IN THE FAST LANE
An OER-United Securities survey of the Fastest Growing Large Cap Companies in the Sultanate of Oman

Oman Cables Industry has had a revenue growth of close to 90 per cent from 2005 – 2007, its shareholders returns and profits during the period grew by over 140 per cent each. If one were to work out an average of these three figures it would add up to 123 per cent. Investopedia, a website on business terms defines a company in a growth mode as, “one whose business generates significant positive cash flows or earnings and which increase at significantly higher rates than the overall economy.” Almost all the 30 companies ranked on our survey have had an average growth far in excess of the five - six per cent average growth that Oman’s economy has been growing at. An indicative of scorching pace that these companies are setting.

No one size fits all
In his bestseller Go For Growth, Robert M Tomasko details five distinct paths that can be taken by companies to achieve higher levels of productivity and prosperity – destabilising an industry to create new markets, excelling by satisfying existing needs in growing markets, dominating the market by controlling its standards, specialising and thriving in niche markets and Improvising. While there is no single best approach to growth, companies like Southwest Airlines, Kodak, PepsiCo, Walt Disney, Intel, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble have followed these principles in varying degrees.

The Fastest Growing Large Cap companies on our survey have in their own ways emulated these principles. To cite an example Renaissance Services has had the courage to venture into the Caspian Sea. Today its offshore support vessel fleet holds a market leadership in the Caspian with approximately 70 per cent of the Azerbaijan market and 44 per cent of the Kazakhstan market. Others like BankMuscat and Omantel have taken stakes in various companies in the region and beyond. For instance, BankMuscat currently owns a 49 per cent of BMI Bank, an independent bank in Bahrain. It also has a 43 per cent stake in the Mangal Keshav Group, one of the oldest securities houses in India and a 35 per cent stake in Saudi Pak Commercial Bank. Omantel acquired a 65 per cent stake in Worldcall Telecom of Pakistan in 2007 at a cost of $193mn. The acquisition is expected to give it a foothold in Pakistan’s fast growing telecom market.

Growth is a way of life
According to Michael Treacy the author of Double Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It, growth is the lifeblood of any company. While conventional business thinking has it that companies run through a life cycle of rapid growth, maturity and decline, Treacy believes that double-digit growth is possible even for mature organisations. He cites the example of Harley Davidson a 100 years plus company which is still growing in double digits. Jim Collin’s celebrity author of books like Good to Great and Built to Last believes that, “Companies do not succeed or fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes around them; they fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves.”Going by the logic the fastest growing companies in the Sultanate seem to be shaping their destinies with their own efforts and initiatives.

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Other Headlines
√ NIMBLE AND AGILE
   The list of the Fastest Growing Mid Cap Companies in the Sultanate of Oman
   throws up quite a few surprises


 

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