlling interest in P&L has increased significantly. So which subsidiaries of yours are generating such high profitability, which is resulting in such high non-controlling interest? And what should be the level of these in terms of percentage of, let's say, net profit going forward that we should look at? Thank you.
Okay, thank you. Now I got it. Apologies for that. So in terms of the first one, the first question related to the CEPA agreements, again, we are here to facilitate trade, and we are focusing on the key trade lanes in and out of Abu Dhabi. The CEPA agreements, what is happening normally is that when these trade agreements are signed, is that that enhances trade, and there will be an increase in terms of trade flows between UAE and the respective country. But it also opens up in terms of opportunities, again, to facilitate that trade.
That can take many different kinds of forms of opportunities. We are not forced to do anything, but obviously, we are there as a local champion to support the government in terms of these efforts as well. So what we aim to do is, again, to create the density and stickiness across these key trade lanes. And we will seek to go in and look at all opportunities on a commercial basis and ideally go in with the entire ecosystem that we have, if possible, both in terms of asset-intensive businesses and also asset-light businesses to facilitate the trade. When it comes to the non-controlling interest in the P&L, the two main contributors in terms of the non-controlling interest is KEZAD Communities, where we have a 48% minority ownership, and the other one is GFS, which we acquired earlier this year, where we have a 49% minority interest.
And particularly, the big increase that you have seen, the KEZAD Communities is relatively stable and steadily growing, but the big increase that you have seen would be from GFS that was consolidated from earlier this year. And we have actually separately disclosed the financial performance of GFS in one of the slides here. And that's essentially the main driver for the non-controlling interest. And what you would be able to see quarter-on-quarter, it's relatively stable, but slightly increasing with the increased performance of what GFS have delivered during the first nine months of this year.
And just to follow- up, so this GFS performance is all organic. There is no one-off that is there at the GFS level?
Yeah, so it's all organic, but again, GFS was consolidated from 1st of February this year.
But since then, it's just the organic business as usual in terms of what we acquired.
All right, yeah. Thank you very much. That's very clear.
Okay, thank you. We'll take a couple of questions coming from Alok Nawani in the Q&A box. How does management see the shipping rates evolve into 2025? That's the first question. And then the second question, what does management's view on the sustainable long-term EBITDA margin for the shipping segment?
In terms of the view on the shipping rates, we have explicitly included that in the earnings release in terms of our current view. Again, especially on the container feedering side of the shipping segment, the visibility in terms of when there will be a normalization is still not clear. So there's no clarity in when that will happen.
Our current base assumption is that nothing's going to change, at least for the remainder of the year. And we also see at least the beginning of next year that the status quo will be maintained. After that, I think there's a lot of moving parts in terms of what will happen post the U.S. election. But eventually, there will be some kind of normalization when container vessels and vessels in general will be able to transit through Suez Canal again. But we don't see that, at least for the remainder of the year and also at the beginning of next year.
In terms of sustainable margins, I think the question related to the shipping segment, but again, our shipping segment composed of different asset classes, again, that has different market cycles and also different exposures because everything in our offshore and subsea and also to a large extent marine services or offshore and subsea and bulk and Ro-Ro are on longer-term contracts, whereas the marine service is linked to the activity in our ports. So the main exposure that we are having is on the container feedering side. And if you look at the EBITDA margins there through the cycles combined for the operational part and the ship owning part, it will normally be in the range between 15% and 25% depending on where you are in the cycles. Currently, we are slightly higher than that because of the situation in the Red Sea.
But that will be the normal bands that the feedering business will operate in through the cycles.
Thank you, Martin. Very clear. As a reminder for everyone, you can use the raise hand function or you can send your questions in the Q&A box. We'll give another chance for Graham to ask his questions. Graham, please unmute locally and ask your question.
Ahmed, he actually sent me his question. He's got some mic issues. I'm going to read it out for the audience. How should we think about the new top-down strategy to ramp up FDIs by 2031? Is there anything AD Ports Group will be stepping up to support this initiative? And given foreign investment appears to have stalled slightly as a percentage of the free float, is increasing liquidity something management is considering to attract new investors? And how might that be done? So two parts of the question.
I'll take the first one on FDIs and let Martin address the liquidity question. On FDIs, attracting more FDIs, well, we're seeing it. It's various initiatives that will continue to drive FDIs. I mean, CEPA is one of them. When you sign a CEPA, you remove tariffs, you facilitate your customs procedure, you bring more transparency into trade flows. So the more you sign CEPAs, the more you increase your chances to attract FDIs. G2G relationships, we mentioned that. That helps also attracting FDIs. What else? I mean, we can mention sovereign wealth funds, investment in certain companies globally, pushing them to also have some manufacturing in the country. We've seen that. We know there are talks about some of those companies, global companies, pushed to establish manufacturing presence in the UAE and in Abu Dhabi more specifically.
So it's a concerted effort that the government is doing and involving Abu Dhabi-owned companies as well, including the sovereign wealth funds. So I think that's one way to answer this question. Martin, on the liquidity, maybe?
Yes. Yeah. So the question, what was the specific questions, whether it's something management is concerned about or doing something about?
Yes. So foreign investment appears to have stalled, sorry, as a percentage of the free float. So foreign ownership has been flat for the past six or nine months, if I'm not mistaken. And whether we are considering a liquidity event to attract new investors and how it might be done.
Yeah. Good question. Obviously, spot on in terms of the foreign institutional investors has been flat, just shy of 10% throughout this year here.
Again, our effective free float is around 70% if you take the Al Seer Marine out of the free float. And then we have a number of strategic investors as well. So yes, I mean, obviously, one of the reasons, at least, that we see it in terms of where our share price currently is trading versus also some of the target prices that the analysts have, part of that relates also to the liquidity. Obviously, it's not something that we are in control of. We can control the fundamentals, and that's what we are spending day on. But it's a bit of a curse for a lot of the companies that are listed on ADX in terms of having the sufficient liquidity in the stock. And I think we are no different for that.
We would like to increase the liquidity on the stock because we believe it benefits all the different stakeholders, but it's not something that we indirectly control off. So it's something that is on the agenda, but nothing specific. Again, what we want to achieve as a company is to eventually get into MSCI, the index, and that has been basically a target since we started out, but no specific plans as of yet, but it's something that we really hope to achieve in the foreseeable future.
Thank you, Martin. Marc, I don't see any more hands raised or questions in the Q&A box. So with that, Marc, maybe back to you.
All right. Thank you, Ahmed. Thank you all for attending this call. We look forward to speaking with you soon. There are a few events to which we're going to participate.
We'll keep the dialogue open with the investor community. Thank you, Ahmed. Thank you, EFG, for hosting this call. We'll speak soon. Thank you.
Our pleasure. Thank you, everyone, for joining. You may now disconnect.