Miahona signs SAR 95 million deal to grow its portfolio

Published: 2026-06-08T11:34:19.000Z

Saudi Arabia's listed water specialist Miahona is buying its way to bigger scale. The Riyadh based company has signed a deal worth more than 95 million riyals to acquire SHAS, framing it as fuel for its next phase of expansion in the kingdom's fast growing water sector.

Saudi Arabia's listed water specialist Miahona is buying its way to bigger scale. The Riyadh based company has signed a deal worth more than 95 million riyals to acquire SHAS, a move it is framing as fuel for its next phase of expansion. For a business that has spent years winning long term government concessions one project at a time, reaching for growth through acquisition marks a slightly different gear, and it signals confidence about where the kingdom's water sector is heading. A quick refresher on the buyer helps frame why this matters. Miahona, established in 2008 and listed on the Saudi Exchange in 2024, is one of the country's pioneers in developing water and wastewater infrastructure under the public private partnership model. It runs the full water cycle, from production and distribution to wastewater collection, treatment and the reuse of treated effluent, serving both municipal and industrial customers across Saudi Arabia's major cities. The company has poured around a billion riyals into water and sanitation assets and reaches millions of residents, which gives it a sizable base to build on. The SHAS acquisition fits a pattern Miahona's leadership has been signaling for a while, namely a willingness to grow by absorbing additional projects and assets rather than relying solely on new tenders. At a little over 95 million riyals, this is not a transformational megadeal on the scale of the company's largest concession wins, some of which run into the billions, but it is the kind of bolt on that can add capacity, contracts or capabilities without straining the balance sheet. Miahona has tended to fund its expansion through project specific structures and refinancing, including a recent Sharia compliant facility that pushed out its debt maturities, so a measured acquisition sits comfortably within that disciplined approach. The timing tracks with a genuinely large opportunity at home. Saudi Arabia's national water strategy under Vision 2030 is pushing hard to expand private sector participation, cut water losses, and lift the share of treated water that gets reused toward 70 percent, all of which points to years of tenders and investment ahead. Analysts have estimated tens of billions of riyals in potential projects flowing to operators like Miahona over the coming years, and consolidating smaller players is one way to grab a bigger slice. For the wider region, the deal is a small marker of a broader shift. Across the Middle East and North Africa, where water scarcity is among the most pressing long term challenges, governments are leaning on private operators and public private partnerships to build and run critical infrastructure. Saudi Arabia has set the pace on that front, and a listed company using acquisitions to scale up suggests the sector is maturing from isolated projects into something that looks more like a consolidating industry.