Saudi operator GO posts 31 percent revenue growth in fiscal 2026

For more than a decade, Etihad Atheeb Telecommunications, known across Saudi Arabia by its brand name GO, looked like a company waiting for a funeral rather than a comeback. It arrived in 2008 with enormous promise as the second fixed line operator licensed by the Communications and Information Technology Commission, backed by founding shareholders including Atheeb Trading Company, Bahrain's Batelco, Al-Nahla Trading Company and Traco, and armed with 3.5 GHz spectrum across thirteen regional divisions valued at roughly 522.9 million riyals. Its 2009 listing was the first Saudi initial public offering after the global financial crisis. Then the story went sideways, and it stayed sideways for a very long time. The numbers from that period are brutal reading. Accumulated losses climbed to around 828 million riyals at one point, equal to 52.6 percent of capital, which the company blamed on collapsing broadband pricing under intense competition alongside rising amortization, rental and leased circuit costs. Crossing the 50 percent threshold placed it squarely inside the Capital Market Authority regime that can end in liquidation for companies unable to repair their balance sheets. Trading in the stock was suspended in 2017 after it failed to comply with listing rules, and again in July 2018 after it missed its annual results deadline. The company also could not publish its nine month 2018 statements on time. What followed was a series of painful capital reductions, first a 25 percent cut from 630 million to 472.5 million riyals approved in early 2018, then a reduction to 228.5 million riyals in 2020, and a further recommended cut of 60.62 percent down to about 89.99 million riyals in 2021. An INSEAD teaching case on the company describes twelve years of deterioration driven by ineffective management, absent planning, indiscriminate asset sales, no cost discipline and weak operating controls. The recovery was built on a transformation strategy centerd on infrastructure modernization, a rebuilt customer service operation and an aggressive pivot toward business customers. Under chief executive Yahya bin Saleh Al Mansour and chairman Dr Issa bin Yaslam BaEssa, the company reported its first ever annual operating profit for the year ending March 2023, posting operating profit of 58 million riyals and net profit of 42 million riyals while clearing its accumulated losses entirely and moving into retained earnings. That year the B2B segment added 234 million riyals in revenue, wholesale contributed another 120 million and retail added 32 million, with major contracts signed across government entities. The second leg was acquisition. In December 2024 GO agreed to buy 51 percent of Ejad Tech, a Saudi IT services and digital transformation consultancy, for 86.7 million riyals, with 40 million paid upfront and the balance split across 2025 and 2026 against performance targets. That deal closed in June 2025. The result is a company that now clears the billion riyal mark comfortably. For the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, GO reported revenue up 31.2 percent year on year to about 1.9 billion riyals, with net income rising 17.7 percent to 259 million riyals, helped by a 65 percent jump in wholesale revenue and the consolidation of Ejad Tech. The board recommended a cash dividend of 0.35 riyals per share, totaling roughly 11.9 million riyals, which for a company that spent years cancelling shares to absorb losses is a significant symbolic marker. The company renamed itself Etihad GO Telecom in November 2025, and in June 2026 launched GO Money, a micro consumer finance subsidiary operating under a Saudi Central Bank license. Regionally, the turnaround sits inside a Saudi telecom sector that has matured considerably. Combined profits of listed operators reached 4.78 billion riyals in the first quarter of 2026 on sector revenue of about 27.64 billion riyals, with STC dominating at roughly 77 percent of earnings, followed by Mobily and Zain KSA, the latter posting the fastest profit growth in the group. GO remains the smallest of the four and the only one with a fiscal year ending in March, which makes direct comparison awkward. Its differentiator is that it stopped competing head on with mobile giants on price and instead moved into government digital infrastructure and enterprise IT, an area where Vision 2030 spending on non-oil sectors provides steady demand. Ejad Tech has become the vehicle for regional expansion, including a framework agreement signed with Syria's Ministry of Communications and Technology at the Saudi-Syrian Investment Forum in Damascus covering two data centers, cloud infrastructure, a government services platform, a cybersecurity center and local technical training. The company has also obtained a Level 2 Managed Security Operations Centre license and launched a GO AI Hub platform alongside a Silicon Valley innovation center. What makes the GO story unusual is that the recovery did not come from a bailout o