Poultry firm Balady to boost Saudi output by 200m chicks a year

• Balady to invest $300m
• 600 new broiler coops
• Rival producer plans IPO

Saudi Arabia’s Balady Poultry Company is to invest SAR1.14 billion ($303 million) over five years to expand its business.

The plans involve establishing two hatcheries with a combined capacity of 200 million chicks a year.

In a statement to the Saudi stock exchange, Balady said it aims to establish a facility with the capacity to process 500,000 birds a day. It also plans to build 600 broiler-chicken coops (chicken that are bred for meat) and the required hatcheries.

The company reported a 56 percent increase in net profit in the first three months of 2024 compared with a year earlier, after an increase in the output to 192,000 chickens a day.

Balady’s shares, which are listed on the Nomu Parallel Market, have risen 152 percent in the past year.

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A rival Saudi poultry producer, Arabian Company for Agricultural & Industrial Investments (Entaj), plans an initial public offering late this month for 30 percent of its shares.

The final offer price will be announced after a book-building exercise that ends on February 27.

Elsewhere in the industry, the Ash-Sharqiyah Development Company recently announced it had obtained a licence to build a broiler facility producing more than 21 million chicks a year. Its share price jumped 8.2 percent on the news.