Saudi Arabian Amiantit Company has announced financial results for the fiscal year 2007 showing record sales and remarkable improvement in net profits, compared with its financial results for the previous year, 2006. Amiantit achieved record sales of SR 3.1 billion, at an increase of 17% compared with the year 2006. Net profits reached approximately SR 64 million (SR 82 million before deduction of Zakat), compared with 20.8 million (SR 32.6 million before deduction of Zakat) for the year 2006, that is an increase of 208%. Net profit per share reached approximately 55 halalas, compared with 18 halalas for 2006.

Commenting on the company's financial results, Engineer Fareed Al-Khalawi, CEO and MD of Amiantit Group said that the fiancial statements showed positive financial indications and come in line with Amiantit's plans to improve performance and production efficiency, overcoming fierce competition, high prices of raw materials, and the losses the company incurred from selling its US factory, Ametech US. Operational profits increased to almost SAR 316 million compared with SAR 146.7 million for the last year, an increase of approximately 115 percent, while administrative and marketing expenses recorded an increase of 10 percent due to growth in sales and steady increase in wages and services. In addition, liquidity ration improved to 1.21 compared with 1.14 in the last year, and the company almost maintained the ratio between indebtedness and partners' rights at 1.61 (1.62 in 2006), which helped in keeping financial expenses at the same level of approximately SR 120 million (119.5 million in 2006).

Results of Q4 of 2007 showed a breakeven point as a result of charging SR 32 million impairment provision to Q4 ( out of total provision of SR 74 million charged during the year allocated to compensate the losses of closing and selling the US Amitech factory and cancelling the book value of its assets). This has reduced profits of Q4 to an amount of SR 210,000 (SR 8 million before Zakat), compared with profits of SR 25,000 (SR 1.8 million before Zakat) for the same period last year. Sales of Q4 for the year 2007 increased by 31% to SR 803 million, compared with SR 611 million for the same period of last year.

According to Engineer Al-Khalawi, the most important factors that affected 2007 results included the continuous and high increase in prices of raw materials, which affected the company's ability to adjust selling prices for long term contracts. Currently, Amiantit is seeking to adopt certain policies, such as modifying sales contracts, and adding compensation provisions according to specific mechanisms, which may help alleviating effect of high prices of raw materials.

Amiantit's decision to sell the assets of its US Amitech factory at an amount of SR 53 million reduced profits by SR 74 million. However, Amiantit believes that this step, in spite of the announced loss, is an important stage throughout its program to restructure some of its international investments. The decision puts an end to a series of losses that made the factory unable to continue with its activities as a result of the major changes in the projects for which the factory was established in the first place. This highly important step will certain help increasing the actual annual profits of the company by SR 50 million during the upcoming years. Operational losses and amounts allocated for US factory were SR 45 million and SR 74 million, respectively. Actual profits before calculating losses and amounts allocated to US factory and before deducting Zakat were almost SR 200 million, which are considered record results and an indication of Amiantit ability to achieve similar successes in the years to come.

By the end of 2007, Amiantit received confirmed orders equal more than SR 2 billion, and this figure is expected to rise throughout 2008 as a result of the increasing demand to the products of Saudi Arabian Amiantit.